Your Handbook For The End of The Universe

Your Handbook For the End of the Universe
Roughly 1 trillion years from now, the last star will be born. In
about 100 trillion years, the last light will go out.
BY PAUL M. SUTTERPUBLISHED: MAR 7, 2023
The bad news is that the universe is going to die a slow,

aching, miserable death. The good news is that we won’t be
around to see it.
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The End of Stars
We currently live in what cosmologists call the luminiferous

era—the epoch of our universe that is full of stars, light and
warmth. Every year, a major galaxy like our Milky Way
manufactures a handful of new stars, with each new
generation carrying the torch from the one before.
But when it comes to star formation, our universe is already

past its prime. Star formation peaked almost ten billion years
ago and has been declining ever since. The reason for this
strange dwindling of light is the fact that we live in
an expanding universe. Our cosmos grows larger with every
passing day. But the amount of matter within the universe
remains fixed, and so all that matter slowly gets spread out
over more and more volume.
To make a star, you need to compress matter down into

relatively small volumes, so as the universe ages, there are
simply fewer and fewer opportunities to make that happen.
🌟 NEWS FROM DEEP SPACE


The Cosmic Hunt for Primordial Black Holes


Did We Finally Find the Source of Dark Energy?


A Supernova Resurrected Itself
It’s difficult to speak of the far future of the universe with

any level of precision, but we can make rough estimates. Our
cosmos is currently 13.77 billion years old, and galaxies
throughout the universe will continue making new stars for
many years to come. But eventually—roughly one trillion years
from now—the last star will be born.
That star will likely be a small red dwarf, barely a fraction of

our sun’s mass. Red dwarf stars live fantastically long lives,
gently sipping on hydrogen to power a slow but steady fusion
reaction. But eventually, all stars, including the red dwarfs,
will come to an end. In roughly 100 trillion years, the last light
will go out.
The Lonely Cosmos
As the luminiferous era slowly unwinds, the universe itself will

change character. With the current age of the cosmos, our
observable bubble—defined by the most distant objects that
we can see—is roughly 90 billion light years across. The
volume bounded by that diameter contains about two trillion
galaxies.
Getty Images
Not only is our universe expanding, but that expansion is also

accelerating. Discovered in the late 1990s and known as dark
energy, the accelerated expansion will eventually close the
curtains on our view of the wider universe.
✅ Here’s the reason why all stars will slip from view one
day:
In an expanding universe, the more distant a galaxy is from us,

the faster it appears to recede away. Indeed, the most
distant galaxies from us are already receding away from us
faster than the speed of light. This is not a violation of the
familiar speed-of-light rule from special relativity, because
the galaxies themselves aren’t moving; instead, the space
between us is expanding. With more space, there’s more to
expand, and so the recession appears faster for greater
distances.
We can still see those galaxies, however, because they

emitted their light long ago, when they were much closer to
us. The light they are emitting right now will never, ever reach
us. And because the expansion of the universe is accelerating,
this boundary of sight inches ever closer to us. As time goes
on, the distance beyond which galaxies recede from view gets
nearer and nearer.
One by one, the inexorable cosmic expansion will rip galaxies
away from us, pulling them so quickly that their light will never
reach us again. Anything not already gravitationally bound to
us will not survive the acceleration-driven onslaught. Only the
Local Group, consisting of the Milky Way, Andromeda, and
Triangulum galaxies, along with dozens of satellite dwarf
galaxies, will remain nearby.
It won’t be pretty. Our three galaxies will eventually merge

into one mega-galaxy, completely and utterly isolated from
everything else in the entire universe. In other words, our
universe will be … just us.
Achingly slowly, even that mega-galaxy, a universe unto itself,

will dissolve. Chance interactions will scatter individual stars—
or what’s left of them—into random orbits, sending them
careening into the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy
or flying off into the void, never to be seen again. After 10 20–
1030 years, no complex system will remain, with all macroscopic
objects left as islands, lost and adrift in a sea of infinite
blackness.
MORE OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD STORIES ✨

 Is Quantum Gravity Real?
 What Is Dark Energy?
 10 Questions With a Cosmologist About Dark
Energy
The Degenerates
In that extreme, unfathomable future, our slowly dissolving

galaxy will not appear as it does today. The stars will be long
gone before our galaxy unbinds itself. Instead, the death of
the last star marks the beginning of the degenerate era, the
epoch of our universe that will occupy quintillions of years
(each quintillion is a billion billion years).
Individual planets will survive into this epoch, although they

will lose all internal sources of heat. So too will asteroids,
comets, and other assorted bits of space debris. The largest
stars will die and give way to neutron stars and black holes.
Stars like our own sun will become white dwarfs. Red dwarfs
will lose their ability to continue fusion, turning into black
dwarfs—a strange kind of non-radiating stellar object that
does not yet exist in our comparatively young universe.
Who knows what strange quantum tricks the universe may get
up to in its cold future. A new Big Bang could suddenly spring
from the vacuum, birthing a new universe from the ashes of
the old.
Random quantum interactions will eventually, slowly, dissolve

these macroscopic objects as well. As each leftover dead star
or wandering lonely planet finds itself alone in the cosmos,
individual atoms will leave them, bit by bit. After
approximately 1065 years, macroscopic objects will cease to
exist in the universe.
Black holes will be the last holdouts, but they too will succumb
to the darkness. An exotic (having unusual properties)
quantum process known as Hawking radiation forces all black
holes to slowly radiate away energy and particles. The process
is the very definition of inefficient—a typical black hole emits
roughly one particle every single year—but at these
timescales even the slowest process eventually comes to
completion. With each emission of radiation, the black holes
lose mass.
After 10100 years, they too will wash away.

Jackyenjoyphotography//Getty Images
Approaching Oblivion
In the ultimate far future of the universe, after all the stars
have left the stage—along with their degenerate leftovers
and black holes—nothing more than individual particles will
dominate the universe.
We don’t know yet if the proton is stable over these lifetimes.

If it is, then protons will survive as the largest objects in the
universe, until they too must eventually decay after
10200 years.
If dark energy continues to dominate the universe and the

expansion of the cosmos continues, we now encounter what’s
known as the heat death of the universe. The present epoch
of our cosmos features vast energy and heat differences, but
the iron laws of thermodynamics dictate that eventually those
differences will vanish.
The universe—what’s left of it—will reach thermal equilibrium,

with no significant heat differences remaining. And that
temperature will continue to drop, slowly approaching, but
never quite reaching, absolute zero. With that death of heat
comes the death of any form of life, no matter how exotic and
alien.
🌞 OUR HOT, THEN COLD FATE

 What Will Happen When the Sun Dies?
And then … well, who knows. The earliest moments of the Big

Bang are a mystery to us because the conditions there are so
extreme, beyond our current understanding of physics. The
same goes for the tremendously distant future. All of our
knowledge of physics is based on the experiments and
observations we’ve been able to make in our present-day
universe. We simply have no complete basis to reckon with
processes operating over multi-quintillion-year (and that’s just
the start) timescales. It’s simply too weird.
Who knows what strange quantum tricks the universe may get
up to in its cold future. A new Big Bang could suddenly spring
from the vacuum, birthing a new universe from the ashes of
the old. The chances of that are almost impossibly small, but
when compared against the enormous timescales of the future
existence of the universe, even the most incredible odds
become near guarantees.
Or something completely unexpected could happen, something

that we don’t even have the language for right now, because
it’s not part of the way that the universe operates today. I
suppose we’ll just have to wait and find out.
PAUL M. SUTTER
Paul M. Sutter is a science educator and a theoretical

cosmologist at the Institute for Advanced Computational
Science at Stony Brook University and the author of How to
Die in Space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical
Phenomena and Your Place in the Universe: Understanding Our
Big, Messy Existence. Sutter is also the host of various
science programs, and he’s on social media. Check out his Ask a
Spaceman podcast and his YouTube page.

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Your Handbook For the End of the Universe

BY PAUL M. SUTTERPUBLISHED: MAR 7, 2023

The bad news is that the universe is going to die a slow,

We currently live in what cosmologists call the luminiferous

But when it comes to star formation, our universe is already

To make a star, you need to compress matter down into

🌟 NEWS FROM DEEP SPACE

The Cosmic Hunt for Primordial Black Holes

Did We Finally Find the Source of Dark Energy?

A Supernova Resurrected Itself

It’s difficult to speak of the far future of the universe with

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

That star will likely be a small red dwarf, barely a fraction of

The Lonely Cosmos

As the luminiferous era slowly unwinds, the universe itself will

Not only is our universe expanding, but that expansion is also

In an expanding universe, the more distant a galaxy is from us,

We can still see those galaxies, however, because they

It won’t be pretty. Our three galaxies will eventually merge

Achingly slowly, even that mega-galaxy, a universe unto itself,

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

MORE OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD STORIES ✨

In that extreme, unfathomable future, our slowly dissolving

Individual planets will survive into this epoch, although they

Random quantum interactions will eventually, slowly, dissolve

After 10100 years, they too will wash away.

We don’t know yet if the proton is stable over these lifetimes.

If dark energy continues to dominate the universe and the

The universe—what’s left of it—will reach thermal equilibrium,

🌞 OUR HOT, THEN COLD FATE

And then … well, who knows. The earliest moments of the Big

Or something completely unexpected could happen, something

Paul M. Sutter is a science educator and a theoretical

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