The Last Three Minutes

📖 The Scoop

And then, perhaps, the big crunch - the last three minutes, when the temperature of the cosmos becomes so great that even atomic nuclei must disintegrate, when larger and larger regions of space are compressed into smaller and smaller volumes, when, as Davies writes, "the handiwork of the big bang, and of generations of stars in creating heavy chemical elements, is undone in less time than it takes you to read this sentence." Will this be the stage on which cosmic life plays out its final act? Or is the universe destined to end very differently and in the much less distant future, overwhelmed by a sudden and unexpected cosmic catastrophe? Indeed, will the universe end at all? If it endures forever, will humanity or our descendants, robots or flesh, find a way to survive through eternal night?

Genre: No Category (fancy, right?)