Monday, October 24, 2011

The Big Bang


If you watch the TV show "The Big Bang Theory," you may be somewhat familiar with this song. 

One quibble, though. The members of the band Barenaked Ladies appear to be proponents of the Big Crunch hypothesis for the Ultimate Fate of the Universe, but all current evidence shows that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating in its expansion. So, if things keep going the way they are, the universe won't reconstitute itself into a singularity, but will keep expanding outward. Most of the universe will move so far away so fast the it will pass beyond our local event horizon (its light won't be able to reach us because it is expanding away too quickly).

The most commonly held hypothesis for the fate of the universe is the Big Freeze,  or heat death. This occurs when the universe achieves maximum entropy, leaving the universe bereft of free energy capable of doing work. Sadly, this would put an end to most of the interesting parts of the universe.

That could be a bit depressing, so let's end with something more optimistic:


1 comment:

  1. Wow, good job catching that in the song! The Big Crunch is one of the possible solutions of Einstein's equations of general relativity, but one that is fairly well ruled out observationally. That's too bad about the Universe petering out into boringness in the end... When I was a kid I read this series of books by Diane Duane about a bunch of kids who became wizards and fought against the increase of entropy (the forces of evil were trying to bring chaos into the Universe by increasing entropy and the forces of good were trying to keep everything organized).

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