Death of the Universe

There's that old saying - some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. When speaking about the universe, there are two trains of thought - some say it will end in a big crunch (heat); others say it will expand forever, becoming very cold.

There was an article on The End of the Universe in Time Magazine years back (June 25, 2001) which tackled this subject and remains a memorable piece to me. On the graph which came with this article, it showed that the almost 14 billion years of the universe's existence since the Big Bang is a tiny amount of time when discussed in the context of the projected overall time of a constantly-expanding universe. The graph below (a time line plotted on a logarithmic scale)  shows what happens trillions times trillions times trillions of years in the future.