The ultimate death of the universe might be by the "heat death". Anyone agree or disagree?

Question

The 2nd law of thermodynamics predicts there can be but one end to the universe and that's the heat death(aka entropy death). What does that do to the temperatures here on earth? How will things in our universe react while its dying? Is it possible that our universe might tunnel into another universe to escape total death?

The first answer seems to be the idiot, saying the sun will heat up and burn us to death. The heat death-in which (the) temperature is so low as to make life impossible.

Answer 1

That would only happen if the universe was a closed system. If it is expanding, then the 2nd law doesn't directly apply. That's where people are getting this freezing to death, but not heat death.

What follows is something that is both very interesting and not very well known. Even if the universe was a closed system (so that heat could not escape into a continually expanding space) and it was eternal, then ultimate heat death would ultimately be avoided. That is, even under the very conditions it is normally thought to hold, it won't.

What people who haven't had any statistical mechanics classes don't generally realize, is that the second law boils down to the trivial statement: "That which is most likely to happen, is the most likely to happen."

To illustrate why this is, I'll need to give you a little better understanding of entropy.

Imagine a table with a bunch of coins lying on it all face up. Now you give the table a jolt so that all the coins bounce into the air and come back down in random orientations. Some face up some face down. Entropy increased here right? Right. If you had a billion pennies on the table, you might go so far as to call it a "law".

But now, say you carried this process out for an infinite length of time. What is to stop one from NEVER seeing that initial state of all heads popping back up? The answer is nothing. For every jolt you give the table there is a very small but very real probability to return it to its initial state. You don't see this (normally) in real life because it is a SMALL probablility. However, in an infinite amount of time, this probablility will inevitably pop up and entropy will DECREASE when that does.

This is essentially how heat transfer works in a closed system, but it's slightly more complicated. Little heat energy quanta in various molecules get exchanged at random with the neighbors of those molecules which do the same with their neighbors and so on.

Statistically, things even out and the heat spreads evenly and entropy increases to whatever maximum it has for the given system. BUT there is always (though prohibitively small to ever see in real life) real probablility that the system can revert back to its original state.

This is a probablility that MUST be realized if time were actually infinite, and the reason it must be realized is for the exact same reasons why heat transfer works in the first place. Probablilities.

What this all boils down to is that even if we were in a "heat death" state of the universe, we would eventually escape it by the same means that we arrived there.

To briefly touch on your other questions, heat death doesn't necessarily mean boiling to death or temperature, it's just that all the energy is evenly dispersed and can't be separated so as to do any actual work. Nothing could live in a heat death state because there is no way for a living thing to collect the energy needed to sustain itself.

For the universe escaping idea... that's a long response in itself, so I'll leave it alone. The short answer is no.

TO THE PERSON WHO DISPUTED MY RESPONSE

You DEFINITELY must take care when talking about ACTUAL infinities of microstates in the physical universe. You are just casually throwing out that the number of microstates is infinite, when you have no idea if that is true. Neither does Hawking. The only way that there are an infinite number of mico-states is that there are an infinite number of particles/quantons. THAT requires an infinite universe and THAT is NOT the universe where heat death is an issue and has nothing to do with what I was saying. I'm guessing you are thinking that the photons are infinitely divisible, but that's kind of what quantum mechanics is all about, they're not.

Also, what you said about the balls is inaccurate for actual infinities as 9 = 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1, and if you sum up an infinite number of them you still just end up with 1+1+1+... the same as you would if you summed up an infinite number of 1's. If you are working with actual infinities, the very idea of how the second law works fundamentally breaks down.

Still, I do not know everything. If you have an actual source please list it. If you are just regurgitating something you saw in Discovery Magazine or wikipedia, then say that. Maybe you have a valid point, but I have severe doubts. I can see no way for there to be an actual infinite number of micro states without infinite energy and particles, and I can see no way to define a universe with infinite energy and particles as an isolated or closed system and that is where the second law applies.

Answer 2

Heat death is really a total misnomer.

As mass-energy is not created or destroyed, then the total amount of energy available in the universe will not change over time.

However, it is not energy that drives the universe. It is entropy. In other words, it is the propensity of the universe to occupy more microstates over time.

We survive on earth because energy come from the sun as a small number of high energy photons (lower entropy). By the time we hav done with it it re-radiates into space as a much larger number of low energy photons (higher entropy from higher number of microstates).

Allow this to continue indefinitely across the universe and, whether it expands, contracts or reaches a steady state, ultimately it will reach a uniform "beige" state where everything is at the same temperature

Even Stephen Hawking - who proposed in A Brief History of Time that in the second half of the universe's life this arrow of entropy would point beackwards - has now revised his opinion.

The number of microstates involved in entropy is infinite, so predicting outcomes involves comparing infinities. This is where some of the confusion here stems. To see through this imagine filling a box with red and black balls. For every red ball you add nine black balls. You do this for eternity. You end up with an infinite amount of balls. But the infinite number of red balls must be smaller than the infinite number of black balls. And this in turn must be smaller that the total (infinite) number of balls. And the probability of grabbing a red ball at random remains 1 in 10. Take care when you argue statistical mechanics with infinities.

Answer 3

I disagree. The rate of expansion of our universe seems to be increasing, pointing toward a very, very cold death, if by death you mean even atoms will be so far apart from each other that they might as well not be there. And ultimately, I imagine even a proton might decay. Scientists tried testing for proton decay but no results, but maybe a proton will fall apart in a "zillion" earth-years. Now what would happen to those stringy little left-over quarks is anybody's guess, but I would guess the temperature of the universe at that time would hit absolute zero.

Answer 4

Well, you sure have a way with science (fiction). I am not familiar with "heat death" nor entropy death. Entropy is one directional as is time, but it isn't associated with temperatures on earth. If entropy has its ways, we would freeze to death.

As for "tunneling", you well know that electrons can tunnel. Can flys tunnel through a wall? Theorectically, yes. But the probability is immense. The probability of something tunneling through matter is inversely propotional to its mass. A whole universe tunneling to another one? Wow. The Trifecta of parralel universe or "membrane" collisions.

Answer 5

Yes, the universe will someday die a "heat death". Essentially all of the energy that we use here on Earth(except nuclear) comes from the sun in one way or another, and this energy in turn comes from the fusion of hydrogen into helium. Even our nuclear energy originally came mostly from hydrogen fusion within the precursor stars that existed before our solar system was formed from their matter. Thus, when the universe runs out of hydrogen, it will run out of energy, and descend into a cold lifeless state. Not a pleasant thought, but this won't happen for many many billions of years, if not trillions.

Answer 6

"...The ultimate death of the universe might be by the "heat death..."

Data from two recent space missions (COBE and WMAP) strongly indicate that the 'heat death' you mention will indeed be the fate of our universe. Ultimately the universe will be totally without any mass or energy of any kind. Only spacetime will continue to exist, expanding more slowly until it coasts to a stop.

Tunnels into other universes? Who knows?

Answer 7

Yeah if the universe is gone then there is literally nothing. Maybe you are confusing our solar system or galaxy with the whole universe... Sure the sun might intensify or something before it dies and affect the planets, but our species will probably be long extinct before that even happens anyway...

Answer 8

lol yeah the sun is gonna pack us in a suitcase and run away.

what a moron. if the universe dies we go with it, idiot.