The End of Time is Nigh (in a Cosmic Sense, Anyhow)
The universe has only about 3.7 billion years in which to settle its affairs. At least, that's the new assertion from a group of physicists who say that there is a 50 percent chance that time will end within that time frame. If the laws of physics as we understand them are in fact correct, then time must eventually end - and their math shows that both the sun and the Earth should still be around when that happens. Why? Physics tells us that the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang some 13 billino years ago and that it is still expanding to this day (Did you just feel that? That was the universe expanding around you). But there's a problem: if the universe expands infinitely, then every conceivable event - no matter how un-probabilistic - will occur. In an infinite universe, in fact, the most improbable event will...