![]() ![]() Star formation will then cease in about 1-100 trillion years as the supply of gas needed will be exhausted. As the universe carries on expanding, we will no longer be able to observe galaxies outside our local group (100 million years from now). ![]() Somewhat more pressing is the heat death of the universe. The data from the WiggleZ survey and other experiments do not rule out the Big Rip, but push it in to the exceptionally far future (if at all). ![]() Bodies that are gravitationally bound (such as our local supercluster, our own Milky Way galaxy, our solar system, and eventually ourselves) become ripped apart and all that is left is (probably) lonesome patches of vacuum. Put bluntly: the Big Rip is what happens when the repulsive force of dark energy is able to overcome gravitation (and everything else). The stronger and faster the repulsive force of dark energy is, the more likely it is that the universe will experience a Big Rip. Depressingly, no more than two more billion years after that, it will consume Earth.Īfter that, the relative strength of dark energy and how it might vary over time becomes important. Five billion years from now, the sun will enter its red giant phase. The more "immediate" future can be predicted with some certainty. Put another way: the peak era of star formation is well behind us, and the universe is already fading. Using that survey, we found that the universe is slowly "dying". We observed that dark energy was retarding the growth of massive superclusters of galaxies.īefore turning to the very distant future, I will mention another relevant survey: GAMA. Not only did we find that the acceleration is happening, but we provided compelling evidence that the cause of this was dark energy. From 2006, I was involved in the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey – a scientific experiment to independently confirm the acceleration. This may sound a bit far-fetched, but independent experiments have been conducted to corroborate the acceleration of the universe and the existence of dark energy. One way to think about the accelerating universe is that there must be some kind of material (or field) that permeates the universe that exerts a negative pressure (or a repulsive gravity). However, understanding the implications of it remains challenging. This profound discovery lead to the Nobel prize in physics in 2011. The universe was not slowing down in its expansion, it was accelerating. Remarkably, two independent teams of scientists found the exact opposite. Given the amount of mass observed in the cosmos it was thought that it might be enough to cause an eventual contraction of the expansion. Late last century, one of the most pressing issues in modern cosmology was to measure the deceleration rate of the universe. Although only one strand of evidence among many, this observation – coupled with Einstein's theory of general relativity – means that the universe started with a Big Bang and has been expanding ever since. And when we look far back in time, we observe that galaxies are closer together than they are at present. Explicitly: the further we peer away from our home planet, the further back in time we see in to the universe. The reason we can investigate the past evolution of the universe is that, in some regards, astronomy is analogous to archaeology. But before we consider random events in the very far future, let's start with what we know about the past and the present. ![]()
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