According to a report in Phys.org, the Universe may be on the Brink of Collapse (on the Cosmological Timescale). From the article:
Physicists have proposed a mechanism for "cosmological collapse" that predicts that the universe will soon stop expanding and collapse in on itself, obliterating all matter as we know it. Their calculations suggest that the collapse is "imminent"—on the order of a few tens of billions of years or so—which may not keep most people up at night, but for the physicists it's still much too soon.
In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists Nemanja Kaloper at the University of California, Davis; and Antonio Padilla at the University of Nottingham have proposed the cosmological collapse mechanism and analyzed its implications, which include an explanation of dark energy.
"The fact that we are seeing dark energy now could be taken as an indication of impending doom, and we are trying to look at the data to put some figures on the end date," Padilla told Phys.org. "Early indications suggest the collapse will kick in in a few tens of billions of years, but we have yet to properly verify this."
The main point of the paper is not so much when exactly the universe will end, but that the mechanism may help resolve some of the unanswered questions in physics. In particular, why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, and what is the dark energy causing this acceleration? These questions are related to the cosmological constant problem, which is that the predicted vacuum energy density of the universe causing the expansion is much larger than what is observed.
[...] The collapse time can be delayed by choosing an appropriate slope, which in this case, is a slope that has a very tiny positive value—about 10^-39 in the scientists' equation. The very gradual slope means that the universe evolves very slowly.
Importantly, the scientists did not choose a slope just to fit the observed expansion and support their mechanism. Instead, they explain that the slope is "technically natural," and takes on this value due to a symmetry in the theory.
As the physicists explain, the naturalness of the mechanism makes it one of the first ever models that predicts acceleration without any direct fine-tuning. In the mechanism, the slope alone controls the universe's evolution, including the scale of the accelerated expansion.
I was unable to find a non-paywalled copy of the full article, but did find an abstract.
I'm very curious about the 'slope' mentioned in the article — are there any cosmologists around who could explain this?
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday March 25 2015, @09:35PM
All this कलियुग Kali-yuga business - it'll end in tears - sooner rather than later, in that case.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday March 26 2015, @12:00AM
This is what comes of mucking about with dark matter, and then dark energy, what you might call "Dark Materials" or just the "Dark side" for short. If we had just not discovered the dark stuff, the universe (so far as we knew) would just keep expanding nicely, to infinity and beyond! But now, Not like this, Not like this. . . .
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:36PM
Yay. We no longer have to worry about global warming anymore!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Wednesday March 25 2015, @09:38PM
The universe is about 14 billion years old. If I were to describe something that would happen "imminently", it would be in the next billion years at the very latest, if their doomy projections are right the universe is at most one-third of it's way through it's lifespan. It would be like a 25 year old saying they're "imminently" going to die of old age.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday March 25 2015, @10:15PM
Putting matters into perspective, you know geological and cosmological time, the kid would be right.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @11:02PM
Interesting thought maybe. I can imagine a feel of 200 miles and the feel of a year. The UN verse being only 15 B years old and um trillions or more miles wide means that it is easier to imagine the age of the universe than the size if the universe.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday March 25 2015, @11:43PM
few tens of billions of years or so
To my way of thinking, a few tens means a minimum of 30 billion.
In the intervening time I'm sure we will find ourselves deluged with at least 30 billion more theories of dark energy and dark matter. On the average we see two to five of these per year. And of course, if dark energy/matter theories suddenly go poof, we may find the universe ending way too soon, or not at all, but we can be virtually certain that there will be other things from the physicists' closet of anxieties to keep us entertained.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:43AM
To my way of thinking, a few tens means a minimum of 30 billion.
Unfortunately, not everyone agrees [xkcd.com] on that (or any other) definition :)
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @01:05AM
Well given that stars in an expanding universe might continue to form for trillions of years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe [wikipedia.org]
Then collapse from that perspective is imminent :).
But if there is no other way to restart stuff it would be more like an impending chance of rebirth than impending doom.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday March 26 2015, @02:22AM
Unless of course, as some have propounded, the universe is infinite with no beginning and no end.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 4, Informative) by stormwyrm on Thursday March 26 2015, @03:26AM
Unfortunately, the best observational evidence of the universe basically puts the kibosh on that idea, at least for most serious physical cosmologists. Edwin Hubble's careful observations of distant galaxies in the late 1920s showed that they're all red-shifted, moving away from us at an accelerating rate. Meaning that at earlier times in the past those galaxies must have been closer, so perhaps at some point even further back in the past they must have been really close together and everything in the universe must have been concentrated at a point. There is also the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is microwave radiation that pervades the entire universe and is nearly even in all directions. Simplest explanation for it is that it's the afterglow from the Big Bang itself so to speak, and is yet another observation inconsistent with an infinite universe with no beginning.
Extrapolation of these observations into the future leads to a prediction of the end to the universe as well, either in a Big Freeze (universal heat death as the universe continues its expansion), Big Rip (dark energy or some other repulsive force eventually wins out over all other forces and rips everything the universe apart), or Big Crunch (gravity or some other attractive force eventually wins out over all other forces and collapses the universe into itself, as asserted may happen in a few tens of billions of years by the article).
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:34AM
Again, you are merely citing OLD theory to counter NEW theory.
See Here [techtimes.com]
They guys who came up with this theory may have it wrong, but they were fully aware of Hubble.
You simply can't thump the table with Hubble's work and insist these whippersnappers get off your lawn.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:39AM
I'll take old, well-established theory over new, untested theory that hasn't really yet shown that it is any better than the old one by doing at least one of the following: (1) fitting the existing observational and experimental data better than the old one, (2) explaining some known feature of the universe which the old theory can't account for or gets completely wrong, or (3) predicting the existence of some feature of the universe that is later discovered. The standard Big Bang cosmological theory managed to do all three in the past century. The jury's still out on whether the new theory can even do (1), so until then, I'll hold off on giving their theory the same status as established cosmological theories.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:58AM
You left out my favorite: The Big Suck. Kinda like the Big Crunch, but sexier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @10:36AM
Your mom said you weren't that big.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:55AM
No, it's more like a 25yo to say he will imminently start to die of old age. Looking at my life after 25, that might be a valid assumption, it just is a very slow death ;-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday March 26 2015, @02:31PM
Well considering previous estimates were infinite, any real number would be "immediate" in comparison.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @10:21PM
Why now? I only have 359 mortgage payments left!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 25 2015, @11:01PM
I need time travel to be invented soon, or I may not have time to get to Milliways.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @11:12PM
Just book your reservation over a statically line. Then if you show up early or late claim that their babble fish must have been on a break and that next time you'll call from a sanitized public phone (if you can find one). Works every time.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Thursday March 26 2015, @02:14PM
I was reading Soylentnews one night when they broke a special report
About the universe ending soon
There will be thirty billion planets crushed to death, all matter annihilated
On the Richter scale it measured 999999999
And I said, "God, please answer me one question?"
"Why'd they have to interrupt 'Microsoft & Apple' bashing just for this?"
What a drag, 'cause I had a witty comment and everything
And now I'll have to wait for the repost to get the most karma
Why does this always happen?
Why does this always happen to me?
Why does this always happen?
Why does this always happen to me?
Inspired by Weird Al: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHRGqJDA1zk [youtube.com]
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @10:24PM
Fuck. I just changed oil on my porsche.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday March 25 2015, @11:41PM
There you have it. Enjoy The End [arxiv.org] (no, seriously).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Friday March 27 2015, @09:22PM
yes, it's the same article, just different title.
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday March 25 2015, @11:45PM
OMG, I need to escape the visible universe urgently!! Anyone have a fast warp speed space shuttle with a wormhole module on sale? It needs to have onboard agriculture ability. Can't find one on eBait which really show how narrow selection of products they have.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:45PM
we just need to wait for the Doctor to show up, steal his tardis, and then go back in time and steal the earth from our ancestors.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:22PM
Thank god ;)
I heard English phone booths are cheap this time of the year?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday March 26 2015, @01:39AM
We don't know which direction time goes when looking at things in a subatomic scale. That is, an electron moving forward in time is the same thing as a positron going backwards in time. Time gains a definite direction when we look at larger scales; it is going in the direction that leads to increasing entropy. Entropy is only defined for systems which have many particles.
When we discussed the arrow of time in UCSC graduate thermo, I pointed out "We don't know yet whether the Universe is open, closed or flat" - at least we didn't know at the time - "if the Universe is closed, then it will eventually collapse in on itself during the Big Crunch."
Then I asked "Suppose the Universe is closed. One was reach the point that the Universe is shrinking, entropy will necessarily be decreasing from our present point of view."
"Will the people who live during that time experience time going forward, or in reverse?"
You could have heard a pin drop. Eventually my friend Shafer Smith said "That's very insightful".
I didn't get very good grades during grad school, but I asked the best questions.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:30AM
Or you just watched the right Red Dwarf [wikipedia.org] episodes.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday March 26 2015, @10:06AM
> Or you just watched the right Red Dwarf episodes [backwards]
"I ain't pointing at you, I'm pointing at you. But I'm not actually addressing you, I'm addressing the one prat in the country who's bothered to get hold of this recording, turn it round, and actually work out the rubbish that I'm saying. What a poor, sad life he's got!"
I was that one prat. Was anyone else that one prat? I remember being extremely pleased with myself when I hear those words for the first time. Can't remember if it was the Amiga 500 or 1200 at that point, but the sampling was done via a DSS8 8-bit sound sampler in the parallel port, all in about a meg or two of memory. Those were the days.
Not everyone in the early nineties had access to the kind of tools necessary to sample some audio from a VHS recording then reverse it. Nowadays most regular folks could probably work out how to do it quite trivially with their mobile phone. Back then doing so in your own bedroom seemed like magic (albeit boring, pointless magic) to mundane people. The fact that Red Dwarf's makers would insert a little dig about geeky people having a "sad life" in a science fiction program whose audience would be largely made up of geeks shows just how pervasive anti-geek attitudes were. I guess we can take it as a reminder of how much more tolerant the world has become to geeks and geek culture.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 26 2015, @11:39AM
"I remember being extremely pleased with myself when I hear those words for the first time."
and
"The fact that Red Dwarf's makers would insert a little dig about geeky people having a "sad life" in a science fiction program whose audience would be largely made up of geeks shows just how pervasive anti-geek attitudes were."
Are in *direct contradiction* with each other.
They put something in the script for you which made you, and presumably other geeks, *extremely pleased*. How is that anti-geek?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday March 26 2015, @12:35PM
> Are in *direct contradiction* with each other.
Not really. Uncovering the message was a fun challenge. The content of the message was less positive than it could have been. That's all.
> They put something in the script for you which made you, and presumably other geeks, *extremely pleased*. How is that anti-geek?
Because they used that opportunity to describe geeky activities as "sad". The implication being that people like us were lonely, lifeless losers destined do die unwashed and unmourned in a basement somewhere surrounded by electronic doodads and computerised whizamajigs. That was how geeks were perceived back then, as fair game. At about the time I was running that bit of audio through my Amiga I was suffering all kinds of bullying and exclusion at school from people using exactly the same kind of terminology. Luckily (?) years of bullying can have a way of desensitising a person, which meant that I was able to laugh off Red Dwarf's jibe and simply enjoy the sense of accomplishment.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:08PM
I was also that one prat, with an Archimedes A3000 and a sound sampler.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2, Informative) by rickatech on Thursday March 26 2015, @02:37AM
Can space expand faster than light [medium.com] suggests we really can't see the vastness of the universe past horizon of about 14 billion light years away.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:25PM
of about 14 billion light years ago.
FTFY.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:46AM
I guess this means I don't have to worry about recycling anymore.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:49AM
http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.7073 [arxiv.org]
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.101302 [aps.org]