What happens as the Universe nears absolute zero?

I am going to speculate here and say that advanced aliens that have mastered the technology of utilising zero point energy will use that energy to keep the universe going, by flying around and creating new stars and planets, or by intentionally compressing the universe back into a singularity to cause another big bang.
Hell, these aliens might even be you damn dirty apes.

I have no idea, a little too deep in the physics realm for me. I will say I am really hoping a renegade black hole just swallows us up..then again, I think I’d prefer a few days notice like a meteor….just enough time to live it up before we all go poof!

I once knew a guy who got chilled to absolute zero. He’s 0k now…

I’ll hide in my refrigerator!

@ETpro, you just gotta get outside and have more fun. ;-)

The “background temperature” of the universe is already only about 2.8 K. Is that not cold enough for you?
Of course not. As cold as 2.8 K is, it’s a heck of a lot warmer than the 0.8 K achieved by the experiment. Fun stuff!

Problem is, as global entropy increases, things get warmer, not colder. The background temperature is now as cold as it is because a lot of the Universe’s energy is concentrated in small areas (we call them galaxies :^). As entropy increases, this energy (mass-energy, really) gets dispersed more evenly throughout space. Thus the “temperature floor” of the Universe will be higher than it is now (probably by less than a tenth of a degree K, as there’s a whole lot of nothing Out There.)

Also, in order for interesting quantum effects to occur in matter, there has to be matter- that is, aggregations of particles in a (relatively) small space. With particles dispersed more-or-less evenly throughout space (not perfectly evenly, but with a stochastic distribution) there’s no “matter” as we know it, but just a thin, thin fog of particles.

However, quantum fluctuations also occur in vacuum, so fun stuff can still happen.

Also, I’d like to remind everyone that entropy always increases in closed systems. The Universe may or may not be closed in this way. We just don’t know yet. For example, if the Universe is an infinite heatsink, then it can just disperse heat forever and never warm up. Local energy gradients would never break down (unless and until all energy sources in the ‘verse run down.) There are many ways in which the Universe could prove to be non-closed wrt energy.

Weird physics stuff.

I know I said this last time but it made me laugh. Sorry

On that great day, we will finally learn how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop… Not a second sooner.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies You mean… after the Big Crunch?

Let me just say that you know a lot of really big words and I find them fascinating. I suppose a short answer to your question is… We’d all die? There’s nothing to worry about though, The Doctor will figure it out brilliantly!

@ragingloli If the more intelligent apes among us are smart enough to keep the ones still mired in greed, tribalism and religious bigotry from getting us all killed, we probably can figure it out. We’ve only been coming close to figuring of any kind for about 500,000 years now, and we have quite a few trillion more to find the answer. But given the relative youth of our planet, it’s a safe bet life developed in many places (like billions of them) way before it got going here, and some of those societies are almost certainly billions of years ahead of us in technological advancement.

The inside of a black hole must be incredibly bright, as all the light that ever fell in there or was generated from gravimetric processes within is still there. None of it can escape.

@uberbatman That’s too cool. :-)

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room I’m thinking refrigerators offer scant protection against heat death. :-)

@rexacoracofalipitorius Aside from all the fun fluff above, which I really do enjoy, there’s the asnwer I was looking for. Entropy is not heat and energy leaking off into non-existence. It is simply the constant averaging of it, till there are no discernable concentrations.

I have some reading to do on your later thought.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room Making people laugh adds to my total energy. In a Universe under attack but the Universal Law of Entropy, adding energy is a very good thing. I is enough. :-)

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies & @rexacoracofalipitorius Ha! How true! :-)

@DWW25921 Oh don’t worry, my fine friend, we’ll all be dead trillions of years before this happens. I do hope that makes you feel better about it all. :-)

Before reaching near absolute zero, the Universe might be teared apart by the Big Rip.

*torn

@ETpro You really think I’m fine? It’s a little awkward but we could work something out…

@mattbrowne It’s looking increasingly like that’s where we are heading.

@DWW25921 Let’s take it up a trillion years from not when we have more insight into what comes next.

@ragingloli – Yes, might be torn apart. Sorry about my sloppiness.

It occurred to me yesterday that since what seems to be empty space (or in casual terms, “nothing”) is in reality a boiling cauldron of quantum energy densities with particles such as quarks poofing in and out of existence all the time, and that this empty space currently comprises more mass and energy than all the matter of the Universe combined; the expanding Universe must be getting heavier and more energetic. Since the universe is expanding at an exponentially increasing rate, then energy and mass is in constant increase and there may be a critical limit as it approaches infinity that indeed triggers a Big Bang not due to the gravitational collapse of mass, but to a Big Rip. Fun stuff to contemplate.

BTW, the above was adapted from the details I has written for today’s question. I feel at liberty to plagiarize so long as it is my writing I am copying.