and i feel fine...

how do you think the world will end?

i know there are all kinds of schools of thought on this one, most of them amazingly summarized here. (very entertaining and informative reading if you get a chance.)

but barring any mass plague, meteor impact, ice age, or disaster like that, assuming that we somehow escape the odds and the planet manages to last to the end of the universe, assuming we (or some form of we) are still here, what do you think will happen at the very end?

the universe, everything, is continually expanding, slowing, cooling. drifting. anything we can observe is completely ephemeral, in the long haul, as what we are observing eludes us and outdistances us like a ghost. the prevailing theories seem to suggest that one day, the whole thing will either be thrown into reverse (when the universe can expand no longer, the big crunch), or that quite the opposite, a Phantom Energy pulling at the outer reaches of the universe will increase in force, until galaxies, stars, planets, and even atoms themselves are torn apart in mass destruction. And then, there are those who say that neither of those things will happen, that the universe will continue to quietly expand forever, and earth will continue to exist, barring some kind of close encounter with a meteor or a black hole.

there are theories that suggest that all possible outcomes may happen, may have happened, in several times, in parallel dimensions. where every possible choice we could have made is being made. where the world is ending, has ended, is just beginning.

in these dimensions, these other times, these phantom lives, if they exist, the universe still continues to expand in its own time, with all its components drifting farther and farther apart. a yearning, rootless state, we are constant travellers all, satellites without orbit, forever trying to bring order to a world that slips through our grasp as quickly as we can attempt to comprehend it.

u/v