How the Universe Will Come to Its Explosive End: Trillions of Years Covered in 29 Timelapse Minutes

We all know that Earth won’t last for­ev­er. But noth­ing else in the uni­verse will either, and you can wit­ness the series of explo­sions, evap­o­ra­tions, expi­ra­tions, and oth­er kinds of cos­mic deaths that will con­sti­tute the next one tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion years in the video above. Con­ve­nient­ly, it does­n’t take quite that long to watch: the time-lapse gets from just a few years into the future to the time at which the last black hole van­ish­es in under half an hour, dou­bling its own speed every five sec­onds. Not only does Earth go first, destroyed by the dying sun, but it hap­pens at the 3:20 mark.

Most of us have no idea what might pos­si­bly play out in the uni­verse over the next 26 or so time-lapsed min­utes. But more astro­physics-inclined minds like Bri­an Cox, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sean Car­roll, Jan­na Levin, and Michio Kaku have put a great deal of thought into just that, and it is from their words that this video’s cre­ator John D. Boswell, known on Youtube as melodysheep, crafts its nar­ra­tion.

And what this for­mi­da­ble cast of sci­en­tists nar­rates resem­bles sequences from the biggest-bud­get sci­ence-fic­tion movies, which shows how far visu­al effects have come since A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ the­mat­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar 1991 doc­u­men­tary on the late Stephen Hawk­ing — a fig­ure who has also appeared in Boswell’s pre­vi­ous work.

How­ev­er it’s told, the nar­ra­tive remains the same: “the death of the sun, the end of all stars, pro­ton decay, zom­bie galax­ies, pos­si­ble future civ­i­liza­tions, explod­ing black holes, the effects of dark ener­gy, alter­nate uni­vers­es, the final fate of the cos­mos,” as Boswell puts it. “This is a pic­ture of the future as paint­ed by mod­ern sci­ence,” and one that “gives a pro­found per­spec­tive — that we are liv­ing inside the hot flash of the Big Bang, the per­fect moment to soak in the sights and sounds of a uni­verse in its glo­ry days, before it all fades away.” Thanks to the work of gen­er­a­tion upon gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists, as well as the work of cre­ators like Boswell who inter­pret their find­ings in far-reach­ing ways (this time-lapse of the future has already racked up near­ly 12.5 mil­lion views), we know how the sto­ry of the uni­verse ends. Now what will we do with the chap­ters grant­ed to us?

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Super­mas­sive Black Hole Shreds a Star, and You Get to Watch

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Very End of Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.