Talk:Heat death of the universe

Change of Phrasing in Beginning of Article

My recent edit is NOT intended to refute the Heat Death Scenario. However, it seems that there are many theories about how the universe evolves with time, some of which posit the idea of Cyclic universes and decaying cosmological constants. We might have theoretical reasons for believing the heat death scenario is true - and, if so, we should demonstrate those reasons in the article. However, it seems as if the jury might very well still be out about whether the universe ends in a heat death. If there is room for reasonable doubt about whether this scenario is true, then reasons for doubt are best indicated (as in the Controversies section).

There is a paper entitled "Current observations with a decaying cosmological constant allow for chaotic cyclic cosmology" and another paper entitled "Decay of the cosmological constant by Hawking radiation as quantum tunneling" which may be worth further reading.

Stating that the universe ends in Heat Death is not necessarily a proven fact (though I can certainly understand why many people would jump on the 'Heat Death' bandwagon - due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics). We could argue on the 'balance of probabilities' but this might lead to erroneous conclusions.

ASavantDude (talk) 18:07, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Extremely slow mass evaporation leading to heat death??

A few years ago, I saw a documentary on the BBC, the details of which I can't remember. If I remember correctly, the documentary said that all of the mass in the universe is undergoing an extremely slow evaporation process which will eventually lead to a universe in which no particle exists other than photons. This will be the heat death of the universe.

Does anyone know exactly how this extremely slow evaporation process works? What actually happens to any particle of mass during this process?95.172.233.137 (talk) 12:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

This is not the place to ask. Here we discuss the article, not the subject—see wp:Talk page guidelines. Best place to go is wp:Reference desk/Science. Good luck. - DVdm (talk) 13:11, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Well anyway not everything is a liquid, so the term is definitely incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:648:8505:2CE0:E1BD:E283:6E14:D5B1 (talk) 00:57, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Statement about rate of cooling of the planet Juipter

Statement: "Jupiter, for instance, is still too hot for life to arise there for thousands of years, while the Moon is already too cold." Intuitively this seems wrong, as the writer says 'thousands of years'. This implies that in at least 99,999 years the planet Juipter will be at a good temperature for life. Given astronomical time scales I doubt this. The writer should probably have said, "Hundreds of thousands (of years)" or, more likely "millions", possibly billions. Or, if the writer is unsure, they should not mention a time scale. There is a formula given for the cooling of Juipter in the following paper. But accurate appraisal is beyond me. https://www.tcd.ie/Physics/people/Peter.Gallagher/lectures/PY4A03/pdfs/PY4A03_lecture10n11_ineriors.ppt.pdf

Brn wk48 (talk) 13:28, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree. It does seem quite strange that Jupiter would be [possibly] inhabited within the [given] time period MercenaryFeet (talk) 09:47, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Timeframe for heat death section does not answer the implied question of when heat death will occur

I.e. the specificity is zero. There is no number. When is heat death? Can you at least provide a distribution to extrapolate from? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:648:8505:2CE0:E1BD:E283:6E14:D5B1 (talk) 00:55, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Should there be more info here?

I think that there should be more info here such as examples, or, well, basically more info. What do you think? MercenaryFeet (talk) 09:44, 11 October 2020 (UTC)