How the Universe Will End (Collins Shorts, Book 1)
Brian Cox
Language: English
Pages: 5
ISBN: 2:00202781
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Collins Shorts – insight in an instant.
Professor Brian Cox shows us our universe as we've never seen it before. In this short he explains how this vast and complex universe – the subject of human fascination and scientific exploration for thousands of years – will end. Taken from his bestselling, mind-blowing exploration of space, Wonders of the Universe.
Collins Shorts are a fresh look at the ebook short, with the emphasis on vibrant design, animated content and expert authors who can provide accessible insight. They satisfy your thirst for knowledge without the need for time commitment. This ebook will work on all e-readers but delivers its full punch on devices that support colour and animation. Please note the extent is between 20 to 40 pages, depending on your settings.
E.T. Talk: How Will We Communicate with Intelligent Life on Other Worlds? (Astronomers' Universe)
Discovering the Essential Universe (5th Edition)
Dwarf – the destiny of almost all the stars in our galaxy. If our planet survives, little more than a scorched and barren rock will remain. This is the most profound consequence of the arrow of time; this Universe cannot last forever. As we move through the aeons ahead, countless billions of stars will live and die. Eventually, though, there will be only one type of star left to illuminate the Universe in its old age: the red dwarfs. The nearest star to our solar system is a red.
And cold, with surface temperatures in the region of 4,000K, but they do have one advantage over their more magnificent stellar brethren: because they’re so small, they burn their nuclear fuel extremely slowly, and consequently they have life spans of trillions of years. If we do in fact survive into the far future of the Universe, it is possible to imagine our distant descendants building their civilisations around red dwarfs in order to capture the energy of those last fading embers of stars,.
Stars will draw to a close and the cosmos will enter its next phase: The Degenerate Era. And yet, even after 100 trillion years of light, the vast majority of the Universe’s history still lies ahead. Bleak, lifeless and desolate, our universe will go on, as it enters the dark. Black dwarfs are dark, dense, decaying balls of degenerate matter. Nothing more than the ashes of stars, they take so long to form that after almost 14 billion years, the Universe is currently too young to contain any.
The means by which the Universe can understand itself, if only for an instant. This is what we’ve done in our brief moments on Earth: we have sent space probes to the edge of our solar system and beyond; we have built telescopes that can glimpse the oldest and most distant stars, and we have discovered and understood at least some of the natural laws that govern the cosmos. This is why we are important. Our true significance lies in our continuing desire to understand and explore this.
Mercury, towards Venus and onwards to our fragile world. The effects on our planet will be as catastrophic as they are certain. Gradually, the Earth will become hotter. In the distant future, if any of our descendants still remain, someone will experience the last perfect day on Earth. As the surface of the Sun encroaches, our oceans will boil away, the molecules in our atmosphere will be agitated off into space, and the memory of life on Earth will fade … Long after life has.