The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures about the Ultimate Fate of the Universe

This book confirms the author's gift for explaining advanced scientific ideas in simple language, and for exploring their philosophical implications. The end of the universe is a most suitable subject for this kind of discussion, in that the evidence for it can only be of an indirect and hypothetical nature, and thus open to all sorts of differing interpretations. Davies sets out the arguments for the three possible outcomes: the universe will go on expanding indefinitely; it will slow down and eventually turn round and collapse into a zero space, the reverse of the Big Bang; it will reach a steady state neither expanding nor contracting but staying the same for ever. As a religious man, Davies is equally curious about the implications for humans: is there any sense in which humanity can expect to survive for eternity?