The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe -Paige De Giovanni

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Today in Mr. Brennan's history class, he asked a question to the class:
"What were you most concerned about when you woke up this morning?"

Many kids he called on to answer the question quickly answered by saying something about school. He shunned whoever did this. Although I never actually got called on to answer the prompt, I ended up saying my answer out loud earning a couple laughs and some glances from the kids sitting nearby.

"The inevitable heat death of the universe."

Although being slightly sarcastic with my response, the end of the world and universe is a topic that floods my mind constantly and is crucial to our society today as we're basically destroying the planet on the daily. But at the same time, it's natural for the human brain to not want to think about it.

What does the inevitable heat death of the universe even mean? Well, for the sake of this blog, it's time to get a better understanding of it.

Heat Death, according to Cosmos Magazine is mostly caused by dark energy, the thing that's causing the universe to rapidly expand. Because the universe is rapidly expanding, galaxies are becoming driven apart. Space as a whole gets darker, cooler, and emptier, and the lack of interactions makes it so galaxies have no fuel to make more stars. As stars die and more decades go by, and the cosmos is then devoid of all structures. Only small amounts of radiation are left, which wander aimlessly throughout the void.

This is the easy way out.

According to other ideas on how dark energy could act, the cosmological constant, proposed by Einstein in 1917 represents dark energy as vacuum energy, a kind of minimum energy inherent to empty space, whos density stays the same no matter how much the earth expands. However, a flaw in this idea is the magnitude.

Vacuum energy should be at least 120 orders of magnitudes stronger than the cosmological constant. However, if the cosmological constant was strong enough and it tied the whole theory together, it would do more than isolating galaxies. It would violently rip apart all structure in the universe. (ouch.)

If dark energy gets more powerful over time, as some other observations about the expansion of the universe suggest, it too can tear the universe apart as well.

However, heat death is estimated to occur in 10^100 years. This number is a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. If it brings you any consolation after reading about the end of the universe, humans will be long gone by this point (hopefully).


Image result for heat death of the universe


Mack, Katie. “Sorry, but the Heat Death of the Universe Is Actually the Nice Option.” Cosmos, 8 Apr. 2019, https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/sorry-but-the-heat-death-of-the-universe-is-actually-the-nice-option.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 17, 2019 at 4:05 PM

    This was really interesting, sometimes we forget to consider and be concerned about whats going on beyond us in the galaxy. It is crazy how big the world really is and I sure am glad this "heat death" is something we hopefully wont be there to experience!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 17, 2019 at 4:15 PM

    I LOVE your tone throughout this, it felt like you were talking directly to me.
    Also, I didn't know about this before (space isn't really my jam) but I'm glad I do now. Thinking about how the universe will end is really interesting and a heat death honestly doesn't seem too bad (for humans at least).

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousOctober 18, 2019 at 5:28 AM

    This is crazy! I didn't know about this, but it's weird to think that something this extreme will happen in "1 followed by a hundred zeros" years. At least we won't have to go through it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. DanielleOctober 22, 2019 at 6:36 AM

    This is wild and I like the way you started the post with an anecdote!

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousOctober 25, 2019 at 7:01 PM

    The fact that, as you said, "Space as a whole gets darker, cooler, and emptier" is a scary thought. Also, I like the way you wrote this blog post, your tone really shows throughout it!

    ReplyDelete

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