The End of Existence
The universe started with a Big Bang. How will it end? Katie Mack presents five possibilities in her recent book, The End of Everything. But first she says not to worry. We will not be around to see the end. Earth will die eons before the universe disappears. Earth’s demise will come as the sun runs out of fuel and expands into a red giant. The expanding sun will engulf Mercury, perhaps Venus, and char Earth beyond recognition. Earth then will spiral into the sun, its atoms dispersing in the fiery furnace. The grand finale is the sun, along with the atoms that once were Earth, collapsing into a dense white dwarf. That will be the end of our blue marble.
What about the end of the universe? Five billion years from now Earth will die by fire, as Mack puts it. Then, she says, it will be at least another 200 billion years before the universe goes kaput. She gives us five scenarios that she and other cosmologists study.
Big Crunch (not likely anymore)
For a time, the Big Crunch seemed to be the answer. It was determined that the combined gravitational attraction of all matter, including dark matter, would overcome expansion and the universe would fall back into itself, collapsing to a single point like when it began. Since the discovery of dark energy and an ever-increasing expansion, this has become an unlikely ending.
Heat Death (most likely)
Cosmologists now think that the expansion will go on forever because of dark energy. As galaxies grow farther apart, they will come apart. Gravitational forces will lose the strength to hold them together. In the end, atoms will be ripped apart and the subatomic debris will remain in an expanding emptiness.
Big Rip (not likely, but possible)
If dark energy expands the universe at a faster rate than expected in Heat Death, then gravitational forces will fail to keep the universe intact and the universe will rip apart, galaxy by galaxy, star by star, atom by atom down to its foundational subatomic particles.
Vacuum Decay (extremely unlikely, but discussed)
Cosmologist like to discuss this rendition of the end, but do not see its possibility. In this ending, a vacuum bubble forms when something goes wrong in the Higgs field, which gives mass to particles. The bubble would expand at the speed of light destroying everything along the way, ending the universe.
Bounce (intriguing new idea)
The Bounce has different possible scenarios, but the idea goes like this. In the far, far future the universe will stop expanding, reverse itself, and come roaring back toward its beginning, much like the Big Crunch; but instead of collapsing into a final point, it will bounce off a similar, but invisible, parallel universe. The bounce will result in another Big Bang as our universe once again expands. There is much speculation around this nascent idea of a recurring universe among many similar universes.
Mack says (p. 206), It’s impossible to seriously contemplate the end of the universe without ultimately coming to terms with what it means for humanity. We encounter death throughout our lives, then must face our own. At some point, our entire species will disappear at the end of our evolutionary cycle. Personal legacy often survives individual death. The legacy of humanity may survive human extinction by being chronicled among succeeding species. But human legacy will die for certain when the expanding sun chars Earth to a crisp. At that point, it will certainly not matter that we ever lived. In about 200 billion years it will not matter that there ever was a universe. Meanwhile, we give ourselves and our world importance.
Considering the humongous scale of the universe, humans count mostly as nothing, except that we are here. The universe will not care when we are gone, but meanwhile, we have the awareness that we exist. We can raise existential questions and attempt to answer them. We have a legacy in the arts, science, philosophy, and religion of knowing a great deal about who and what we are. It is our nature to give ourselves meaning and purpose.
One often-asked question is, what am I? A recent answer comes from physicists who study subatomic particles and the laws they obey in the workings of the universe. They often say a person is their body and nothing more. We are nothing before birth and nothing after death. We are bundles of subatomic particles that give us form and consciousness. Brian Greene, a noted physicist, puts it this way in his recent book, Until the End of Time (p. 120): I anticipate that we will one day explain consciousness with nothing more than a conventional understanding of the particles constituting matter and the physical laws that govern them….physical law reaching arbitrarily far into the outer world of objective reality and arbitrarily into the inner world of subjective experience. I hear him saying that life at its foundation, including consciousness, is particles governed by physical law.
According to Greene’s view of humankind, life is particles bundled into our physicality as a body. There is birth and death with nothing before and nothing after. In between, life is particles behaving true to physical laws. We have come about by chance through evolution. So, I ask myself, why bother suffering through life when it is a needless piece of work that has no purpose or meaning. But we do. Humankind has spent its entirety giving meaning to its existence so that our being here has purpose. If we accept humans as evolved objects with no meaning or purpose other than their legacy on this planet, then what? Is it enough to be only an earthly legacy that ends in a void, or do we continue to seek a reality beyond the body that gives us meaning and purpose?
For at least 2500 years, philosophy, spirituality, and religion have taught that we are more than the body. Physicists may want to find the critical building-block particle of the universe and tie it into a single most-exquisite formula to explain existence once and for all, but I suspect they will be no more successful than metaphysics at finding the ultimate answer. Odds are Earth will become a charred ruin without our having a conclusive answer to What am I?
Whether we are only a body or not, our existence in the universe is going to end. In the short term, you and I will die. Mid-range, Earth is swallowed by the sun in a fiery death spiral. Long-term, the universe fragments into its basic subatomic particles becoming an emptiness that is nowhere. Is there any purpose to all of this? Only what we give it. Does life transcend existence? Probably. At least we want it to. We almost crave a life beyond the grave. If there is no spiritual reality, then why bother with this painful world? We struggle with meaning and purpose because we are aware and conscious. We extend ourselves beyond natural capabilities. We extend with the machinery of civilization to do great works. We extend with metaphysics in great faith that we are more than a transitory bundle of particles.
Do we go on forever after death? Even after the end of Earth? How about after the end of the universe? I think so. I think these endings are insignificant in the eternal reality of what we are in consciousness. That which I am transcends the body and all of existence. Metaphysics has taught this for 2500 years, or more. The recent view of Greene and others that we are but a bundle of particles is true as well. The truth of what physicist discover about our existence cannot be denied. There is beauty in the mathematical formulas they derive to explain it all. Being limited to a body, however, is not the whole story to me. Because of what I have learned from the teachings, I cannot accept existence in the physical universe as a limitation. I am certain that I am not my body.
Not to worry says Mack about the end of Earth and the universe. She reminds us that the demise of humankind and the ultimate end of existence is eons upon eons away. Let us take her thought further and know that the emptiness at the end is eternal. We need not worry. We are forever. In the reality of consciousness, there is no end. We are not our bodies. Earth is not our truth. We are oneness, the eternal I AM. That is my truth. So be it.