The Big Rip

WolfWithoutAClause writes "It's been known for decades that the universe is expanding. The current evidence points to this rate of expansion increasing, and if so, there's no obvious reason why the expansion rate couldn't continue to increase ever faster. A physicist, Simon Caldwell, has taken this to inevitable conclusion and suggested the expansion will eventually reach a point where the expansion rate is so high that any surviving people will ripped apart, followed a millisecond later by the destruction of all the atoms in the universe. Ouch. New Scientist says we may only have 22 billion years left. Almost enough time for a quick game of Everquest then."

Comments

And then the lawsuit will come...

[phamlen]

Hmmm... if I read this correctly, the universe will be "ripping" all the digital media in existence in about 22 billion years.

Sounds like it could be the target for a RIAA/DCMA lawsuit! "Your honor, we would like to sue the universe for clearly premeditated copyright violation."

Re:Don't Panic!

[WolfWithoutAClause]

so I take it like all such with a grain of salt.

Yes, a large one; and getting larger all the time ;-)

My Results

[scotay]

the expansion will eventually reach a point where the expansion rate is so high that any surviving people will ripped apart, followed a millisecond later by the destruction of all the atoms in the universe.

My experiments in expansion have proven that somewhere around a 44-46 waist the expansion rate is so high, you better start looking for a big-and-tall men's shop or any surviving jeans will be ripped apart, followed a millisecond later by the purchasing of sweatpants.

Don't let this happen to your universe.

The dangers of extrapolation

[phamlen]

Mark Twain wrote on nearly this exact topic in 1883. He wrote a great essay on extrapolation , basing his conclusions on the fact that the Missippi between Cairo and New Orleans was shortening an average of a mile per year for the last two hundred years or so....

To quote:
"Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

-Peter

The Joy of Extrapolation

[You're All Wrong]

"A physicist, Simon Caldwell, has taken this to inevitable conclusion and suggested the expansion will eventually reach a point where the expansion rate is so high that any surviving people will ripped apart"

What did Master Caldwell think when he first started getting his first erection?

Sorry for being crude,
YAW.