The End of Everything

Everything ends. We know that; we might even know that our world—this little blue-green planet—will end. But here’s the thing; the Universe had a beginning, and it will have an end, too. That’s just a fascinating and crazy thought; everything… ALL THE THINGS… started off for reasons we can scarcely understand, and will eventually close up shop. It sounds too big to contemplate, but guess what: today, right now, we can still “see” the dawn of the cosmos. It filters into our reality as a background noise, the ripple that flung out from creation itself, and science can measure it!… show more.

Who doesn’t love to think about how the universe—so big, so old already—will ultimately end? Reading the book encouraged me to look at the universe as its own thing, of which I and all of Earth, were tiny parts, and tiny parts that would end long before the cosmos itself would. Katie Mack explores what five such conclusions might look like, getting everybody a little more comfortable with the idea that every story has an ending, even if we don’t know what this one looks like.

If you are interested in how the world works, you are probably interested in where it’s going. None of the end-of-the-universe scenarios described in this novel are guaranteed to happen, but they are all real possibilities — even if they’re so remote from our own lives as to be, essentially, future mythology.

This book is important to me on a surprisingly emotional level. Knowing that existence will one day end is a tremendous comfort to me. If that sounds pessimistic, remember that immortality and eternity both allow for the possibility of limitless suffering! In an infinite universe, there are many… show more.

I recommended a book about the beginning of the universe, so I guess it’s beautifully symmetrical that I recommend one about its end. My PhD thesis was on dark matter that governs the fate of the universe, so I love how Dr. Mack makes this darkly disturbing (or is it disturbingly illuminating) topic so fun. This is the subject guaranteed to leave my students stunned, upset, and uncomfortable when the semester ended. It’s also research by a new generation of astrophysicists carrying the mantle of the science popularizers that first made me want to be a scientist. Speaking of whom…

Do you ever wonder how everything – the Earth, the stars, the farthest galaxies – is going to end? Katie Mack, an astrophysicist at North Carolina State University, has devoted much of her career to exploring this topic in detail, and in The End of Everything she outlines a half-dozen kinds of fate that may befall our cosmos. But don’t worry, it’s not a depressing book – in fact, it’s just the opposite. Mack’s humor and playful style help to take the sting out of the universe’s temporary status. Plus, we’ve still got billions and billions of years to go… show more.