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'Phantom menace' may rip up cosmos
New Scientist ^ | 19:00 05 March 03 | Marcus Chown

Posted on 03/07/2003 11:40:45 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach

'Phantom menace' may rip up cosmos

 
19:00 05 March 03
 
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
 

Stand by for a nightmare end to the Universe - a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies, planets and even atomic nuclei are literally ripped apart. The scenario could play out as soon as 22 billion years from now.

 
End of everything

"Until now we thought the Universe would either re-collapse to a big crunch or expand forever to a state of infinite dilution," says Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. "Now we've come up with a third possibility - the 'big rip'."

Whether the big rip happens or not depends on the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is pulling the Universe apart. We know that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up, but most physicists assume the acceleration is likely to stay constant or get weaker over time.

But Caldwell takes a different view. He thinks the dark energy causing the expansion could be growing more powerful. "We call it phantom energy," he says. "It's pretty weird stuff."


Shrink to a point

Under the influence of phantom energy, the runaway expansion of the Universe would become ever more violent, stretching more and more of the Universe further and further away until the light from the stars cannot reach us.

"Every observer sees the visible Universe around them shrink ever faster, eventually down to a point," says Caldwell. For all practical purposes, the Universe will have ended.

The existence of phantom energy has always been a possibility - even if a pretty unlikely one. But astronomers have tried and failed to rule it out. In particular, detailed measurements released in February of background radiation left over from the early Universe leave the door open.

Now, in a paper submitted to Physical Review, Caldwell and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have calculated how phantom energy would bring the Universe to an end. They found that as the phantom energy grows, its repulsive force becomes strong enough to rip all bound systems apart, starting with galaxy clusters and rapidly moving down the scale to galaxies, stars, planets and atoms.

Caldwell says he was surprised by the violence of the Universe's end - the received wisdom was that an ever-expanding Universe should end with a whimper. "In the last moments, even atomic nuclei will be ripped apart," he says.


Final millisecond

In the most extreme scenario, the big rip will happen 22 billion years from now, with the Milky Way destroyed 60 million years before the end and atoms torn to pieces in the final 10-19 seconds (see graphic).

 
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"If humanoids survive, they could observe all but the final millisecond," adds England's Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, who has also considered the possibility of phantom energy. "That's when the cosmic repulsion gets up to the tensile strength of our bodies and tears us apart. It's unlikely, but it can't be proved impossible."

Astronomers' best bet for working out which fate is in store for the Universe is the Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP), a satellite proposed for launch later this decade. SNAP will make detailed measurements of thousands of supernovae, to pin down exactly how fast they are moving away from us and hopefully work out how dark energy is changing over time.

Most physicists probably will not be rooting for phantom energy. That is because if it exists, it will cause them all kinds of theoretical headaches. For example, Einstein's theory of gravity predicts the existence of minuscule wormholes - short cuts through space-time.

Normally they snap shut so fast we never notice them. But phantom energy's repulsive gravity would be powerful enough to hold wormholes open, and perhaps even push them wide enough apart for spacecraft to use them for faster-than-light travel. "This raises the spectre of time machines and all their paradoxes, which physicists find very uncomfortable," says Caldwell.

 

Marcus Chown




TOPICS: Astronomy
KEYWORDS: cosmos; universe

End of everything

1 posted on 03/07/2003 11:40:45 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
glad you put the pi cin there, I was thinking of a big fart.

in either event this sure sounds like a "your tax dollars at work" story to me.
2 posted on 03/07/2003 11:46:42 AM PST by camle (no camle jokes, please...OK, maybe one little one)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
whew thanx for the warning, I just made my reservations at "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe". I hear they have a good band playing.
3 posted on 03/07/2003 11:49:50 AM PST by camle (no camle jokes, please...OK, maybe one little one)
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To: camle
Right, if this doesn't get us it will because of Global Warming!
4 posted on 03/07/2003 11:53:56 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The End is out there!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
they gots food up there that asks you what part you want to eat. it's very polite and eager to serve.
5 posted on 03/07/2003 12:06:28 PM PST by camle (no camle jokes, please...OK, maybe one little one)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Crap. Well, I can't give a rip about a rip that is gonna happen in 22 billion years.
6 posted on 03/07/2003 1:12:38 PM PST by HairOfTheDog
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Disaster Area! the name of the band is Disaster Area!
7 posted on 03/07/2003 1:23:14 PM PST by camle (no camle jokes, please...OK, maybe one little one)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Will the Security Council still be debating?
8 posted on 03/07/2003 1:57:57 PM PST by pierrem15
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
What will this do to my 401K?
9 posted on 03/07/2003 5:04:23 PM PST by AdamSelene235 (Like all the jolly good fellows, I drink my whiskey clear.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
And just when I thought it was safe to come out from under the bed...
10 posted on 03/07/2003 8:29:39 PM PST by Savage Beast
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
WHAT??

Oh... that was 22 billion years? I thought you said 22 million years. You had me worried for a moment there. Sorry.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

11 posted on 03/08/2003 11:21:19 AM PST by fporretto (Curmudgeon Emeritus, Palace of Reason)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Stand by for a nightmare end to the Universe - a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies, planets and even atomic nuclei are literally ripped apart. The scenario could play out as soon as 22 billion years from now. End of everything

Lucky thing I stocked up on duct tape.

12 posted on 03/08/2003 2:57:56 PM PST by Maceman
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