Episode 22 --- The Far Future Of Our Universe (Turtles All the Way Down)

What happens when all the stars in our cosmos’ galaxies burn out; with little or no hydrogen gas left to fuel star formation; and everything pretty much turns to toast?  It will presage an age of black holes where extremely low temperatures and fundamental particle decay will alleviate life as we know it.  This universal endgame in an almost infinite far future may actually be a Dark Age where little or nothing can happen.  And if it does, only on the longest timescales.  Yale University astrophysicist Gregory Laughlin and I discuss these and other issues in this cosmological “turtles all the way down” episode of the podcast.