The Big Rip

[Lucas]

According to Robert Caldwell, all the structures of the universe will be torn apart in 20 billion years. What can human race do to prevent this? Should we permit that all our knowdlege would be lost forever?

[Beercules]

End of the world theories are a dime a dozen, so don't worry. Being ripped apart is not our only possibility, since we could also be crushed out of existence in the big crunch (or ripped to shreads by the blistering heat prior to that), die a slow death as we run out energy as heat death sets in, or be horribly burned to death if the universe is cyclic, as in the case of the brane collision model.

In either case, it looks like we're screwed, and there's probably nothing that can be done to escape trillion degree temperatures or circumvent the 2nd law.

[Lucas]

Arrhgghh! I must do something! I don't want to disintigrate myself! Perhaps I could storage my memories in some kind of hard disk, but a hard disk very resistent, able to resist the ripping

[bigjnorman]

yes, its a nice plan, but whatever happens to space, time will follow in its wake. So alas, your floppy disk scheme will have to be reworked.

[Lucas]

The end of time? What are you talking about? I think that the ripped structures will continue to move around, and meanwhile there's something moving in the universe, time can't stop

[Harnu]

Speaking of the big crunch, can someone explain this to me? I don't quite know what it is or how it's going to work.

[eburacum45]

Concerning the Big Rip; if it is true, it implies that there is an increasing amount of dark energy coming from 'somewhere'; this repulsive force is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe.
By 22 billion years, all atoms will be torn into subatomic quarks; these will survive, each one isolated by an event horizon from its neighbour.

Not good.
What is good is that so much abundant dark energy will surely facilitate the construction of wormholes; before our 22 billion years are up we will have connected the universe together by a comprehensive system of shortcuts and created a universal civilisation...

now perhaps we can see a way out; if we extract enough dark energy from the universe, we could cause the expansion of the universe to stop, and hopefully reach a steady state.

Don't overdo it though, as this might lead to a collapse, and eventually a Big Crunch; this is like a big bang in reverse, where everything collapses into a point again, and cancels itself out, thereby ceasing to exist.
Fun, eh?

_________________
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

[invisibleone]

i wouldn't worry so much about what happens 20 billion years from now. The human race will be extinctmuch before then anyways.

[LordAza]

Maybe we will evolve and get that third eye everyone wants? Who knows maybe we will evolve so much that a space folding kit can be bought in vending machings.


"Wow a real live robot, or is that just some fake costume?"
"Bite my shiny metal ass"
"Hey your ass isn't shiny!"
"Shinier than yours meatbag.

-Fry meets Bender in Futurama