Is the universe and everything in it going to be pulled to shreds at the sub-atomic
level like Spider-Man in Infinity War? Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks so.
If you've got a question about the cosmos, then you can be sure Neil deGrasse Tyson's
got an answer. Hop on over to Tyson's StarTalk YouTube channel and you'll come across a whole
host of fascinating and dumbfounding topics to chew on: time dilation, the nature of wormholes,
the shape of the universe, dark matter, and even the ethics of driverless cars. As the
current director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History,
few people are more qualified to comment on universal, supermassive questions than Tyson.
So if Tyson starts talking about horrifying, cosmos-annihilating scenarios with terrifying
titles like "The Big Rip," there's cause for concern. The Big Rip hinges on the
continued expansion of the universe, which in case you didn't know is a thing that's
happening. And as Space.com explains, not only is the universe expanding,
but it's believed to be expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light.
This means that most of the universe will be forever out of reach unless we can somehow
bypass the light-speed barrier. Some unknown theorized phenomenon dubbed
"dark energy" is fueling the universe's expansion. And if dark energy wins the
battle against the phenomena holding the universe together — gravity and
dark matter — then the whole universe might shred itself apart at the sub-atomic level.
"Ahhhh."
First off, you don't have to worry about this whole universe-obliterating Big Rip
thing for quite some time — the cosmos will not be big-ripped apart sometime next Tuesday, or even
the Tuesday after that. So take a deep breath, keep your appointments, and exit your apocalypse
bunker. As Wired says, if the Big Rip does happen, it'll happen in about 22 billion years.
Long before that far-flung 22 billion years in the future, however, the sun will expand into
a red giant and consume Earth, our Milky Way Galaxy will fuse with the Andromeda Galaxy,
and humanity will likely be long-dead — just to keep things in perspective.
As Neil deGrasse Tyson explained to Stephen Colbert, space itself is expanding. Galaxies
themselves are stuck together, so they stay whole even as the space around them expands. In the same
way, individual objects — stars, planets, you, your latte — remain stuck together as well. But
eventually, the forces fueling the expansion of the universe may overcome the molecular,
even atomic, and then sub-atomic forces binding the very fabric of spacetime
together. If you could somehow be around at that time, you'd experience space itself,
down to every single errant quantum particle, separating into an infinitesimal nothing.
"It will eventually overcome molecular bonds that are holding your flesh together."
As sites like The Conversation discuss, the Big Rip isn't a new idea. We know that space
itself isn't actually empty; the vacuum of space is permeated with energetic quantum
fields. And as space expands, it fills with more of this "energy of space," so to speak,
which fuels the universe's expansion more and more. In the early 20th century Albert Einstein,
in an attempt to explain why gravitational forces didn't just clump all matter together, described
a repulsive property within the universe called the "cosmological constant." Modern researchers
equate this constant with the dark energy that would drive the Big Rip, per Live Science.
But have no fear. Neil deGrasse Tyson and others state that the Big Rip isn't the only
way the universe could end. As Tyson mentions briefly in his interview with Stephen Colbert,
we've also got the Heat Death of the Universe. In
the unimaginably far future, at a time of maximum cosmic entropy when all
stellar bodies and even all black holes have dissipated, the universe might be a bland,
drab slab of uniform heat and energy where no distinct objects can ever exist, ever again.
"How will the world end? Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Not in fire, but in ice."
Fun times. One other option largely discarded by researchers is the Big Crunch,
where the gravitational forces of the universe overcome the expansive
forces and everything collapses back into a pre-Big Bang-like singularity,
per Universe Today. In light of such options, maybe the Big Rip isn't so bad.