Big Crunch

The Big Crunch is in cosmology - in addition to the Big Rip and the eternal expansion - a hypothetical temporal end of the universe. In this case, the universe under the action of gravitational force collapses more and more until it finally in a kind of reverse Big Bang, the "Big Crunch ", ends and thus completely disappears.

State of research

Which of the three as a result predicted by the models previously existing possibilities ever occurs, depends on the amount or density of dark matter, which is located in the universe. This estimate in turn depends on the mass of the not yet directly observed the Higgs boson - the critical value is about 11 GeV. However, the currently available data suggests a perpetual expansion of the universe because our universe has exactly the critical density. However, more accurate measurements are needed to rule out a collapse after the Big Crunch theory.

Assuming an equal Stay out of the dark energy, then the universe would expand forever though, but this expansion would take place progressively slower. However Supernovaeauswertungen show of 2008 that the responsible for the expansion of the universe made ​​dark energy could also have decreased in the last two billion years.

Hypothetical sequence

Assuming however, that sufficient amounts of matter is present and reduces the dark energy, so in a few trillion years, the effect of gravity would be stronger than that of dark energy. From this point, the expansion of the universe would cease completely and turn into an accelerating contraction. This also its temperature would continue to increase. 100,000 years ago a hypothetical Big Crunch ( collapse) of the universe, the background radiation would be hotter than the surface of most stars, so they would boil away from the outside.

Minutes before the Big Crunch radiation beyond the nuclei before they are sucked up by giant black holes. A few seconds before the Big Crunch supermassive black holes would merge. Exists only a single " Mega Black Hole ", which includes all matter and at the last moment of the Big Crunch, the universe, including himself, swallowed the end.

It is conceivable that such a big crunch at once to a new Big Bang ( Big Bang ) would be, which would be associated with the emergence of a new universe. A fundamentally different model was derived from the oscillating universe and leads to the Big Bounce.