The End of Ends

An Empty and Terrible Future

THE universe, it now appears, has a much more terrible future than anyone has dared to imagine - at least if one takes the long view. For far more than 99 percent of its existence it will be dark, empty of life, planets and stars, and meaningless. This is not the first time we have heard forecasts of the long-term future of the cosmos, but the first to be so utterly cheerless.

Frank Tipler's eccentric prediction a few years ago that, given a closed universe from which no information could escape, we would all ultimately be ``resurrected" because the people of that remote epoch would have infinitely powerful computers, had a definite charm. So also did Freeman Dyson's theory of 1979, that if the Universe continued to expand for ever, then the number of years in which life would continue to be possible would be an unimaginable 10 raised to the power of 1076

But the new prophecy, from Fred Adams and Gregory Laughlin of the University of Michigan, offers no such comfort. Indeed, it threatens religious belief, for what god would devise a universe in which life and mind could not exist in all but the tiniest fraction of its history?

Adams and Laughlin, like Dyson and a possible majority of cosmologists today, assume an everlasting cosmic expansion. But these two men differ from Dyson in their belief in ultimate ``proton decay".

Atoms, being complex objects compared with the particles that comprise them, must eventually break down into their most fundamental components. When this happens, all complex objects that are made of atoms–people, furniture, houses, worlds and stars–must similarly decay and disappear. ``When there is no carbon, there will be no carbon-based life," said Adams. And the same will apply to every other element in the periodic table.

The good news is that none of this will happen yet. We have another ten trillion years (one followed by 13 noughts) of the present ``Stelliferous Era’’, in which most energy comes from radiating stars.

Then the trouble will begin. In 1014 years, star formation will cease because there will be no material left with which to make stars. In 1015 years, planets will wander away from the relics of their parent suns that will have lost the mass to hold them, and become lost in the cold and dark.

Going forward a few steps by 1030 years, galaxy-sized black holes will devour nearly all matter, and all that is not devoured will undergo proton decay. (Bear in mind that black holes, not being made of atoms, are immune from this disintegration).

But even this stable situation cannot last. Black holes, as Stephen Hawking has shown, will evaporate. By 1098 years they will all have gone, and all the matter which they spew back into the Universe will itself disintegrate.

This will be literally the end of everything - except for time. The "Dark Era" will be an everlasting future, "a vast sea of particles immersed in nearly complete and total blackness".

It is a prospect that makes our present concerns seem extraordinarily petty.