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Will The Universe End in the “Big Rip”?
Why an expanding universe might ultimately spell its demise
Everyone is familiar with the Big Bang, and some people are even familiar with the Big Crunch. But what about the Big Rip? The Big Crunch says that eventually the universe will reach the end of its expansion and snap back into a period of retraction, like a rubber band. The Big Rip says something much different and more violent than the Big Crunch.
One of the biggest mysteries and headaches in modern cosmology is the existence of Dark Energy and Dark Matter. Our current formulas and calculations say that large swaths of the existing universe are invisible to us. (To me, that tells me that the equations are wrong, but I digress.) What we do know is that the universe is expanding and expanding at an accelerating rate. This expansion of the universe is (supposedly) fueled by dark energy, which is pushing everything apart slowly but inescapably.
If this universal expansion continues to accelerate and strengthen, as some theories suggest, it will result in what scientists call the Big Rip. The Big Rip is a hypothetical end to the universe in which everything, and I mean everything, is ripped apart.
The Big Rip goes beyond the theory that says that eventually galaxies, stars, and even light will accelerate…
