A Trillion Years of Social Distancing

I live on an iceberg.

A Trillion Years of Social Distancing

Our Universe doesn't have a problem with social distancing.

"Why?" you ask, or maybe you don't. Maybe you don't care, but I'm gonna tell you anyway.

Our Universe is expanding at a tremendously rapid rate. About a trillion or so miles per hour.

Okay...I could be wrong about those figures.

I have no scientific evidence to back that up. A trillion miles per hour is pretty fast.

But Universal expansion is a good thing...sorta.

It means we can't spread the corona virus to Ursa Major, or is that Minor. I always get the two confused.

It's a wonderful thing, no matter how you look at it.

But on the downside, Universal expansion can get a little chilly.

Think of it like this; place a regular plastic bottle of water in the freezer.

Notice what happens. In a couple of hours the water inside that bottle freezes, and the plastic is stretch as far as it can stretch.

What you have is good ole ice.

That's because the cold causes the molecules in that water bottle to slow down, contract a little, then expand. It's a weird process and, as far as I know, no other substance reacts the same as water.

Before, when all those little water molecules were nice and close, they kept each another nice, cozy, and warm. That's because they're always vibrating and moving. The result of all that moving and vibrating is friction, and friction causes heat.

The result; liquid water.

Rub your hands together and see what happens.

But lets get back to the expansion thingy.

Before, when the galaxies were nice and close, space might have been a little warmer than now.

I can't say for sure, I wasn't there.

Galaxies, by nature, produce their own heat due to movement of galactic object, solar systems, and their heat producing suns, along with other stuff.

Heat transference from these galaxies travel to other galaxies, which are, in return, producing their own heat.

Together, the galaxies are keeping each other toasty, but, as they expand away from one another, the heat transference must travel further distances causing a loss of some of that wonderful heat stuff.

Eventually, as the distance between galaxies grows greater and greater, heat transference will be barely noticeable.

What does all this mean? It means things could get a bit chilly out there.

So what's causing all this cosmic expansion?

It all has something to do with dark matter and dark energy.

It's confusing and I'm not sure I understand it.

Take two horseshoe magnets.

Hold them together with their magnetic poles; positive to negative, negative to positive.

Notice what happens, they attract one another, pulling one another together.

Astrophysicist might call this dark matter.

Now reverse the poles; positive to positive, and negative to negative.

What happens?

The poles reject each other and push one another away.

Astrophysicist might call this dark energy.

Think of it as good versus evil kind of thing, and right now it looks like the evil is winning.

Sound familiar? Hmm.

It is pretty complicated stuff, and I don't understand any of it.

Heck, folks, I made up half of this stuff, but I'm pretty sure there must be something to it...shouldn't there be?

Worried about global warming...why?.

In a trillion years or so you'll be wishing for a little warming.

There we go with that trillion thing again.

I like the sound of the word trillion, it has a certain ring to it, trillions of them in fact..

The point is, we're not going to win this battle one way or the other.

The Universe is going to do what the Universe is going to do.

See ya in a trillion years.