The Eternally Vibrant Multiverse
We assume full of optimism that mankind will master its earthly problems and also the burning out of the sun in a few billion years. But she still can't escape the fate of the universe.
In view of our short time on earth, some questions may seem absurd, but they are always exciting. Where does our universe come from? What does his future look like? Is there a beginning and an end of the world? What was once a matter for religion alone is now the subject of science. The answers remain varied and imaginative.
Astrophysicists can agree on the fact of the expansion of the universe. Like dots on an expanding balloon, all objects in space are moving away from each other-the farther away, the faster. The "Big Bang" is also widely recognized as the origin of this expansion. However, the future development of the universe is controversial. Unfortunately, most of the theories don't sound very promising.
The "big crunch" was propagated for a long time: gravity stops the expansion of the universe, it shrinks again and finally collapses in one point. For almost a decade, however, astronomers have been accumulating more and more evidence that the expansion is accelerating. As an explanation, the "dark energy" was postulated, a mysterious force that pushes the universe apart and is said to account for seventy percent of the total energy.
So we probably won't get crushed. Instead, we can expect either the "Big Freeze" (freeze=freezing), in which there is only frost due to constant expansion and cooling, or the "Heat Death", a state of maximum disorder in which all energy and matter evenly space fills or the "Big Rip" (rip=to tear), where accelerated expansion causes all matter - from the black hole to the atom - to disintegrate and with it all life disappears.
A more optimistic idea is the "oscillating universe" that pulsates forever in an endless cycle of expansion and contraction - similar to the religious idea of "samsara", the continuous cycle of life without beginning or end. Corresponding scientific theories were already being discussed in the 1930s, but were quickly rejected because of the violation of fundamental physical laws. For example, the second law of thermodynamics forbids entropy - a measure of disorder - to be destroyed. However, since processes take place in which the entropy increases, for example in the development of stars, the total entropy of the universe must increase with each cycle. As a result, the universe gets bigger each time, and each oscillation lasts longer. Conversely, when looking into the past, the universe must have been smaller and smaller, experienced shorter and shorter oscillations and thus inevitably had a "big bang"-like beginning.
The two physicists Lauris Baum and Paul Frampton from the University of North Carolina are now proposing a new model for a cyclic universe that is in line with the second law. According to their theory, too, dark energy is responsible for an extreme expansion of the universe. However, just before the "Big Rip", specifically in the last 10-27 seconds, the expansion comes to a h alt. After all matter has disintegrated and the world is made up of separate "causal patches", each patch contracts individually to form a separate universe.
The total entropy of the original universe is distributed to all newly created universes, because of their large number, the respective initial entropy is negligibly small. In addition, to avoid insurmountable complications in the contraction, each of the new universes must contain only dark energy and radiation, but no matter whatsoever."Our universe must come back empty!", the researchers describe this crucial point of the initially completely empty universes. With a renewed increase in entropy, the individual universes shrink until they are held in balance by the radiation shortly before collapsing and finally expand again - the cycle begins again. Since it has already happened an infinite number of times, physicists conclude that there are an infinite number of parallel universes - our universe is just one in the ensemble of this "multiverse".
The theory is based on special physical properties of dark energy, which could be checked with the "Planck" research satellite, which the European space agency ESA plans to launch this quarter. But even with delays in the Esa timetable, according to the calculations of the two researchers, we would still have enough time at 33 billion years until the fast "big rip" of our universe, which is only just under 14 billion years old.
The two astrophysicists see their theory as a first draft that elegantly solves the problem of entropy in an oscillating universe and should give its followers new hope. Which physical processes take place shortly before the "Big Rip" remains open. It is questionable to what extent our current physical models are applicable under such extreme conditions. Before we find out, we fear the earth will blow up in our faces and seal our fate.
