La muerte térmica (también muerte entrópica) es uno de los posibles estados finales del universo, en el que no hay energía libre para crear y mantener la vida y otros procesos. En términos físicos, el universo habrá alcanzado la máxima entropía.

Leer el artículo completo en Wikipedia · CC-BY-SA

The heat death of the universe is a possible 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 processes that increase entropy (including computation and life). Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other processes may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium (maximum entropy). If the topology of the universe is open or flat, or if dark energy is a positive cosmological constant (both of which are supported by current data), the universe will continue expanding forever and a heat death is expected to occur, with the universe cooling to approach equilibrium at a very low temperature after a very long time period. The hypothesis of heat death stems from the ideas of William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, who in the 1850s took the theory of heat as mechanical energy loss in nature (as embodied in the first two laws of thermodynamics) and extrapolated it to larger processes on a universal scale.

Leer el artículo completo en Wikipedia · CC-BY-SA