When 14 Billion Years Just Isn't Enough Time (preview)

Feature Articles | Space See Inside

Some say its glory days are long gone, but the universe has life in it yet. Brand-new types of celestial phenomena will unfold over the coming billions and trillions of years

By Donald Goldsmith ?| February 20, 2012?|

Image: Illustration by Kenn Brown, Mondolithic Studios

In Brief

• Although the grand era of galaxy and star formation is over, the universe remains a vigorous place. In the future stars will gradually shift their appearance as their composition changes. Star and planet systems will fall apart, and celestial objects that now are rare will become common, such as dense balls of helium. In some ways, the universe in the future may be more hospitable to life than it is today.
• Considering the far future of the cosmos is more than inherently interesting. The far distant future provides astrophysicists with an intellectual sandbox, a way for them to grasp the implications of their theories and observations.

Time?s seemingly inexorable march has always provoked interest in, and speculation about, the far future of the cosmos. The usual picture is grim. Five billion years from now the sun will puff itself into a red giant star and swallow the inner solar system before slowly fading to black. But this temporal frame captures only a tiny portion?in fact, an infinitesimal one?of the entire future. As astronomers look ahead, say, ?five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years,? as humorist Douglas Adams did in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, they meet a cosmos replete with myriad slow fades to oblivion. By then the accelerating expansion of space will have already carried everything outside our galaxy beyond our view, leaving the night sky ever emptier. Lord Byron captured the prospect of such a celestial wasteland in his 1816 poem ?Darkness?: ?The bright sun was extinguish?d, and the stars/Did wander darkling in the eternal space.?

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