Wait, I thought the heat death of the universe ment it all got so hot nothing survived... Does it literally mean heat will die and it's going to be cold?

[–] knightly@pawb.social 17 points 6 months ago

Basically, yeah.

Eventually the distant galaxies will fade into memory as their light is lost to the expansion of the universe, then the stars will all burn out, the radioactive materials will all decay, and black holes evaporate in the final flashes of light to illuminate the universe.

With no sources of heat left, what remains gets down near absolute zero as residual energy is lost as infrared radiation. The heat death of the universe is the long, cold dark at the end of everything.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Yes. To my understanding, it's when all the things in space drift so far apart due to the expansion of the universe that all the atoms and energy are spread so thin that there is nothing left but empty, cold, void.

The antithesis to Heat Death is "The Big Crunch" where the expansion of the universe stops and then starts to go back into itself until there is only a singularity like the one that the big bang originated from.

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run 5 points 6 months ago

I liked when they called it the Great Gnab, as it's the reverse of bang.

[–] Hawke@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago

It means that everything will be in equilibrium, and there will be no such thing as hot or cold. No energy to move from place to place to create the idea of hot or cold.

So I guess that means that it’d be cold but the concept would be meaningless.

[–] Jimbo@yiffit.net 10 points 6 months ago

Yeah put simply, heat is energy. When the energy from all the stars is spent and eventually no sources remain...

It's going to be very cold

[–] femtech@midwest.social 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's a theory that all the suns go out and there is no heat left.

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run 4 points 6 months ago

Energy is neither created, nor destroyed, only changes form. With the 'heat death' of the universe, all the heat spreads out evenly, so it's pretty danged cold by our standards of such things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe

"If the curvature of the universe is hyperbolic or flat, or if dark energy is a positive cosmological constant, the universe will continue expanding forever, and a heat death is expected to occur,[3] with the universe cooling to approach equilibrium at a very low temperature after a long time period. "