OBJECTIVE:  I will be able describe how the end of the Universe is different from our previous discussions during class today.

WORDS FOR TODAY:

• Tunneling
• Evaporation

WORK O' THE DAY: 

Today's reading/analysis work is going to really, really tough. So let's be a bit more whimsical before we dive into the science of the end of the Cosmos, shall we?

Here's your opener for today:

Imagine you are a proton created during <when?> after the Big Bang. You've lived an interesting life. You floated around with a bunch of other hydrogen atoms, maybe clumping together to make H₂ (hydrogen gas) before turning into a star where you eventually fused with a few more hydrogen atoms to make carbon before getting blasted into space during a super nova.

Where might you be 10 billion years from now?

Where might you be 10 trillion years from now?

Where might you be 10 trillion trillion trillion years from now? (Yesterday's video mentioned.... *what* with regards to protons in the distant future?)

 

VERY TECHNICAL READING:

Red dwarf stars are tiny stars (roughly the size of the Earth) that are by far the most common/plentiful stars in the Universe. They will eventually stop fusing and become white dwarf stars. Astrophysicists estimate that red dwarf stars will exist as stars for a few trillion years!

White dwarf stars will eventually cool off exactly the same why a hot coal in a fireplace cools down, by giving off heat and will eventually become a chunk of iron in space with a temperature right at the temperature of the surround space. Astrophysicists estimate the time for that to happen on the order of 10³⁷ years (give or take an eon!)

THIS is a *VERY* tough read, how might we glean *something* from such a difficult read?

 

 

 

 

That article included discussion of If  "η" is then the following table gets A WHOLE LOT more readable, really, really quick. Let's do that NOW!

Keep in mind, this article was published before the 'discovery' of dark matter and dark energy. Therefore it's best to use this data for background in helping us understand the distant future, rather than a complete description of that time.

Notice that I have rewritten the date ranges using powers of 10 notation (in years) and edited the content using words more familiar to our class.

[A] The Radiation Dominated Era. 10^−∞ < η < 10⁴. This era corresponds to the usual time period in which most of the energy density of the universe is in the form of radiation.

[B] The Stelliferous Era. 10⁶ < η < 10¹⁴. Most of the energy generated in the universe arises from nuclear processes in conventional stellar evolution.

[C] The Degenerate Era. 10¹⁵ < η < 10³⁷. Most of the mass in the universe is locked up in degenerate stellar objects: brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, and neutron stars.

[D] The Black Hole Era. 10³⁸ < η < . 10¹⁰⁰ The only star-like objects remaining are black holes of widely differing masses, which are actively evaporating during this era.

[E] The Dark Era. η >10¹⁰⁰. At this late time, protons have decayed and black holes have evaporated. Only the waste products from these processes remain: mostly photons of colossal wavelength, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons.

We can really only guess at what will happen during this era so far in the future, there is simply too much uncertainty in our models.

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