Questions about the origin and, consequently, the further development of our Universe have often bothered me since the uncertainty of knowledge breeds panic and arouses curiosity. In fact, in the absence of constructive information due to the lack of technological development, I used to find answers to all unexplained questions with the help of conspiracy theories. However, now that I have become more familiar with the physics of the Universe and astronomy, I have begun to understand the cosmic processes more deeply. One of the leading such processes has been the emergence of the Universe in general: the dominant theory in this regard is the Big Bang, which occurred from some singular state of the matter about 14 billion years ago (Wall, 2022). Evidence for this theory is the presence of relic radiation, preserved from the explosion and observable according to Einstein’s theory of relativity (Vekshin, 2020). Since the Universe was compressed into a tiny point, and the density of matter was excessive, the further evolution of the Universe generated a tendency towards expansion. In other words, as time passes, the Universe actively expands, increasing the distance between the topographic points. In this model, however, scientists disagree on whether the Universe will continue to expand infinitely. According to some data, this process will continue until the Universe reaches some critical point of density; according to other data, this point has almost been reached, which means that in the next billions of years, the Universe should be expected to show a tendency to shrink back into its initial singular state (Specktor, 2022). This gives rise to the assumption of successive multiverses.
It is noteworthy that in the singular state, the Universe was probably very hot, and as it expanded, it cooled rapidly. The cooling can be justified both by the expansion of the volume of the thermodynamic system in terms of our physics and by cooling due to the absorption of energy by black holes. In this context, in the nineteenth century, Clausius proposed the hypothesis (which has been repeatedly criticized) that the Universe as a thermodynamic system will evolve until it reaches absolute entropy, which causes its cooling – as a consequence, the thermal death of the Universe will come (Ivchenko, 2021). Thus, at the current moment, the scientific message has no unambiguous answers about what will happen to our Universe in the future — it is either infinite or finite and will come to some logical end according to the rules of physics in billions of years.
References
Ivchenko, V. V. (2021). The role of the paradoxes arising from the limited applicability of the scientific models in physics education. Latin-American Journal of Physics Education, 15(4), 7-10.
Specktor, B. (2022). The universe could stop expanding ‘remarkably soon’, study suggests. Live Science. Web.
Vekshin, N. L. (2020). On the question of the Big Bang and accompanying expansion of the universe. Cosmic Research, 58(6), 487-491. Web.
Wall, M. (2022). The Big Bang: What really happened at our universe’s birth? SPACE. Web.