Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 2:57 am
Allow me to translate the horrible typing:
Basically they've (by they I mean the astronomical community) determined that everything is flying away from each other at the same velocity (or at least away from Earth at the same velocity).
A Big Crunch, like Bluefire is talking about, would have to mean that everything would eventually slow down and start collapsing in on itself, eventually resulting in a titanic smash of all matter into a single point (sounds like the precursor of another Big Bang, huh?)
Unfortunately, THEY have determined the velocity to be such that everything is moving away from each other too fast to ever slow down and collapse. So everything keeps expanding, until the space between galaxies becomes too great and they sputter out one by one as the stars within each eventually run out of fuel, and the universe becomes a uniformly cold and lifeless vacuum.
Just a theory, of course. Fwacho's right, science likes to present things as fact only to prove itself wrong later. But it is kind of sad to think about - that all that we look upon in the night ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Basically they've (by they I mean the astronomical community) determined that everything is flying away from each other at the same velocity (or at least away from Earth at the same velocity).
A Big Crunch, like Bluefire is talking about, would have to mean that everything would eventually slow down and start collapsing in on itself, eventually resulting in a titanic smash of all matter into a single point (sounds like the precursor of another Big Bang, huh?)
Unfortunately, THEY have determined the velocity to be such that everything is moving away from each other too fast to ever slow down and collapse. So everything keeps expanding, until the space between galaxies becomes too great and they sputter out one by one as the stars within each eventually run out of fuel, and the universe becomes a uniformly cold and lifeless vacuum.
Just a theory, of course. Fwacho's right, science likes to present things as fact only to prove itself wrong later. But it is kind of sad to think about - that all that we look upon in the night ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.