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Speculative cosmology day!

Theories like this are interesting on an entertainment level, but so was cold fusion. I'll take this one with a large grain of salt.

Here's a quote from a link:

Cosmologists have long wondered whether the Universe will eventually re-collapse and end with a Big Crunch, or expand forever, becoming increasingly cold and empty. Recent evidence for a flat Universe, possibly with a cosmological constant or some other sort of negative-pressure dark energy, has suggested that our fate is the latter. However, the data may actually be pointing toward an astonishingly different cosmic end game. Here, we explore the consequences that follow if the dark energy is phantom energy, in which the sum of the pressure and energy density is negative. The positive phantom-energy density becomes infinite in finite time, overcoming all other forms of matter, such that the gravitational repulsion rapidly brings our brief epoch of cosmic structure to a close. The phantom energy rips apart the Milky Way, solar system, Earth, and ultimately the molecules, atoms, nuclei, and nucleons of which we are composed, before the death of the Universe in a ``Big Rip''.

1 posted on 03/03/2003 12:08:12 AM PST by petuniasevan
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To: MozartLover; Joan912; NovemberCharlie; snowfox; Dawgsquat; viligantcitizen; theDentist; ...

2 posted on 03/03/2003 12:09:26 AM PST by petuniasevan (Wonders of the Universe)
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To: petuniasevan
A jigsaw universe! I love it.:)
4 posted on 03/03/2003 7:41:16 AM PST by MozartLover
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To: petuniasevan
thanks for the ping
6 posted on 03/03/2003 1:04:47 PM PST by firewalk
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