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burned. The reason is that nearly everything in normal
life depends on some kind of temperature difference,
either directly or indirectly. For example, the local power
plant sends electricity so that a computer works. The plant
probably powers the turbine to produce electricity by
heating water. And your body runs on food, which, without
the huge temperature difference between the sun and the
rest of our solar system, wouldn’t exist. However, once heat
death affects the universe, there will be no heat difference
in anything anywhere. Life, and other interesting things, will
never be sustainable again.
A second possibility for the end of the universe is that
the universe is expanding. There is a lot of “stuff” in the
universe, for example, matter and light, but we don’t really
know how much stuff there is. This theory says that the
expansion of the universe will decelerate and eventually
stop if there’s too much stuff. It will then begin to contract. It
will keep shrinking, getting hotter and denser, and end in an
incredibly compressed inferno, known as the Big Crunch.
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