The Death of A Universe

ninthwave writes "The Guardian is running an article on research into the visible effects of entropy in the Universe. Alan Heavens of The University of Edinburgh did the research also posted at The Royal Astronomical Society with this article" I dunno - expansion, heat death - it all reminds me of a teacher who said "I'm not a premillenialist, postmillenialist - I'm a pan-millenialist, as in it's all going to pan out in the end." Update: 08/18 16:36 GMT by S : Headline fixed.

Comments

they have neglected hawking radiation

[PhysicsExpert]

The conclusions drawn by this article would appear to be fairly trivial at first. Basically energy can neither be created or destroyed and as the universe is expanding the overall energy density of the universe is faling. Less energy density means less luminosity.

I think, however that the scientists haven't accounted for the effects of hawking radiation, which is basically the energy given out when a piece of matter falls into a black hole. Hawking radiation is obtained from matter that is otherwise lost frrm the universe and as such does not obey the classical laws of thermodynamics. Because of this the amount of energy in the universe is actually increasing although the rate at which it is doing so is extremely slow. As mentioned by the article however the number of black holes is increasing (all matter is drawn together by gravity so in a long enough timescale it will eventually coalesce to form a black hole) and so the hawking radiation will increase. It is therefore likely that in a billion years from now, the sky will actually be brighter than it is now, not from stars (which as the article points out will have disappeared) but from a brilliant glow of hawking radiation.

Re:Am grammar died

[maddskillz]

Just to drive the point home, I found this at www.dictionary.com: In writing, the form a is used before a word beginning with a consonant sound, regardless of its spelling (a frog, a university). The form an is used before a word beginning with a vowel sound (an orange, an hour).

Re:"An Universe"?

[dodongo]

It's called "epenthesis"--the insertion of a sound becuase the language seems to dictate it.

Ex. A + hour ---> "An hour"

In this case, the [n] sound is epenthetic.

I'm sure some folks studying phonology can give us the official formula for English... I guess the [n] only pops up between the determiner "a" and a vowel sound-initial word. The "yoo" sound in "universe" is a semivowel :-P

Re:Interesting, but I don't put much faith into it

[confused one]

It was a good paper, at the time. Since it's publication; however, we have some fairly good evidence that the universe isn't going to slow down and compact in a "crunch" The evidence shows that the universe is actually accelerating outward. Additional evidence, seems to indicate that there isn't enough mass to reverse the acceleration. Current accepted theory is that the universe will continue to expand and thermodynamically "die"

Re:Now I'm worried

[Distinguished Hero]

Actually, since in the article they mentioned that the Big Bang occured 14 billion years ago, they are using "U.S. Billions" (10^9) and not "U.K. Billions" (10^12). That means that they predict the Sun will engulf Earth in 5*10^9 years (5 "U.S. Billion" Years).