Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity

Piling one layer of speculation upon another yet retaining a disciplined, scientific approach, astrophysicists Adams (University of Michigan) and Laughlin (UC-Berkeley) take readers on a cosmic adventure to a time in the unimaginably distant future. They view time not in linear years but in logarithmic cosmological decades. We live early in the 10th cosmological decade, approximately 10 billion (10 to the 10th power) years since the Big Bang. For the first six cosmological decades, the Primordial Era, the authors explain, an intensely hot universe expanded and cooled. Elementary particles formed, followed by atoms and molecules. The stage was set for the present Stelliferous Era of galaxies, stars and planets that will continue through the 14th cosmological decade. Our universe will then be 10,000 times its present age, and even its slowest-burning stars will have used up their nuclear fuel. Stellar remnants will dominate the next 25 cosmological decades, the Degenerate Era. Following that will be the Black Hole Era, more than 60 cosmological decades long. The final chapter will be the Dark Era, a steadily diminishing, infinitely long decline toward universal equilibrium. The authors speculate on the survival of intelligent life through the entire history. They also discuss the evolution of universes in Darwinian terms. Many readers will reach their saturation point for conjecture well before those final sections, but others, especially science fiction buffs, will savor every lengthening, darkening, diminishing epoch leading to the authors' concluding vision: the birth of new universes more than 100 cosmological decades after ours burst into existence. (June)