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The Ultimate Fate of the Universe

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Jamal Nazrul Islam

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“It is possible that those strange sentient beings of the far-future cold universe will find contemplating a warm universe such as ours not very pleasant, much as a nocturnal creature shuns daylight. But the more speculative amongst them may look back to our universe and to the Earth as an ideal world full of sunshine and a supply of adequate energy to last for billions of years, a dream world which will have passed away never to return. And what do we human beings do with this ideal dream world of ours? We oppress each other, build nuclear weapons for each other's destruction, and plunder the resources of the Earth!”

“If the standard model is correct, the universe started in a state of high density and temperature, with all matter and radiation forming one great continuous mass. It is very remarkable that this undifferentiated soup should have the intrinsic property that in due course of time it develops into galaxies of which at least one creates life with such staggering complexity, subtlety and diversity and often such stunning beauty. It also creates thinking and feeling beings which in turn can contemplate the universe and study its properties and which can love and hate.”

“Supposing a new era begins after the big crunch, will the number of protons (or baryons) be the same in the next cycle? Will the protons retain a memory of their previous life in the earlier epoch of the universe when deciding to decay or not to decay? Will there be subsequent cycles of big bangs and big crunches? If so, will proton decay affect the cycles of the far future? There exist no answers to such questions at present.”

“It is perhaps worth noticing that we have arrived 'on the scene' at a fairly early date. By this I mean that the time scale that it has taken nature to create us is of the same order of magnitude as the age of the universe. The universe is about 10-15 billion years old, and the Earth about 4.5 billion years old. Life is supposed to have begun on Earth about 3 billion years ago. It would not have been possible to evolve life, because of the hostile conditions, in the first few billion years after the big bang. Thus we have been created almost as soon as the universe was in a position to create us. It is an interesting question how long the universe will continue to create entirely new forms of life, assuming that it is open.”

“It is possibly true that intelligent life with a sophisticated technology is needed for the eventual survival of life. Dinosaurs and many other species became extinct because they could not adapt themselves to changes in the environment. Of course many other species have lived through many crises. But it is doubtful that any species, other than human beings (or atany rate, intelligent beings) can survive.”