Big Bang Soon?

Most recent answer: 11/14/2011

Q:
Can there be another big bang in our life? can there be something that causes everything to go extinct?
- Kerry (age 9)
NJ
A:
So far as we understand things, there can't be another Big Bang like the one that happened 13.7 billion years ago anytime soon. It is possible, at least according to some theorists, that the fabric of space could suddenly find a way to settle down to lower energy, which would basically destroy everything that's around now.  However, there's no reason to expect anything like that to happen any time soon, if ever.

It's hard to think of how anything that could happen in say the next 100 years would make everything here go extinct.  Even a full-scale nuclear war or collision with a huge asteroid would leave many forms of life. Past collisions killed off many types of plants and animals but didn't come close to driving all of life extinct.

Mike W.

(published on 11/14/2011)