Big Rip

The Big Rip is a cosmological model concerning the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the matter of the universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, and even spacetime itself, is progressively torn apart by the expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future, until distances between particles will become infinite. The possibility of sudden rip singularity occurs only if phantom energy exists.

An estimate is that the Big Rip would happen approximately 22 billion years from the present, which is the earliest possible time the universe could end.


 * 200 million years before the Big Rip, clusters like the Local Group would first disintegrate and galaxies would be separated from each other.
 * 60 million years before the Big Rip, galaxies would begin to disintegrate as gravity becomes too weak to hold them together.
 * 3 months before the Big Rip, planets would fly off into the rapidly expanding universe.
 * 30 minutes before the Big Rip, stars and planets would be torn apart.
 * 10^-19 seconds before the Big Rip, atoms would be destroyed.
 * At the time the Big Rip occurs, even cosmic string and spacetime itself would be ripped apart and the universe could regress into infinity or an eternal realm.