Will the universe speed up to the point that it will fly apart?

Answer 1

I don't think it's speeding up, but the question you ask is one of the Big Questions of cosmology today. We would like very much to know if there is enough mass to stop the expansion and cause it to contract, or if there is insufficient mass for this, resulting in eternal expansion and "heat death." We don't know yet. I think most astronomers are so aesthetically revulsed by the heat death option, that they are trying a little too hard to believe the necessary mass is there. Thus, the non-stuff they call dark matter. It hasn't really been proven and I am skeptical that it ever will be.

I think it's going to be heat death. Matter will disintegrate into a vast, incredibly rarefied mist of non-interactive quanta at absolute zero and zero potential energy. Yuck! But that should take something like oh, 10^100 years.

Great question. You get a star. Who knows, maybe one day you will be the one to prove it, one way or another.

Note, I'm guessing that any thumbs down I get, are from people who feel that dark matter has been adequately proven and that it is enough to "close" the Universe. (Along with "dark energy," which also hasn't been proven.)

Answer 2

I'm split on this issue currently. I recently came to the conclusion that the cyclic universal model was the one I found most useful and plausible. That the universe explodes and implodes again and again in the same exact way for eternity. And our lives are lived in the exact same way again and again forever. But now the actual hard data (I've heard at least) is that the universe is accellerating while it expands. So that would mean that it will just keep going faster and faster away from the origin of the big bang and eventually reach faster than speed of light velocities which would make an event horizon at the edges of the universe.
I'm leaning more and more towards the latter theory at this point, even though the cyclic model makes me feel more important and eternal as a living being. But if you look at what happens to colliding protons in proton accelerators that is more likely what would happen to our universe, because what would cause it to re-implode? It would take a reciprical pressure to push it back together, and gravity isn't strong enough to do that, so what would it be then? A reversal of time at a certain point of expansion?

Answer 3

The universe won't fly apart. But it will probably stretch so thin that matter can not accumulate any more to form stars and planets. This, however, is not such a big deal.

You have to realize that the universe as we know it lives on borrowed time (energy, entropy) anyway. All the radiation that keeps us alive comes from nuclear reactions which tap into the initial energy of the big bang. Once that energy is gone, the lights in the universe will dim and finally go out. After that it will be very cold. It does not really matter how fast space-time will be expanding at that time.

This is what we think will happen over the next 10^100 years:

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys240/lectures/future/future.html

The article ends on the note "Not a happy ending". I don't know. I rather see the universe live its life out in piece and then be quiet for eternity (which does not matter because there is nobody there to experience it and the vacuum does not really care about time) than in a hot re-collapse which will wipe out billions if not trillions of civilizations scrounging to escape for a few more years before the end is really near.

Personally, I don't mind going in my sleep. Why should the universe?

Answer 4

LOL, it is flying apart as we speak and has been for about 14 billion years.

Too late

If expanding faster and faster as time goes on for billions of years isn't "flying apart" then I don't know what is.

Answer 5

Yes it will, if the most recent measurement that shows the expansion accelerating is correct.

Answer 6

No because the faster something spines in the universe the more gravity it creates. It can implode on itself if to much gravilty is present.