A universe death clock, built in Minecraft

Some interpretations of cosmology and the laws of thermodynamics imply that eventually, the universe will freeze and die. If galaxies keep racing away from each other, stars keep burning up their nuclear fuel, and entropy keeps increasing, then eventually all matter, including black holes, will decay and the universe will asymptotically approach a temperature of absolute zero.

Some guy cooked up a mechanism in the video game Minecraft that will take a bit over 1 googol years to complete, which is about the time that it will take for all the black holes to evaporate via Hawking radiation. In case you aren't feeling nihilistic enough this morning, it's pretty great:

Note, however, that this isn't the only possibility for the ultimate fate of the universe. Far-future thinking like this can get extremely weird.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up