When time as we know it ends, it will not happen the same way the Universe came to be – with an almighty bang – but rather a slow death of the cosmos. Since the Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago, the universe has been expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Thermodynamics is the study of heat and energy and how they influence each other. Its first law is energy cannot be created or destroyed, just moved and transformed into a different type.
But the second law of thermodynamics, however, has given scientists an insight into the universe’s lonely, cold inevitable end.
The simplest explanation of the second law of thermodynamics is that heat will naturally transfer to a colder place when the two entities come into contact – however, this can never be done with 100 percent efficiency.
The property behind this transfer is called entropy which essentially dictates the order of molecules making up something.
For example, water molecules in an ice cube will have more order than the same amount of molecules in water as a gas.
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This means the heat and energy of the molecules have become dispersed as they transfer from one state to another.
Come the end of the cosmos, the only thing remaining will be black dwarf stars – remnants of dead stars – and black holes, with no energy left to help anything new form.
Eventually, as these dead stars and black holes begin to go extinct, researchers state there will just be “silent fireworks” throughout the Universe until there is nothing left.
Illinois State University theoretical physicist Matt Caplan said: “It will be a bit of a sad, lonely, cold place.
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Fusion happens, even at zero temperature, it just takes a really long time.”
However, we still have a fair bit of time left – 10^32000 years, or in other words, 10, followed by 32,000 zeros.
But even at that point, there will still be dead celestial objects floating through the void.
Dr Caplan continued: “It’s hard to imagine anything coming after that, black dwarf supernova might be the last interesting thing to happen in the universe. They may be the last supernova ever.
“Galaxies will have dispersed, black holes will have evaporated, and the expansion of the universe will have pulled all remaining objects so far apart that none will ever see any of the others explode. It won’t even be physically possible for light to travel that far.”