What is Time and When will it End?
The Life Span of the Human Species is just a Blip Compared to the Age of the Universe
![]() They have been blamed for the onset of ice ages about every one hundred thousand years. Then there's the carbon cycle. It begins with rainfall over the oceans and coastal waves that pull carbon dioxide into the sea. In 5th century BC Greece, Antiphon the Sophist, in a fragment preserved from his chief work On Truth held that: "Time is not a reality, but a concept or a measure." Parmenides went further, maintaining that time, motion, and change were illusions, leading to the paradoxes of his follower Zeno. Artifacts from the Palaeolithic suggest that the moon was used to calculate time as early as 12,000, and possibly even 30,000 BP. Lunar calendars were among the first to appear, either 12 or 13 lunar months (either 346 or 364 days). Without intercalation to add days or months to some years, seasons quickly drift in a calendar based solely on twelve lunar months. Lunisolar calendars have a thirteenth month added to some years to make up for the difference between a full year (now known to be about 365.24 days) and a year of just twelve lunar months. The numbers twelve and thirteen came to feature prominently in many cultures, at least partly due to this relationship of months to years. The reforms of Julius Caesar in 45 BC put the Roman world on a solar calendar. This Julian calendar was faulty in that its intercalation still allowed the astronomical solstices and equinoxes to advance against it by about 11 minutes per year. Pope Gregory XIII introduced a correction in 1582; the Gregorian calendar was only slowly adopted by different nations over a period of centuries, but is today by far the one in most common use around the world. The Universe - The End of the Universe
The ultimate fate of the universe is a topic in physical cosmology. Many possible fates are predicted by rival scientific theories, including futures of both finite and infinite duration. Once the notion that the universe started with a Big Bang became accepted by a consensus of scientists, the ultimate fate of the universe became a valid cosmological question, one depending upon the physical properties of the mass/energy in the universe, its average density, and the rate of expansion. ![]() There are many possible solutions to the equations of general relativity, and each solution implies a possible ultimate fate of the universe. Alexander Friedman proposed a number of such solutions in 1922 as did Georges Lemaître in 1927. In some of these the universe has been expanding from an initial singularity; this is, essentially, the Big Bang. In 1931, Edwin Hubble published his conclusion, based on his observations of Cepheid variable stars in distant galaxies, that the universe was expanding. From then on, the beginning of the universe and its possible end have been the subjects of serious scientific investigation. The fate of the universe is determined by the density of the universe. The preponderance of evidence to date, based on measurements of the rate of expansion and the mass density, favors a universe that will continue to expand indefinitely, resulting in the "big freeze" scenario below. However, new understandings of the nature of dark matter also suggest its interactions with mass and gravity demonstrate the possibility of an oscillating universe. Big Freeze or heat death The Big Freeze is a scenario under which continued expansion results in a universe that asymptotically approaches absolute zero temperature. It could, in the absence of dark energy, occur only under a flat or hyperbolic geometry. With a positive cosmological constant, it could also occur in a closed universe. This scenario is currently the most commonly accepted theory within the scientific community. A related scenario is Heat death, which states that the universe goes to a state of maximum entropy in which everything is evenly distributed, and there are no gradients — which are needed to sustain information processing, one form of which is life. The Heat Death scenario is compatible with any of the three spatial models, but requires that the universe reach an eventual temperature minimum. Big Rip In the special case of phantom dark energy, which has even more negative pressure than a simple cosmological constant, the density of dark energy increases with time, causing the rate of acceleration to increase, leading to a steady increase in the Hubble constant. As a result, all material objects in the universe, starting with galaxies and eventually (in a finite time) all forms, no matter how small, will disintegrate into unbound elementary particles and radiation, ripped apart by the phantom energy force and shooting apart from each other. The end state of the universe is a singularity, as the dark energy density and expansion rate becomes infinite. Big Crunch The Big Crunch theory is a symmetric view of the ultimate fate of the Universe. Just as the Big Bang started a cosmological expansion, this theory postulates that the average density of the universe is enough to stop its expansion and begin contracting. The end result is unknown; a simple extrapolation would have all the matter and space-time in the universe collapse into a dimensionless singularity, but at these scales unknown quantum effects need to be considered. This scenario allows the Big Bang to have been immediately preceded by the Big Crunch of a preceding universe. If this occurs repeatedly, we have an oscillatory universe. The universe could then consist of an infinite sequence of finite universes, each finite universe ending with a Big Crunch that is also the Big Bang of the next universe. Theoretically, the oscillating universe could not be reconciled with the second law of thermodynamics: entropy would build up from oscillation to oscillation and cause heat death. Other measurements suggested the universe is not closed. These arguments caused cosmologists to abandon the oscillating universe model. A somewhat similar idea is embraced by the cyclic model, but this idea evades heat death, because of an expansion of the branes that dilutes entropy accumulated in the previous cycle. Big Bounce The Big Bounce is a theorized scientific model related to the beginning of the known Universe. It derives from the oscillatory universe or cyclic repetition interpretation of the Big Bang where the first cosmological event was the result of the collapse of a previous universe. According to one version of the Big Bang theory of cosmology, in the beginning the universe had infinite density. Such a description seems to be at odds with everything else in physics, and especially quantum mechanics and its uncertainty principle. It is not surprising, therefore, that quantum mechanics has given rise to an alternative version of the Big Bang theory. Also, if the universe is closed, this theory would predict that once this universe collapses it will spawn another universe in an event similar to the Big Bang after a universal singularity is reached or a repulsive quantum force causes re-expansion. Multiverse: no complete end One multiverse hypothesis states that our uni-"verse" is merely one Big Bang among an infinite number of simultaneously expanding Big Bangs that are spread out over endless distances (open space). Each "verse" may be either matter or antimatter, with an equal number in existence at any given time. As the "verses" expand they collide and matter and antimatter annihilate, releasing energy. Heat death of a finite universe would be predicted as entropy increases, however, the infinite size of the multiverse and the infinite number of "verses" could mean that new "verses" would be formed as old "verses" were annihilated. A chain reaction multiverse would be analogous to a fireworks display (each explosion representing a Big Bang) that starts in one neighborhood and is followed by fireworks displays in surrounding neighborhoods and then in neighborhoods further out. The chain reaction of Big Bangs would continue to expand as Big Bang fuel is consumed. If the multiverse is open and the fuel is infinite then the chain reaction would expand forever. Of course, it is not known what the "fuel" is, but it is logical to assume that matter and energy are the product of a transformation from a real reactant, possibly the Higgs boson. The multiverse as a whole may never end completely. False Vacuum If the vacuum is not in its lowest energy state (a false vacuum), it could tunnel into a lower energy state. This is called the vacuum metastability event. This has the potential to fundamentally alter our universe; in more audacious scenarios even the various physical constants could have different values, severely affecting the foundations of matter, energy, and spacetime. It is also possible that all structures will be destroyed instantaneously, without any forewarning. According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the universe will not end this way. Instead, each time a quantum event happens that causes the universe to decay from a false vacuum to a true vacuum state, the universe splits into several new worlds. In some of the new worlds the universe decays; in some others the universe continues as before. Cosmic Uncertainty Each possibility described so far is based on a very simple form for the dark energy equation of state. But as the name is meant to imply, we know almost nothing of the real physics of the dark energy. If the theory of inflation is true, the universe went through an episode dominated by a different form of dark energy in the first moments of the big bang; but inflation ended, indicating an equation of state much more complicated than those assumed so far for present-day dark energy. It is possible that the dark energy equation of state could change again resulting in an event that would have consequences which are extremely difficult to parametrize or predict. It is also possible the universe may never have an end and continue in its present state forever. Time and the Big Bang ![]() Stephen Hawking in particular has addressed a connection between time and the Big Bang. In A Brief History of Time and elsewhere, Hawking says that even if time did not begin with the Big Bang and there were another time frame before the Big Bang, no information from events then would be accessible to us, and nothing that happened then would have any effect upon the present time-frame. Upon occasion, Hawking has stated that time actually began with the Big Bang, and that questions about what happened before the Big Bang are meaningless. This less-nuanced, but commonly repeated formulation has received criticisms from philosophers such as Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. Scientists have come to some agreement on descriptions of events that happened 10−35 seconds after the Big Bang, but generally agree that descriptions about what happened before one Planck time (5 × 10−44 seconds) after the Big Bang are likely to remain pure speculation. Time by Michio Kaku We've always structured our lives based on an unchanging past and a predictable and ordered future. But atomic and cosmic discoveries have changed all that. What is time itself? And will it ever end? However, these arguments often center around what it means for something to be "real". Time has historically been closely related with space, the two together comprising spacetime in Einstein's special relativity and general relativity. According to these theories, the concept of time depends on the spatial reference frame of the observer, and the human perception as well as the measurement by instruments such as clocks are different for observers in relative motion. The past is the set of events that can send light signals to the observer, the future is the set of events to which the observer can send light signals. |