Physicists are debating the question of what the end of the world will look like. In startling scenarios, they shed light on the fate of our universe.
There is something going on in the background of the universe. The relationship between the forces that move stars, planets, galaxies and black holes across the cosmic stage is changing radically. The new manager increasingly determines what happens.
“We are in the midst of a radical change,” says Paul Steinhardt, a professor at Princeton University and one of today's leading cosmologists. As a theorist, he followed the insights astronomers gained when they looked into space. He concludes: The discoveries “force us to rethink the future of our universe.”
Maybe coercion is the wrong word. Because “where everything will end”, what fate awaits such powerful structures as galaxies with billions of stars have always occupied people's minds.
Even if they will never experience this end, neither they nor other intelligent beings are anywhere in the universe. Perhaps because Homo sapiens needs to ascertain its role in the cosmic drama and wants to clarify whether the era that produced it lasts only a blink of an eye in the history of the universe or whether it defines a distinct period.
So where are we in the order of things?
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