How To Destroy The Universe

The universe began 14 billion years ago with the Big Bang and has been expanding ever since. New empty space is continually created between galaxies, making space itself larger. The ultimate fate of this expansion, whether it continues infinitely or eventually halts, is believed to be decided by two powerful cosmic forces locked in a struggle for dominance.

The first major force is all the "stuff" in the universe: galaxies, gas, and dark matter. Despite their differences, these components share a fundamental desire to converge. Matter is drawn together by gravity, which also exerts a pull on the universe as a whole, working to decelerate the cosmic expansion initiated by the Big Bang.

The second warrior is empty space itself. Although it appears inert and powerless, empty space possesses an intrinsic energy. Scientists currently lack a complete understanding of what this energy truly is or why it exists, largely using it as a placeholder to fill gaps in our understanding of reality. This mysterious force is known as dark energy, and it actively pushes objects apart, acting as a form of "anti-gravity" that accelerates the universe's expansion.

The ultimate fate of the universe hinges on which of these two forces prevails. The winner will determine the universe's dramatic end. The outcome is highly dependent on the nature of dark energy: will its strength remain constant, a common assumption for simpler models, or will it fluctuate, becoming either weaker or more powerful over cosmic time?

If the strength of dark energy remains constant, it is predicted to be the victor in the cosmic war. As space continues to grow, matter becomes increasingly diluted, akin to sugar dissolving in an ever-filling cup of tea. This expansion generates more empty space, which in turn brings more dark energy, further accelerating the separation of everything and creating even more empty space. This creates a positive feedback loop, causing the universe to expand at an exponential rate, doubling in diameter approximately every 12 billion years, indefinitely.

Imagine a whole universe – with just a single, lonely particle traveling through nothingness.

Even though dark energy wins the overall war, matter still achieves local victories. Over short distances, gravity can maintain cohesion, allowing local galaxy bubbles to resist the expansive push of dark energy. In a few billion years, our local group of galaxies will merge into a colossal sphere housing trillions of stars, becoming our final observable cosmos. All other galaxies will be propelled away by the rapid expansion, eventually disappearing from view, leaving our supergalaxy alone in a seemingly infinite, dark void within a few hundred billion years.

Approximately 100 trillion years from now, all stars within our supergalaxy will have exhausted their fuel and died. The gas necessary for forming new stars will have been consumed, and no new gas will be available from outside the isolated system. The galaxy will become a dark expanse, populated by stellar remnants. Over quadrillions of years, white dwarfs and neutron stars will progressively cool, eventually becoming truly dark, extinguishing the last lights in the universe.

All structures, regardless of their size, will slowly disintegrate. One by one, dead stars and planets will depart the supergalaxy, which will gradually dissolve over sextillions of years. Each object will ultimately drift into isolation, allowing dark energy to reassert its dominance by creating ever-increasing amounts of empty space between everything. Objects will become so widely dispersed that each will effectively inhabit its own universe.

Eventually, after a googol years, all black holes will have evaporated. Entropy and dark energy will relentlessly pursue their objective until it is complete. Over timeframes that can only be described as forever, even the remaining fundamental structures might dissolve into individual particles, which will then be driven further apart by an ever-growing expanse of empty space. This final state is known as the Big Freeze or Heat Death: a universe that is completely featureless, cold, and eternally expanding, where no events can ever occur again.

A more aggressive fate awaits if dark energy intensifies over time. In this scenario, empty space would not merely overcome matter; it would literally tear it into pieces. Unlike the Big Freeze, where matter still maintained some local cohesion, here, matter achieves no victories. Dark energy's increasing strength would progressively overpower the pull of gravity, generating new empty space at ever-decreasing distances. This escalation could begin as early as 20 billion years from now, unfolding rapidly.

The initial phase of the Big Rip would involve dark energy creating empty space between individual galaxies. Our galaxy would detach from its local cluster, drifting in isolation within an increasingly inflating and darkening cosmos. Billions of years later, empty space would begin to intrude between individual stars, leading to the dissolution of galaxies. For inhabitants of a planet within a star system, the night sky would become progressively bleak and desolate as other stars are pushed too far away to be visible.

A few million years after the sky darkens, dark energy would start to create empty space even within star systems. Planets would be pushed away from their stars, causing all life in the universe to freeze to death. Time would then accelerate dramatically. Mere months later, dark energy would penetrate solid objects, ripping apart stars, neutron stars, planets, and asteroids. If one were in a spaceship, there would be only a short period before being torn apart.

Finally, the very fabric of reality is torn to its core, obliterating spacetime itself. The Big Rip.

Within approximately half an hour, even atoms would be destroyed as new space is created so furiously that electrons and nuclei are forcefully separated. At this point, the universe would have only a fraction of a second remaining. In its final moments, only dying black holes would endure, drained and defeated by dark energy. These remnants, septillions of times smaller than an atom, would explode with the power of a trillion supernovae in an immeasurably small fraction of a second. Ultimately, the very fabric of reality would be torn apart, obliterating spacetime itself in an event known as the Big Rip, where space and time lose all meaning, making future predictions impossible.

In contrast to the other scenarios, there is one outcome where matter triumphs: if the strength of dark energy diminishes over time, and if this reduction is sufficiently potent, the persistent pull of gravity would ultimately prevail. In this event, all existing entities in the universe would begin to move towards each other, leading to a catastrophic collapse of the universe into itself. While the exact timing is unknown, this process could commence in as little as a few hundred million years.

As the universe begins its contraction, over billions of years, galaxies and galaxy clusters would draw closer and eventually collide. Since galaxies are predominantly composed of empty space, these collisions would resemble the gentle merging of two vast clouds. Initially, galaxies, and subsequently individual stars, would become increasingly proximate.

As the universe continues to collapse, concerns might arise about stars and planets eventually colliding; while this would happen, it would not be the primary threat. If space itself shrinks, it would also concentrate all the radiation emitted throughout cosmic history by stars, supernovae, and quasars. Consequently, the previously "empty" space would become saturated with radiation, and the dark voids between stars would heat up, making life progressively difficult and eventually impossible as planets are scorched. Initially slow, this heating would rapidly intensify, making space as hot as it was shortly after the Big Bang. Stars, though inherently hot, would find the surrounding space even hotter, literally boiling them from the outside.

The Big Crunch is complete. From here on there are two possibilities. Either the universe will collapse completely, into a singularity, a point of zero size and infinite density, without space and time.

As the universe collapses inward, all galaxies and stars would merge into a single, intensely hot ball of plasma, marking the completion of the Big Crunch. From this point, two potential outcomes emerge: either the universe would collapse entirely into a singularity—a point of zero size and infinite density, devoid of space and time, similar to the state potentially preceding the Big Bang—or it could "bounce back," restarting cosmic expansion and giving birth to a new baby universe. While this concept presents a poetic cycle of death and rebirth, there is currently no evidence to support that such an event has occurred before or will happen in the future.

The scientific consensus among most researchers is that dark energy will maintain a constant strength, indicating that the most probable fate of the universe is Heat Death. While this scenario of eternal cold and profound boredom might seem melancholic, it offers a significant advantage: it grants humanity the longest possible duration for the universe to exist. This offers trillions of years for potential expansion, interstellar travel, and perhaps even the discovery of methods to sustain consciousness indefinitely. Ultimately, the future remains uncertain, and humanity's role is to observe, adapt, and make the most of the extraordinary universe we currently inhabit.