To understand the universe, science calls on the ultrasmall
Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 12:21
in Astronomy & Space
Will the universe expand outward for all of eternity and end in a vast, dark, cold, sterile, diffuse nothingness? Or will the 'Big Bang' - the gargantuan explosion that formed the universe 14 billion years ago - end in the 'Big Crunch?' Planets, stars and galaxies all hurtle inward and collapse into an incredibly hot, dense mass a billion times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. And then... KA-BOOOOM!!! Another Big Bang and another universe forms and hurtles outward, eventually leading to new iterations of the Sun, the Earth, and you?...