The Ultimate Fate of Our Universe

            The more the human race learns about the universe the more questions that arise. The ultimate fate of the universe is a prime example of this. A number of theories have been created in hopes of explaining how our universe will come to an end, but the truth remains that we don’t know for sure. In hopes of finding out our fate, astronomers measured the density of our universe in order to further our understanding of what might happen. Before calculating this, scientists figured that there were three potential outcomes for the, universe each of them determined by how tightly packed matter in our universe is.

Theory #1 “The Big Crunch”

            If the universe is denser than the critical density one day the universe will re-collapse in on itself because of gravitational attraction. This would result in the universe returning to the state in which it began, a singularity.

Theory #2 “The Big Freeze”

            If the universe isn’t densely packed enough that gravity wouldn’t be able to stop the current expansion would expand forever creating an open universe. It would never stop expanding, so eventually everything would cool down, and freeze.

Theory #3 “Critical Density”

            The idea that the universe is at the critical density meaning the expansion rate of the universe would decrease until the end of time. Ultimately, everything would slow down and eventually freeze.

            Astronomers measured the density of the universe, and found that our universe is currently at the critical density. This discovery lead to the belief that theory #3 was our ultimate fate, but after studying a distant supernova this idea was challenged. Astronomers were able to look back in time at a white dwarf supernovae and discovered that the universe is actually expanding at an increasingly fast rate. We call the invisible force that pushes galaxies further away from each other dark matter.

            Eventually another theory called “the big rip” arose in response to this discovery. The big rip says that the galaxies will move faster away from each other that pressure caused by the expansion will tear matter apart essentially ripping atoms.

 The age old question of how will the universe end is still a very long way away from being answered. As time has gone on we have revised our guess of what will happen. Astronomers will continue to make observations and hopefully further understand what the end of our universe will look like.