Whether in film, television or literary works, "the end of the world" seems to have become a specific theme setting: it means the end of most vitality, social disorder, people's human nature is exposed in their struggle to survive, but there is still hope for continuation after a struggle with fate. But will there come a moment when all of a sudden everything ceases to exist?
American female cosmologist Katie Mack's "The End of Everything" uses this starting point to tell whether the universe may end, and if so, in what form it will end. Before reading it, I thought it would be a popular science book with an exaggerated theme in the title, but when I actually read it, I discovered that "the end of the universe" is not a false proposition just based on a joke or gimmick.
Could the universe end? Is the environment we live in stable? Only when we realize that the answer is probably "no" can we examine this seemingly science fiction proposition. Today, scientists generally believe that the formation of the universe came from the Big Bang, so the universe that appeared by chance may also have an end point - everything has a beginning and an end.
Cosmologists are not kidding anyone. When people break through the shackles of gravity and continue to explore outwards, the vast universe has too many revelations about the future. "The End of Everything" lists five forms of universe destruction: Big Crunch, Heat Death, Big Rip, Vacuum Decay and Big Bounce. Behind each theory are physical explanations of cosmological phenomena and cosmological model deductions based on cutting-edge scientific observations.
is like the concept "heat death" that science fiction creators often like to quote. It is based on the deduction of thermodynamic law . Entropy continues to increase, and the mass and energy of countless particles in the universe continue to decay. Then, if the deduction continues, a silent and empty limit state seems to be in front and in the future that will eventually be reached.
Another example is the Big Rip. The expanding universe is like a soap bubble. It is inevitable that there will be cracks. The holes under these cracks will destroy the soap bubble instantly. Maybe one day, the electromagnetic force of the atoms and molecules that make up the world around us will not be able to withstand the expanding space. It will collapse from the inside, just like in the movie "Don't Look Up". It ushered in a point in time that came to an abrupt end, and the whole world cracked into countless stardust that even the naked eye could not see clearly.
may benefit from the author's unique female perspective. In the writings of cosmologist Katie Mack, a universe that seems illusory and vast to ordinary people has become a small object, a small animal, whose life and death can be observed. It can be rounded and flattened with arbitrary but reasonable assumptions, which has a lot of Zen or Taoist flavor, and the feeling of "a world hidden in a grain of millet" arises spontaneously. The content is slightly more serious than similar books, but it does not eclipse the brilliance of its humanity. This kind of popular science is soft and warm. The formation of the universe is so accidental, as if a thought explodes and a thought destroys. The life and death of every life are so accidental, which is better than any imaginable miracle.
This is the charm of physics. It seems that every word has nothing to do with love but every word is romantic. It talks about light, force, constants, and space, but the scale is incomparable to a human being who is just a drop in the ocean. Even though everything you guess may never be confirmed or answered, you still have the motivation to study it throughout your life. As the author said:
"There is a purpose for doing this, even if the purpose will eventually disappear."
Who said that the physics of the universe is not an ultimate romance?
(2022.12.25)
