Astronomy: Heat Death of the Universe

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Heat Death of the Universe The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or the Big Freeze) is a scientific hypothesis regarding the ultimate fate of the universe which posits the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and, having reached maximum entropy, will therefore be unable to sustain any further thermodynamic processes. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other processes may no longer be exploited to perform work.

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Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

Heat Death of the Universe The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or the Big Freeze) is a scientific hy pothesis regarding the ultimate fate of the universe which posits the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and, having reached maximum entropy, will therefore be unable to sustain any further thermodynamic processes. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other processes may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium.

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Why Heat Death of the Universe matters: Cosmology addresses the deepest questions we can ask: where did the universe come from, what is it made of, and what will happen to it in the future? If the curvature of the universe is hyperbolic or flat, or if dark energy is a positive cosmological constant, the universe will continue expanding forever, and a heat death is expected to occur, with the universe cooling to approach equilibrium at a very low temperature after a long time period. The theory of heat death stems from the ideas of Lord Kelvin who, in the 1850s, took the theory of heat as mechanical energy loss in nature (as embodied in the first two laws of thermodynamics) and extrapolated it to larger processes on a universal scale. This also allowed Kelvin to formulate the heat death paradox, which disproves an infinitely old universe.

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Deep dive: Heat Death of the Universe The theory of heat death stems from the ideas of Lord Kelv in who, in the 1850s, took the theory of heat as mechanical energy loss in nature (as embodied in the first two laws of thermodynamics) and extrapolated it to larger processes on a universal scale. This also allowed Kelvin to formulate the heat death paradox, which disproves an infinitely old universe. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)