Religious texts have extensively tackled the end of everything, taking a more prophetic, almost cinematic approach to describing the end times. Scientists have also come up with at least three very different scenarios; predictably, none of them look particularly appealing, and all of them are on the table until physicists come up with a theory of everything.
First on the list is the Big Crunch: According to its supporters, the continuous expansion of the universe means that eventually, there would be enough matter within it to not only stop its growth but also pull itself back in. To crudely illustrate this, imagine stretching a rubber band to its limits, and then letting go of both ends to allow it to snap back into its original shape.
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The second theory, the Big Freeze, imagines what the universe will be like over the course of trillions of years. Initially, the distance between galaxies will become so great that they will be impossible to see, and no more stars will form. By the time the last supermassive black holes evaporate, all of the energy across the cosmos will be uniformly distributed, plunging the entire universe into cold darkness. Finally, proponents of the Big Rip believe that the universe will keep expanding until dark energy surpasses gravity’s power. As a result, everything — stars, planets, even black holes — will be torn apart. By the end of this universe-wide destruction, all that will remain are “single, disconnected particles.”
