WHEN physicists first suggested that our universe could end in a big rip - a violent death in which all matter would be torn apart - they struggled to explain one thing: how could anything shred black holes? Now it seems that the energy driving the big rip would dissolve black holes like aspirins in a glass of water.
Whether the big rip happens or not depends on the nature of the dark energy that is believed to be pulling the universe apart. One form this energy could take is something called phantom energy, whose density increases continuously and which will eventually accelerate the expansion of the universe so drastically that everything will be destroyed.
"Phantom energy will pull the galaxy apart, and then the solar system, the sun and all the planets, until all that you are left with are quarks and electrons," says Vyachadav Dokuchaev at the Institute ...
18:00 23 July 2008
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