Galactic Survey: The Universe Dying as Old Stars Fade Faster Than New Ones Are Born

astroengine writes: A study of more than 200,000 galaxies, encompassing wavelengths of light from the far ultraviolet to infrared, shows that the universe is producing half as much energy as it did 2 billion years ago and continues to fade. "Newer galaxies are simply putting out less energy than galaxies did in the past," astronomer Mehmet Alpaslan, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., told Discovery News. In other words, astronomers, for the first time, have gathered observational evidence that our universe is slowly marching toward its eventual heat death (in a few trillion years time).

Comments

Third Possible Fate

[Roger W Moore]

it is supposed to be either expand and freeze, or collapse and crunch.

Actually there is a third possibility: the big rip. The expansion of the universe is accelerating and, if this continues and the Dark Energy driving it is of the right type, then space-time might literally rip itself apart.

Re:The Last Question

[Soylent Beige]

Illustrated version http://bato.to/read/_/188371/the-last-question_by_supreme-cream-scanlations