What if You Traveled to the End of Time?
Everything has to end eventually. Our days, when the Earth completes one rotation; our
years, as it makes its way through all of the seasons; and the decades pass one after
another after another. Humans, just like all living creatures, have a limited lifespan.
One day, they’ll die and so will everything else out there; the Earth, the sun, the whole
galaxy… but what about reality itself?
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if you travelled
to the end of time?
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Practically every belief system has its own depiction of an “end time”, a prophesised
apocalyptic scenario that it’s believed will one day happen. It may involve the second
coming of a figure like Jesus Christ, a battle with the forces of evil, or just a general
spate of large-scale, across the board ruin and destruction known as Judgement Day. Even
with the likes of Buddhism, where rebirth cycles are incredibly important, there are
writings about “end times”, where the Buddha is forgotten and society collapses.
There have also been plenty of secular theories about something destroying the world. The
Millennium Bug, for example, triggered frantic concerns over computers struggling to cope
with the year change from 1999 to 2000 - with some fearing a massive, world-wrecking glitch
causing a fairly literal “end of time”. Elsewhere, we’ve seen various other prophecies
come and go… including the 2012 apocalypse theories based on the Mayan calendar which
billed December 21st of that year as the doomsday moment. It again received plenty of attention,
but again didn’t translate into actual annihilation.
But regardless of the apocalypses that so far haven’t happened, for many it’s inevitable
that time will one day end - and since time and space are inextricably linked, this future
point of incredible destruction can also be generally understood as the end of the universe.
There are other ways to interpret the question… Like the death of time equating to the death
of the sun, if you take “time” to mean humanity’s method of measuring it… Or
perhaps the “end of time” actually passes when Earth itself expires, or when there are
no humans left to perceive time in the way that we do. And, as with most conundrums surrounding
time, there’s also the question of black holes and the massive, maybe infinite distortions
you yourself would experience were you to somehow fall into one. But in terms of a total
black-out; the final destination for anything and everything; the end of the universe is
the only scenario where it might also be said that time truly stops moving.
So, to see the end of time you’d have to also be present at the end of space – a
practical impossibility but a theoretical prospect. We know that time travel into the
future is theoretically much simpler than time travel into the past. And there are also
various far-future theories on how we might one day achieve immortality, which offer another
route to front row seats at the end of all things. With the time travel option, the theoretical
problems with traveling back into the past would unfortunately mean you’d never be
able to tell anybody that wasn’t already there that you’d seen the end of time…
And with the immortality approach you’d have essentially discovered that even everlasting
life has its limits… but you’d at least be present to see the ultimate endgame.
In either case, knowing precisely when the end of time will happen is key. Estimates
vary wildly, with some theories suggesting that the universe only has a few billion years
left to run… while others say that if reality does ever end, it won’t happen for hundreds
of billions, perhaps even trillions of years. The window we’ve got to work in, then, is
exceptionally wide! But exactly what you’d see when you eventually got to the correct
time and place depends on which of the various “end of the universe” theories proves
to be the right one. Over the years a lot of predictions have been offered up!
“Heat death”, or the Big Freeze, is a reasonably well-supported idea… where the
universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium and can no longer increase entropy. In other
words, it gets too cold to function when, in the far, far future all of the black holes
in existence close up, no longer able to even sustain themselves. But there’s also the
Big Crunch theory; a now less-popular idea in modern science, but one where it turns
out the expansion of the universe we’re currently in the middle of isn’t endless,
and that it will one day revert inwards and back towards an eventual collapse.
If neither of those come to pass, there’s also the Big Rip theory, which some predict
could happen after an increase in the amount of dark energy present in the universe. Right
now, we think the universe is about 68% dark energy… but say it climbed closer to 100%,
it could ultimately tear itself apart - condemning everything inside the universe to another
inescapable doom. Finally, the Big Bounce is a best-of-all-worlds scenario and arguably
the least destructive option, where the universe endlessly expands and contracts forever, as
though it’s breathing. In some ways, there actually wouldn’t be an “end of time”
in this case, but there would be various stages in a now eternal cycle where next to nothing
exists!
However it plays out, if you somehow travelled to the end of time and survived to witness
it, you’d be left with… darkness. Blank, literal, total nothingness everywhere. A bottomless
void in the truest sense, where even your own existence would actually be impossible.
With time and space no more, you yourself couldn’t age, grow or even function. As
will have happened with everything else - from planets, to stars to even supermassive black
holes - the matter that makes up your body would now be impossible, too. Even in some
kind of indescribably futuristic, seemingly indestructible spaceship, you’d be a goner
as soon as you arrived at your “end of all things” destination. If time really does
end and you really could jump forward to see it, then you’d simply be fast-tracking your
own demise.
But perhaps there’s a silver lining to arriving at your own inevitable departure? Seeing as
energy can’t be created or destroyed, the residue of the universe - the remnant of space-time
- has to go somewhere… particularly if you subscribe to the Big Crunch or Bounce theories!
And you would’ve been there at the very close… so perhaps no sooner would you be
gone before you’d reappear, at the birthing of a new universe or the beginning of a “new
time”.
Regardless of whether you lived, died, were ruthlessly annihilated in the blink of an
eye or wondrously reborn into a brand-new reality, however… you’d have played your
part in the absolute rarest event in cosmology; a moment to defy description, or even comprehension!
And that’s what would happen if you travelled to the end of time.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these
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