The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity

Product Description

As the twentieth century closed, Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin captured the attention of the world by identifying the five ages of time. In
The Five Ages of the Universe, Adams and Laughlin demonstrate that we can now understand the complete life story of the cosmos from beginning to end.
Adams and Laughlin have been hailed as the creators of the definitive long-term projection of the evolution of the universe. Their achievement is awesome in its scale and profound in its scientific breadth. But
The Five Ages of the Universe is more than a handbook of the physical processes that guided our past and will shape our future; it is a truly epic story.
Without leaving earth, here is a fantastic voyage to the physics of eternity. It is the only biography of the universe you will ever need.

Review

Neil de Grasse TYSON
Scientific American Continuously engages the imagination….An entertainingly scary picture of our distant future.

Susan Okie
The Washington Post Marvelous descriptive writing and mind-expanding explanations….What makes it even better than good science fiction is that it’s true.

About the Author

Fred Adams received his Ph.D. from the University of California. Recipient of the Helen B. Warner Prize, Adams is a professor of physics at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

A guide to the big picture, fundamental physical law, windows of space and time, the great war, and extremely big numbers.

January 1, 7,000,000,000 A.D., Ann Arbor:

The New Year rings in little cause for celebration. Nobody is present even to mark its passing. Earth’s surface is a torrid unrecognizable wasteland. The Sun has swelled to enormous size, so large that its seething red disk nearly fills the daytime sky. The planet Mercury and then Venus have already been obliterated, and now the tenuous outer reaches of the solar atmosphere are threatening to overtake the receding orbit of Earth.

Earth’s life-producing oceans have long since evaporated, first into a crushing, sterilizing blanket of water vapor, and then into space entirely. Only a barren rocky surface is left behind. One can still trace the faint remains of ancient shorelines, ocean basins, and the low eroded remnants of the continents. By noon, the temperature reaches nearly 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the rocky surface begins to melt. Already, the equator is partly ringed by a broad glowing patchwork of lava, which cools to form a thin gray crust as the distended Sun eases beneath the horizon each night.

A patch of the surface which once cradled the forested moraines of southeastern Michigan has seen a great deal of change over the intervening billions of years. What was once the North American continent has long since been torn apart by the geologic rift which opened from Ontario to Louisiana and separated the old stable continental platform to produce a new expanse of sea floor. The sedimented, glaciated remains of Ann Arbor were covered by lava which arrived from nearby rift volcanos by coursing through old river channels. Later, the hardened lava and the underlying sedimentary rock were thrust up into a mountain chain as a raft of islands the size of New Zealand collided with the nearby shoreline.

Now, the face of an ancient cliff is weakened by the Sun’s intense heat. A slab of rock cleaves off, causing a landslide and exposing a perfectly preserved fossil of an oak leaf. This trace of a distant verdant world slowly melts away in the unyielding heat. Soon the entire Earth will be glowing a sullen, molten red.

This scenario of destruction is not the lurid opening sequence from a grade B movie, but rather a more or less realistic description of the fate of our planet as the Sun ends its life as a conventional star and expands to become a red giant. The catastrophic melting of Earth’s surface is just one out of a myriad of events that are waiting to oc