27
What Lies Ahead?
The future is always hard to predict. So how can we contemplate what will
happen to such a large system as the universe, with all its galaxies, planets, stars,
and gas? Yet, given what we know about the laws of physics and the state of our
universe now, a rough future path for the universe can be charted. It is of course
always possible that new things and new phenomena will be discovered and the
path will change. But in this chapter, we will push ahead with the knowledge
we have to predict what can happen. There are several serious discussions of
this in the literature [6]. Since this kind of discussion deals with the “end” of
the universe, it is often called an “eschatological” study of the universe. Here,
we give a brief glimpse of some of the main events at specific future times, like
ten billion, 100 billion billion, and 1000 billion billion billion years. One can
of course go beyond that time scale, but this book does not.
27.1 “Near” Future: The First Ten Billion (∼10 10 )
Years
Things that likely will happen to our universe in the billion year time scale are
as follows:
The Sun and all the stars shining every day, as already alluded, will become
red giants in a few billion years. As soon as that happens, the outer region of
the Sun starts engulfing the Earth. The detailed studies estimate that Earth
will have about 50 years to be totally destroyed [6] once the engulfing starts
in a few billion years. There is the possibility that as the sun expands, it may
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
R. N. Mohapatra, The Neutrino Story: One Tiny Particle’s Grand Role in the Cosmos,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51846-2_27
203
What Lies Ahead?
The future is always hard to predict. So how can we contemplate what will
happen to such a large system as the universe, with all its galaxies, planets, stars,
and gas? Yet, given what we know about the laws of physics and the state of our
universe now, a rough future path for the universe can be charted. It is of course
always possible that new things and new phenomena will be discovered and the
path will change. But in this chapter, we will push ahead with the knowledge
we have to predict what can happen. There are several serious discussions of
this in the literature [6]. Since this kind of discussion deals with the “end” of
the universe, it is often called an “eschatological” study of the universe. Here,
we give a brief glimpse of some of the main events at specific future times, like
ten billion, 100 billion billion, and 1000 billion billion billion years. One can
of course go beyond that time scale, but this book does not.
27.1 “Near” Future: The First Ten Billion (∼10 10 )
Years
Things that likely will happen to our universe in the billion year time scale are
as follows:
The Sun and all the stars shining every day, as already alluded, will become
red giants in a few billion years. As soon as that happens, the outer region of
the Sun starts engulfing the Earth. The detailed studies estimate that Earth
will have about 50 years to be totally destroyed [6] once the engulfing starts
in a few billion years. There is the possibility that as the sun expands, it may
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
R. N. Mohapatra, The Neutrino Story: One Tiny Particle’s Grand Role in the Cosmos,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51846-2_27
203