74111101– yes, my eldest insists on representing himself as the ASCII decimal code point values for his name– and I have been watching the History Channel’s The Universe. Below some of 74’s questions (typed verbatim from his notes) that he hopes to have answered after writing to some of the presenters in the series.

Questions

  • If the Universe keeps on expanding will it eventually rip apart the things that make up dark energy?

  • Is there a known limit to the repulsive effects of dark energy in the way that we know gravity does operate above or below certain distances?

  • Is dark enery strong enough to rip apart:

  • dark matter itself?, and

  • the atoms that make up stars and “regular matter”? How broken up will matter become? Can it go beyond fundamental particles?

  • If there is antimatter, is there antiDARKmatter?

  • Once the sun becomes a white dwarf, is it possible to combine all the gas in the planetary nebula and the outer planets to form another sun?

  • Is it possible to use the sun’s energy to start nuclear fusion and as the sun gets cooler to add more hydrogen to make it hotter and launch it into space?

  • If dark energy is driving the expansion of the Universe will it eventually destroy the particles that cause dark matter? Will this then cause a big crunch and possibly a new big bang?

Presenters

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