Death of the universe?

Death of the universe?
Will our universe come to an end? Will it rip to shreds in a flash? Collapse on it self? Or will it slowly freeze to death?
Scientists are imaging the unimaginable and they're coming up with some wild ideas about how it's all going to end. This is the end of the universe. A battle is taking place in the farthest reaches of space. No one can see it, but scientists are certain that it's happening and that the outcome is grim. The universe is going to the end. It won't happen for billions of years  but there is no way out. Working out how it will end is the challenge of astrophysicists around the world. They're pointing high-tech equipment out toward the heavens to unlock the secrets of our fate.

The possibilities are frightening. In one scenario ...gravity pulls the universe back into itself similar to air being let out of an inflated balloon. The universe goes back to its original size. This is the big Crunch. It'd be the end universe in a big fireball as all the matter collapses on to itself. That'd be pretty dramatic. Then there's the big Chill.The universe expands until the nuclear furnaces that power all the stars burn out. The universe grows cold and dies. A second possibility is actually kind of sad.The universe will continue to expand forever and it will just grow into an increasingly cold and lonely place as the expansion removes our nearest neighbors from us and we just end up a single isolated community... of stars and galaxies.

Then again, there could be a much more spectacular end in which every thing is ripped to shreds, down to the last atom. Think of it like balloon that is filled with too much air.It pops.It's much more dramatic than the big Chill and just as fateful as the Big Crunch. The universe continues to expand, but at an ever-quickening pace. And in fact, the pace is so great that even the space-time... fabric cannot hold the universe together.

However the end comes, it will be a dramatic conclusion.To understand how it all could end,scientists turn to how it began.The mystery starts to be solve here at the Mount Wilson Observatory overlooking Pasadena, California.In 1929, while looking through what was then the world's largest telescope, Edwin Hubble makes a strange discover. The universe is expanding. Hubble's discovery led to a whole new picture of the universe. That it was a dynamic environment and that it evolved. It change in time. And that's different from pictures that people had of cosmology previous to that. Before Hubble, scientists said that the universe was static and unchanging.

Hubble's discovery that the universe is expanding meant it had starting point. A begining.That brought the idea forward that hey, what if we ran the film backwards in time and found the point at which that began? And that was where the idea of a Big Bang came from.

The Big Bang. That fraction of a second when the universe and everything in it exploded into existence from a point smaller than an atom. One common misconception about the Big Bang is that we can identify a point in space where the Big Bang occured.But in fact, it's more appropriate to think of the Big Bang as a simultaneous creation everywhere of space, which is then continuing to expand until the present day.

If the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang, scientists must consider that it will stop expanding at some point. The question is: how? The most obvious answer involves gravity what goes up, must come down. Star and galaxies and everything else might reverse direction. The universe would collapse in what some scientists call a Big Crunch.

Take the top and then see the other handle? And just jerk them apart. A model rocket offers clues to how the Big Crunch would work. The rocket is like the universe expanding into space out of the Big Bang. An initial bang allows the rocket to overcome the pull of gravity. The engine blast gets the rocket moving off its launch pad. It accelerates into the air and breaks free of gravity's pull, for the moment. It appears as it's climbing upward that it will never stop. But Earth's gravity won't allow this to go on forever. Eventually, when the fuel is exhausted, the rocket coasts about a meter higher, stops, and is pulled back to Earth.

This is what would happen with a Big Crunch. The entire universe is essentially pulled back to its launch pad. The universe itself has its own momentum, its own energy. It's moving outward. But eventually there's a point where possibly the universe will stop that moving outward just like the rocket that we saw and have to fall back in upon itself and collapse again under the force of its own gravity.

In this scenario, the universe could return to its original state just before the Big Bang setting the stage for a perpetual seesaw of creation ang destruction. The Big Crunch theory moved to a scientific backburner. Cosmologists worked out that there must be some form of energy that keeps the universe from collapsing.The existence of such a force leads to new theories about what the universe is made of and how it might end. And evidence about how this might play out is found in some of the most powerful and mysterious phenomena in the cosmos...Black Holes.

Predicting how the universe will end involves some of the most advanced technology known to man. On a remote volcano on the island of Hawaii, astronomers are monitoring a battle in space that is shaping the fate of the universe. At an elevation of nearly 4,300 meters, the Keck Telescopes bring astronomers from all over the world nearer to space for a clearer view of the cosmos. They come here because the telescopes work best far away from city lights and as high as possible above the Earth's polluted air.

Harsh conditions make it difficult to work here. But for scientists in pursuit of the great mysteries above, it's paradise. So, this is a remarkable location. But of course the air is very thin, it's extremely hard to work here. But these telescopes are amazingly powerful. But we're ambitious astronomers. We don't just start looking at easy objects. We try hard to look at the very faintest objects so we can understand the extremities of the universe, the most distant objects that tell us about the universe when it was very young.

Here, astronomers like Richard Ellis are working on a problem that has been all consuming for cosmologists since Edwin Hubble. They know the universe is expanding. But what they don't know is how fast It will be difficult to predict exactly how the universe will end until they solve this mystery. The answer lie in the past.

An astronomer like myself uses a ground-based trlescope as a time machine. We're looking back in time to study distant galaxies seen us they were a long, long time ago. Richard Ellis, and scientists like him, train their telescopes on light from the past. They're seeing things that validate long-standing theories about the cosmos by observing objects that technology has only recently been able to see.

And what astronomers are finding  is that one of Einstein's predictions in particular, just might be responsible for the crushing end of the cosmos. Einstein said that there has to be more mass in the universe than we can actually see. He predicted that there would patches of invisible supergravity from which not even light could escape. One of the distant galaxies that astronomers found revealed a powerful source of X-rays from something that they could not see. It was in the Constellation Signus and emitted no light. But something was there. Whatever was emitting these x-rays had a mass about seven times that of Earth's sun. There wasn't a name for it, so they called it a Black Hole.

Black Holes offer scientists an analogy to how the Big Crunch Theory works. When certain stars run out of fuel they collapse in on themselves into a smaller and far denser mass that attracts more and more matter, just like the Big Crunch.

The gravitational pull is so powerful that anything that falls near a Black Hole will be forever trapped. Not even light can escape. It's a mind-boggling concept that something invisible is detectable and offer a view to our ultimate fate. This black trap represents space. And space is relatively flat.But when you put a massive object into space it curves it.This is a penny.And notice how it comes into a really beautiful circular orbit. Basically, the Black Hole trapped it into an orbit around itself. And that orbit becomes very circular as it gets closer. And now the penny will eventually disappear, go inside the Black Hole. What if our universe eventually collapsed upon itself? What if eventually all of the matter in the universe were enough to gravitationally pause it to collapse into one huge Black Hole? Then at the end you would end up with a big singularity. So that's one possible future of the universe that we end up in a singularity. We came from one, we might go into one and that's one way you can look at it on a big macroscopic scale, that Black Holes, in some ways, their physics is very similar to what started the universe. And so, that may be how we end up.

Black Holes exist in isolated areas througout the cosmos. A black Holes' gravitational pull is a scaled down version of the force that could cause the universe to collapse. That force is dark matter. And dark matter is what scientists often call cosmic glue. Dark matter, attracts other objects while its gravitational attraction is a positive force. Dark energy, we don't really understand what it is but it's negative repulsing effect that pushes galaxies away from each other.

The whirlpool in Richard Ellis's demonstration represents the gravitational force of dark matter. The green dye coming out of the syringe shows how the stuff of the universe collapses under the force of dark matter. The presence of dark matter acts as the focus for the gas in the universe, bringing structure together. This is how the Milky Way developed as the universe expanded. Little things merging into big things. The positive constructive force of gravity. Now if this was the only force in the universe and the universe would stop expanding at some point in the future and eventually the universe would stop collapsing, gravity would eventually halt the expansion and bring it back together in a Big Crunch.

This dark matter is responsible for producing galaxies in a finite amount of time. If we had to rely on the gravity of atomic matter to produce galaxies, we wouldn't be anywhere, we wouldn't exist today to be able to ask these questions. Cause there's not enough time for gravity to have condensed the atomic matter that we know exists in the cosmos, So dark matter has to exist to give, to help this process out and speed it up.

Yet the universe continues to expand and isn't showing any signs of collapsing. This suggests the opposing force of dark energy could be stronger than dark matter. But it will take scientific detective work to find out. They look to one of the most violent forces in the universe for clues. We studying exploding stars to try to understand if they can tell us the rate at which the universe is expanding. These are explosions at the end of the lives of stars, not unlike our sun. The fuel that these stars have in their center is as, is spent. The star collapses, the outer part expands, and the star becomes something called a White Dwarf.

White Dwarf stars sometimes have other stars orbiting nearby. A companion star. A massive explosion could happen if the companion star's debris falls onto the White Dwarf causing a spectacular fireworks display in the cosmos. Scientists consider exploding stars, or supernovae, Their brief and bright explosions allow scientists to track the universe's expansion and give them a way to measure its speed. Essentially they are White Dwarf stars that become nuclear bombs. They explode with a certain brightness and certain length of time. It takes a certain amount of time for that brightness to dissipate. They are essentially standard candles Anyone of these will look the same no matter where it is in the universe.

Astronomers measure the distance and speed of these exploding stars by measuring the amount of red light they emit. The faster the star moves away from us, the redder its light appears. When we study the spectrum of a supernova, we get indicators of its chemical composition, we understand the velocities as the supernova shell expands following the initial explosion. And so there are a lot of physics that we can study about the individual events.

The Expansion rate of galaxies containing stars like supernovae can then be used to interpret how the rest of the universe is moving outward. We know this because we can compare the velocities of galaxies with their distances.This are the clues that lead astronomers to answer just how soon the universe will reverse direction and come back together in a Big Crunch or, This information might lead to an entirely different conclusion.

Dr.Ellis is looking at clues at the Keck observatory in Hawaii. While the telescope is on the top of a hugh volcano, he is in a viewing room on another part of the island. At the same time. John Reshar is at the California Institue of Technology in Pasadena, California evaluating the light from a distant galaxy that thr Keck Telescope captured in Hawaii. He's looking to see if any of the known elements coming from the galaxy are in the red spectrum and moving farther away.

We can interpret that as a velocity of how much the galaxy is moving away from us.  We can really interpret how the entire universe is behaving, is expanding. Interpreting red shift is the cornerstone of the quest to pin down the fate of the universe. Clearer pictures of the universe that have only been possible in recent years have led cosmologists to conclude that the red shift of distant galaxies is greater than previously  predicted. This is startling. Not only is the universe expanding, it's speeding up.

Nothing in the observable cosmos could account for an acclerating universe. And yet the data seem irrefutable. This has to mean that an invisible force is working against gravity. Cosmoslogists have come up with a name, dark energy.

So, when the universe was young, gravity was the most dominant force. And so what we see here is galaxies as particles on the surface of the water are bound together by gravity. And the point about seven billion years ago, dark energy and gravity are pretty well in balance. But the universe continues to expand, the density goesdown, and so dark energy starts to take over. And lo and behold, the universe starts to accelerate. So dark energy is now the dominant property of space. So, the universe started out with the certain amount of energy. And we know, we're trying to understand how much energy there is. And we know the universe is expanding as it moves outward with time. We also know now that the universe's expansion is accelerating. And we don't know, is that acceleration going to slow down or not. We're still trying to understand that. So in understanding what's going to happen to the fate of the universe, we have to know how much energy is there?How much matter is there?

Well, the history of the universe is really a battle between dark matter  and dark energy.These two forces are in opposition. And so both the history of the universe and its ultimate fate is really the competition between these two forces. The Big Crunch theory was a result of scientists interpreting that dark matter is the dominant force. But astronomers now suspect that dark energy might be much stronger. If so, the end could be dramatic and violent .

It pull apart solar systems, it pulls apart stars. And eventually it grows so strong that it pulls apart matter itself, breaks bonds pulls apart atoms, and reduces everything to fundamental particles and that's the end of the universe.

The battle between dark matter, the force that holds the universe together, and dark energy, the force seeeking to tear it apart, has set the universe on the path of destruction. If dark matter is the victor, the universe might collapse. If dark energy rules the cosmos, it could rip to shreds. The expansion grows so strong that it tears up the entire universe. It'll be a strange twist of fate. Dark energy, the force that propelled matter to form a magnificent universe, continues to push it outward and drive it to its demise.

To find out the dark energy is in fact winning the battle, scientists will first need to know how fast the universe is actually expanding. The most remarkable feature of the universe is that it's expanding, Every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy. We can illustrate that with this balloon as we expand it. We see that every dot drawn on this black balloon, like the night sky, is moving away from every other dot. Buy there is something else that we know about the universe, something else that we know about that expansion. That is that the expansion is getting faster. The universe is accelerating. The size of the universe is getting bigger at a faster and faster rate. And we don't know exactly how fast it's accelerating. But if it's accelerating fast enough, then something really dramatic could happen. The universe could end up tearing itself apart in a Big Rip.

Doctor Robert Caldwell attempts an Earth-bound experiment to show how dark energy affects the acceleration of the universe. He use a paintball gun mounted on a truck. He send the truck coasing down an inline. Earth's gravity pulls the vehicle downhill, which is similar to how dark energy propels the universe outward, causing it to expand. Gravity pull the truck forward at an increasing speed. The gun fires paint at the ground at regular one second intervals. Caldwell measures the distance between the paint dots to calculate just how fast the truck was accelerating.

This demonstration then gives a sense of the dramatic rate of expansion that appears to be happening in the cosmos.By eye it might be difficult to appreciate how good a fit it is. But we can tell you that the rate of statistics indicates that an accelerating universe is a very good fit to this data.

If like the truck the universe is conyinually accelerating, then billions of years from now the universe might tear itself apart. All the distant stars and galaxies would be pulled away from each other. They'll be pulled away from us. But more over, we won't have time to grow cold and lonely. It'll actually be pretty exciting and dramatic and violent. Stars are ripped apart, planets are ripped apart, and even atoms are torn apart before the universe end. It wouldn't happen for at least fifty billion years. But still, it's an interesting fate for the universe.

What would atoms ripping apart look like? Things like coffee cups are solid, Atom join together to create somthing that will hold a cappucino without leaking a single drop. Zoom in through the cup like sailing through the cosmo, pass the molecules, and into the stoms. The solid cup is nothing more than a fabric of atomic particles that formed a bond to become matter. If these particles were to move apart, the bond that hold this cup together stop working. The atoms no longer support molecules.The connection between the miniscule particles dissolve.Matter in the form of this cup seizes to exist.It disintegrates.Gone from the existence.This is the dramatic end that Robert Caldwell foresees for the universe.

What you would see if you were standing on Earth or standing on some other planet that happened to still be around at that time, you would see something that looks like a wall of darkness approaching you.And as the wall of darkness approaches stars would go out, galaxies would go out, and then eventually that wall of darkness would surround the planet.And then pretty soon atoms themselves are torn apart and that's it.Just the wall of darkness shrinks down to a point and that's the end of the universe.

According to Robert Caldwell, that moment is still billions of years off.Leaving plenty of time to refine their research.In the way, this is like a detective story.We're trying to figure out what is the culprit or who is the culprit responsible for the cosmic acceleration.We think we know its name.We call it dark energy, but we don't know the modus operandi.We don't know exactly how it works.And what's needed is more information.More information about the physics behind the dark energy.We want to know exactly what it does and exactly what it's made out of.And in answering those questions we'll be able to figure out exactly what is the fate of the universe.

The Big Rip is one theory.Cruising just above Earth's atmosphere and peering deep into space, the Hubble Telescope provides scientists with clues to a less violent, but equally unavoidable, end of the universe.Scientists now say the universe is expanding.And that depending on how fast it is accelerating, it might end in a big rip where everything tears apart.It's also possible that it will continue to expand, but at a slower rate.The universe wouldn't rip apart, but would become dark, cold, and lifeless.

If dark energy turns out to be constant , a constant property of space and continues at the same rate that it is now, the universe will keep expanding forever and it will be a very sad state.In the end it just chills out.Everything cools down.

Evidence for the Big Chill and all of the theories for the end of the universe in part come from the Hubble Space Telescope.It has been orbiting Earth since 1990 and have an unobstructed view of the cosmos.The extraordinary images it beams back to Earth are amazing in their clarity and detail.And because of Hubble, scientists can make better predictions about how the universe will end.

So here is an example of a very deep field that was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope which literally you point the space telescope at a single region in space.And if you looked at this from a typical ground based image before Hubble was launched, first of all it's a, literally a, almost size of a postage stamp.And so suddenly the first Hubble deep field that was ever taken had four thousand galaxies that looked just like the galaxies here that were never visivle before from the ground.Tremendous power each of these smudges in their own right in another galaxy.Each one of these galaxies contains about a hundred billion stars.

Astronomers eagerly await all images from Hubble.Each bringing them closer to solving the mystery about the fate of the universe.Through image processing with computers and differencing frames on, taken on different nights, we can take out the other galaxies in the image and we're left with just the blob.Look like nothing to you but that's supernova.And this is an object that could never have been discovered before Hubble Space Telescope was launched.

Hubble sees more than just stars and galaxies.It just might be on to one of the key ingredient of space.An invisible ingredient that could put the brakes on dark energy's effect and cause a Big Chill.That's dark matter.Scientists talk about dark matter as the substance that holds the universe together and could prevent a Big Rip.Evidence that dark matter exists is seen in some of Hubble's images of nearby galaxies.It sometimes appears as though other galaxies surround them.The other galaxies are not really there at all.Rather they are reflections of more distant galaxies coming from behind.

Astronomers suspect this optical illusion is dark matter causing aweird distortion of light called gravitational lensing.The light from the more distant galaxies is literally bent by the curvature of space caused by stars and dark matter in its path.The more dark matter there is between Earth and the distant galaxy the more the light will be bent and the greater the force to cause a Big Chill.

The gravitational lensing is a tremendous tool for the astronomer because we can measure the distortion in background galaxies and use it to trace the distribution of dark matter on various scales.We're looking at a you're wearing them.And you can tell how much that bending is occurring, you can map the dark matter and you can also see well if there's dark matter there is the universe around that dark matter behaving the way it should given the gravity or not?

Identifying which energy force dominates dark matter or dark energy will give scientists more confidence about whether a Big Chill or Big Rip will be our fate.The best evidence shows dark energy as the driving force.But by how much?Solving this mystery depends on astronomers finding ways to measure how fast the universe is moving.On Earth it's simple to determine how fast something moves.An airplane for example is relatively close.We can look at it and calculate its speed by estimating the distance it travels and timing how long it takes to get from one point to another.But the star's light can travel for millions or billions of years before it can be seen on earth.By the time its light gets here, the star will be long gone.And it's too far away to gauge its speed or distance traveled with any certainty.

The universe is expanding.Only scientists cannot give precise answers about how fast.The mystery moves closer to being solved by imaging the cosmos with greater precision.You couldn't even observe the galaxies that are in this image before Hubble Space Telescope was launched.So the increase in our capability with technology recently has been astounding.It has enabled us to do things to chart the evolution of the universe in a way that we never could have imagined.

Clearer images from space make it easier to estimate the rate of expansion.If the universe continues to expand with time, then  ultimately all of the energy sources. the nuclear furnaces and stars would run out and die and the universe would actually get very cold.And there would be somthing called the Big Chill.

In the Big Chill Scenario.Earth could become a lonely cold planet as the universe expands.Distances between stars grow so vast that they nearly disappear from view.Over time they burn out.And eventually  the entire universe ends in a frozen state.These are ideas that sprang from the work of Einstein and Hubble.Only neither of them lived long enough to see these results.

Imagine what Edwind Hubble and Albert Einstein would think if they were alive today watching the progress in th subject.You know Einstein thinking about the expanding universe as a natural solution to his equations but puzzles that the universe didn't appear to be changing.Edwind Hubble desperate to measure whether the universe was slowing down in its expansion.In fact they were both wrong.It's speeding up.

The time that Einstein developed the general theory we didn't know that there were other galaxies outside of our own Milky Way galaxy.And we didn't know that the universe was expanding.And in fact Einstein himself, despite the fact that his equations were screaming at him that the universe had to be evolving, didn't have enough confidence in that result to say the universe must be expanding or the universe must be contracting.

Still his work led to the scientific breakthroughs that would identify dark matter and dark energy. the forces that could cause a Big Chil.This sphere demonstrates the principles behind a Big Chill.The mables coming out of this sphere are like stars that were formed following the Big Bang.Dark energy propels the stars outward.Dark matter slows them down.In a Big Chill the expansion would continue but the nuclear fuel that cause the stars to burn will eventually run out.From Earth's perspective the  first thing to go would be sunlight.The sun dims as it exhausts its last bits of nuclear fuel.

Earth would freeze and become lifeless and billions of years after humans are gone, the cosmos expands out of view.A few newer stars might remain but most would have long moved away.The furnace powering the universe burns out.The darkened universe continues to expand.A frozen and lifeless remnant of its once vibrant existence.

Eventually if this keeps going if nothing changes in the composition of this energy density, the universe will continue to expand forever.It's going to get colder and colder and eventually even the gala our neighboring galaxies will be receding from us so fast that they won't be able to see them.So the universe is going to get cold and dark and it will be a very lonely place.

Astronomers have much to learn about the influence of dark energy and dark matter.And much of the newest information is coming from this probe in deep space.It's sending back information that's helping scientists to interpret the history and the fate of the universe.The night sky by all appearance is a quiet and peaceful place.But in reality there are forces that are driving it to an end.Big Science moves astronomers closer to deciphering the universe's great mysteries.Including its ultimate fate.

The solution to the universe's riddle may well be hidden in this multi-colored image.What's incredible is that it's a map of the early universe from the moment it was conceived.And even more fantastic, it reveals a great story that helps cosmologists predict how it will end?The machine that captured this is called WMAP a NASA satellite that's working around the clock to chart the cosmos.

WMAP is one of the great astronomical breakthroughs of the 21st Century.Nothing before it could give us such a clear image of the energy leftover from the Big Bang.Energy that scientist call the cosmic microwave background.WMAP is measuring temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background which may finally make it possible to predict which force will dominate the universe and how that force will bring the cosmos to its end.

Temperature difference revealed by WMAP tell scientists about the nature of the matter and energy that is contained within the universe.They're able to be analyze the light patterns and find clues not only about the substance but also the fate of the universe.We only capture a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum with our eyes.And we have to go with much longer wavelengths.Same wavelengths that are used to heat in a microwave oven are what we're measureing here with WMAP.

WMAP is so precise that it can detect differences in temptures as small as one one-thousandth of a degree.This sensitivity helps scientists to calaulate the ratio of dark matter to dark energy.Force that will determine how the universe ends.

Pulling away from the probe and following the path of the light it is collecting, we pass Mars, Jupiter and Saturn whose reflected light takes over an hour to reach Earth.Then leaving the Milky Way, we pass Andromeda, the next nearest galaxy, whose light takes 2.3 million years to reach us.Which means we have traveled 2.3 million years back in time.

And finally we arrive back thirteen billion years ago at the beginning of visible light.Before that super heated hydrogen gas is everywhere.WMAP can see this far back in history.It's confirming important facts about the universe and what's driving it to its demise.The final act for the universe becomes more easily predicted thanks to WMAP.It's information combined with the work of astronomers has led to some astounding discoveries concerning a rapidly expanding universe.Rapid expansion supports the dark energy theory and the possibility of a Big Chill or Big Rip.

We now know from all the data we've had in the last ten years that there's by a factor of two to one more dark energy than dark matter.So dark energy is the dominant constituent of energy in the universe.The evidence seems clear.Dark energy is taking over and is leading astronomers into new thoughts about the beginning and the end of the universe.

Before the discovery of dark energy, things were a lot simple.If we could determine the amount of matter in the universe then we could say something about its ultimate destiny.Those simple days are gone.But the proof is adding up and supports the idea that the universe will continue to expand.But will it do so to oblivion? We've made huge strides over the last century is learning somethng about evolution of the universe and its expansion.But we've now raised more questions in some sense than we've been able to answer.And so the next decade's going to be even more exciting.

The battle between dark matter and dark energy is expected to go on for billions of years.And humans will be long gone from Earth when the final outcome occurs.But no pursuit has been more significant to science than understanding how the universe arrived, how it works and how it will end.It's a never ending quest.It's a driving astronomy.What are the answers to these profound questions? The constituents of the universe, the nature of dark matter and perhaps the biggest mystery of all, what is the ultimate fate of the universe?