What If the Universe Ended Tomorrow?

WHAT IF

Our universe is racing toward its destruction, right now. But how exactly will it end?

Transcript

00:00 (music)

00:04 What if all the stars disappeared tomorrow?

00:08 Together with all the planets,

00:10 solar systems and galaxies?

00:12 What would be left of the Universe

00:14 if it suddenly collapsed?

00:16 What could make it restart its cosmic cycle

00:19 all over again?

00:20 And how exactly could the entire Universe break apart?

00:25 This is WHAT IF,

00:26 and here's what would happen

00:28 if the Universe ended tomorrow.

00:32 Some 50 million years from now,

00:34 the Martian moon Phobos

00:35 will slam into Mars and shatter to pieces.

00:38 In 100 million years,

00:40 Earth will likely get hit by an asteroid

00:42 the size of the one that caused

00:43 all the dinosaurs to go extinct.

00:46 In about 1.5 billion years,

00:48 the Sun will become so luminous

00:50 that it will force the habitable zone

00:52 to move outwards,

00:53 leaving what's left of Earth to get crispy.

00:56 Everything will eventually come to an end,

00:59 even our almost 14 billion-year-old Universe.

01:02 What would it be like to witness

01:04 the epic end of the cosmos?

01:09 Don't get too comfy.

01:09 The end of the Universe

01:11 would mean the end of everything in it.

01:13 Two trillion galaxies

01:14 that we can observe from Earth

01:16 filled with a tremendous amount of everything,

01:18 from enormous gas giants

01:20 to weird-shaped asteroids.

01:22 Everything would be gone,

01:24 including you and whoever else is out there.

01:27 But your last moments could be very different,

01:30 depending on how the Universe shut down.

01:32 Here are three ways it might happen.

01:36 One possibility is it might get really chilly.

01:40 The Universe is expanding.

01:42 Galaxies are moving away from each other

01:44 at an ever-increasing rate,

01:46 despite the attempts of gravity

01:47 to pull them back together.

01:49 That's because a theoretical force

01:51 called dark energy

01:53 is opposing the force of gravity.

01:55 If one day this dark energy

01:57 pulled a little too hard,

01:58 the pieces of raw material

02:00 needed for star formation

02:01 would become too far away from each other.

02:04 All the existing stars

02:05 would eventually run out of fuel,

02:07 and there would be no new ones to replace them.

02:09 It would get very dark and very cold.

02:13 Once the temperature reached absolute zero,

02:15 nothing would be able to move,

02:16 not a single atom.

02:18 The Universe would become

02:19 the most boring, static place,

02:22 and would probably remain

02:23 an endless void forever.

02:26 I bet you were hoping for a more spectacular ending

02:28 to this story.

02:29 So let's add more action

02:30 with the Big Rip.

02:33 If the dark energy became so intense

02:35 that it was able to nullify

02:36 the force of gravity altogether,

02:38 it would rip the Universe apart.

02:41 It would start with the galaxies,

02:42 tearing them down one by one.

02:45 Black holes would be the next to disintegrate,

02:48 followed by stars,

02:49 planets,

02:50 asteroids.

02:52 As the expansion of the Universe ramped up,

02:54 every form of matter

02:55 would collapse on itself

02:57 and decay into radiation.

02:59 That, of course, includes you.

03:02 The Universe would end up

03:04 full of single particles.

03:06 Would it ever come together after its death?

03:09 Let's try our luck with the Big Crunch Theory.

03:13 If the force of gravity fought back

03:15 hard enough to overthrow the dark energy,

03:17 the Universe would stop expanding.

03:19 It would shrink back instead.

03:22 Planets would collide with other planets.

03:24 The stars would slam into each other.

03:27 Galaxies would merge together.

03:30 Earth wouldn't be able to dodge

03:31 all the space matter for too long.

03:33 The Universe would compress

03:35 into a very dense singularity,

03:38 just the way it was before the Big Bang

03:39 began spewing out galaxies.

03:42 From that singularity,

03:44 it could make a fresh cosmic start,

03:46 with new planets,

03:48 new stars,

03:49 new life forms.

03:52 One way or another,

03:53 the Universe and everything in it will end.

03:55 But it won't happen in just one day.

03:58 We still have time to become

03:59 a more advanced civilization,

04:01 and maybe even find a cozy exoplanet to settle on.

04:05 But that's a story for another WHAT IF.

04:08 ♪ ♪

04:13 (thunder)

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