• palordrolap@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    2 months ago

    There’s no proof the universe will end in a Big Crunch. Apparently there’s some measure of the universe where if it’s less than 1, we’ll get a Big Crunch, and if it’s greater than 1, we’ll get a Big Rip where everything just falls apart. I may have those backwards, but the important thing is when it’s exactly 1, it implies a universe that continues forever, getting colder and colder. And as best as science can determine for our universe, the value is precisely that.

    But here’s another, well, dimension to that: There’s a popular but unprovable conjecture that our universe is the inside of a black hole that exists in a higher-level universe. In our universe, black holes boil away due to Hawking radiation, a process that can take trillions of years for very large black holes.

    Once the black hole we’re inside of stops consuming matter in the level above, that spells a very slow but alternative end to our universe. One day it will simply cease to exist.

    “This the way the world ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.” – T.S.Eliot.

    • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      That is interesting but I reject the alternate theories of the Big Rip and the Silent Extinction because they are scary and I don’t like them.

    • sploosh@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      I’ve become a fan of the “We’re already in a black hole” theory. The Schwarzschild radius for the mass of the known universe is larger than the radius thereof.

      It’s probably not correct but I do like it.