dark era

Blip by blip, the Hawking radiation will fill the universe with a very faint background of photons and neutrinos, as well as electron-positron pairs. Although it is disturbing to think that the cosmos will remain in this state for eternity, for ever, this does seem to be the most plausible outcome.

Some have speculated that life, even intelligent life, could exist in such circumstances; like most phenomena in these eras this would rely on the extreme lengths of time available.

Another hopeful suggestion is that the cosmos could "tunnel" into another low-level state with different fundamental physics, essentially creating a new universe. This is given some credibility by recent estimates of the cosmological constant. It was found that as much as 70% of the total energy in the universe may be still stored in the fabric of the vacuum; this is an artefact from the intense vacuum energy of the inflationary period.

- Fx