Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Trending News
How will the Debt of Gravitational Energy manifest itself at the end of the Universe when it is time to repay?
Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Arthur C. Clarke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQQAv5svkk
F/F Time index:07:30 Refers
6 Answers
- RaymondLv 78 years agoFavorite Answer
IF (a mighty big if) the rate of expansion continues to increase, we will reach a point where even atoms will not be able to remain together (because space expands everywhere, including inside atoms). The binding energy will be carried away as a photon (or some boson, maybe) while mass will slowly disappear as hadrons will be split into quarks and the quarks themselves into... (we do not know what, yet).
There will come a point, in a few gazillion years, where expansion will be so fast that each individual photon of energy remaining will be alone in its own "light cone", unable to perceive anything from even the nearest photon. At that point, there will be no gravitational gradient anywhere within any of the "Observable universes" (each one containing one single photon). As expansion continues, the wavelength of each lone photon continues to increase (expansion of space takes place everywhere, including "inside" the photon) so that its energy content decreases.
Will the energy content of the photon be asymptotic to zero? If so, its effect (if it has any) on the Higgs field will also be asymptotic to zero, thereby bringing the gravitational energy content (the negative value in the equation) also asymptotically close to zero.
This is the best guess (until the next guess) as to what happens to the "debt".
- 8 years ago
I wonder if there is a debt. We do WORK to increase gravitational potential energy, or give up kinetic energy to increase the potential energy. Is that a debt situation? I really don't know, but don't think so. No, I'm not an expert like Sagan, Clarke and Hawking, but sometimes we find ourselves practicing outside our area of competence. Would you want a physician to maintain your airliner, or an aircraft mechanic to do brain surgery? No... but we have theologians who tell us about science and scientists who tell us about theology, which may be similar.
- Anonymous8 years ago
Gravity is not a force, so the only energy is frictional when infalling bodies are braked to a common momentum.
That is also why Dark Energy is no sort of energy...
Do not let loose talk distract you.
- How do you think about the answers? You can sign in to vote the answer.
- PaulLv 78 years ago
What debt? Gravity didn't sign any contract and has absolutely no intention of paying anything back. Gravity knows its rights.