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The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or Big Freeze) [1] [2] is a hypothesis on the ultimate fate of the universe, which suggests the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and will therefore be unable to sustain processes that increase entropy.
Over infinite time, there could be a spontaneous entropy decrease by the Poincaré recurrence theorem, thermal fluctuations, [20] [21] and the fluctuation theorem. [22] [23] The heat death scenario is compatible with any of the three spatial models, but it requires that the universe reaches an eventual temperature minimum. [24]
Antimatter may exist in relatively large amounts in far-away galaxies due to cosmic inflation in the primordial time of the universe. Antimatter galaxies, if they exist, are expected to have the same chemistry and absorption and emission spectra as normal-matter galaxies, and their astronomical objects would be observationally identical, making ...
The cycles can also go infinitely into the past and the future, and an attractor allows for a complete history of the universe. [19] This fixes the problem of the earlier model of the universe going into heat death from entropy buildup. The new model avoids this with a net expansion after every cycle, stopping entropy buildup.
All the particles that make up the matter around us, such electrons and protons, have antimatter versions which are nearly identical, but with mirrored properties such as the opposite electric charge.
Far in the future, past the death of the Sun and the annihilation of the Earth, everything will simply evaporate.
The universe should thus achieve, or asymptotically tend to, thermodynamic equilibrium, which corresponds to a state where no thermodynamic free energy is left, and therefore no further work is possible: this is the heat death of the universe, as predicted by Lord Kelvin in 1852.
The universe will become extremely dark after the last stars burn out. Even so, there can still be occasional light in the universe. One of the ways the universe can be illuminated is if two carbon–oxygen white dwarfs with a combined mass of more than the Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 solar masses happen