Science 10 Wonder Project

How Will the Universe End? 

It’s said that the universe started with the big bang. A condensed, insanely small singularity exploding, expanding faster than the speed of light. My wonder is how will the universe end? I’m not one to speculate too much on unsolved mysteries, but questions such as this one intrigue me quite a bit. 

My knowledge of space is extremely limited to begin with. Using what I already know and what we learned in class about astronomy, I would guess that the universe would end in some sort of reverse big bang where instead of expanding, the universe starts to compress itself back into a condensed, insanely small singularity. I feel that there was something that came before the big bang and what created that condensed singularity because matter cannot be created nor destroyed. If everything was just one large cycle, then I could see where the condensed singularity came from. This doesn’t solve the question of how the first singularity came to be, but that’s a completely different wonder in and of itself. With some research, I could see if this makeshift theory is plausible. 

It seems that my theory already existed. The big crunch theory is a predicted scenario to the end of the universe. It states that the universe would eventually stop expanding and collapse into itself, turning into a massive black hole. Scientists made an effort to figure out the density of the universe for if it were to cross a certain value of density known as critical density, the possibility of a collapse is very high. Scientists believed that the gravitational force of the galaxies, and the outward momentum of them caused from the big bang were the only two forces that impacted the universe’s expansion. The gravity pushing the galaxies further would eventually bring the galaxies back like how a rock thrown up would eventually come back down. This was the most logical prediction scientists could come up with until they discovered that the universe expands not from gravity, but from an entity that propels the galaxies apart. 

There isn’t much known about dark energy. All that is known about it is what it does and how much of it there is. Dark energy takes up approximately 68% of the universe with the remaining 32% being 27% dark matter and 5% matter. 

With the big crunch theory having been proven to be highly unlikely, what other theories that contemplate the end of the universe are plausible? Two theories arose after the big crunch theory was debunked. The big freeze theory and the big rip theory. 

The big freeze is what scientists predict to happen in hundreds of trillions of years. The discovery of dark energy led scientists to realize that the expansion of the universe wouldn’t slow down but accelerate. In trillions of years, the universe would’ve expanded so much that no galaxies would be seen and the formation of stars would fall apart. In even more trillions of years, all stars and galaxies would be gone and all matter would have been sucked up by black holes. Eventually, by a googol’s worth of years, all black holes will be gone and all energy would be evenly distributed throughout the still expanding universe leaving the final temperature of the entire universe to be just above absolute zero. 

The big rip is a theory that states that as the expansion of the universe accelerates from the dark energy pulling the universe faster, the dark energy also gets stronger. Eventually dark energy would get strong enough to pull apart what holds atoms together. In the end, once dark energy gets strong enough to rip apart everything, there would be nothing left. 

These two theories make complete sense to me and I honestly believe both could be the answer, but I find myself believing the big freeze theory to be the solution to my wonder. An ending with nothing but coldness just seems more believable than an ending with everything down to the atom torn apart. Learning about possible endings of the universe and about dark energy was very insightful. I’m glad that the end of the universe isn’t anywhere close to now. 

 

Work Cited

Villanueva, J. C. (2020, March 2). The big crunch: The end of our universe? Universe Today. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://www.universetoday.com/37018/big-crunch/

Betz, E. (2021, January 31). The beginning to the end of the universe: The big crunch vs. the big freeze. Astronomy.com. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://astronomy.com/news/magazine/2021/01/the-beginning-to-the-end-of-the-universe-the-big-crunch-vs-the-big-freeze