The heat death of the universe is a suggested ultimate fate of the universe, in which the universe has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and therefore can no longer sustain motion or life. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other process may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches the maxim...
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The heat death of the universe is a suggested ultimate fate of the universe, in which the universe has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and therefore can no longer sustain motion or life. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other process may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches the maximum entropy. The hypothesis of heat death stems from the 1850s ideas of William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, who extrapolated the views of the theory of heat as mechanical energy loss in nature as embodied in the first two laws of thermodynamics to processes in the universe.
The idea of heat death stems from the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy tends to increase in an isolated system. If the universe lasts for a sufficient time, it will asymptotically approach a state where all energy is evenly distributed. In other words,...
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