The Last Sonnet of All
by cricketjeff on June 12, 2018. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
When countless billion years have passed away
And stars and galaxies have slowly died;
When every lonely planet’s had its day
And there are no more questions to decide.
Neutrinos will still whiz without a care
Dark matter will still orbit quite unseen
There’ll be no final nebulae to flare
And nothing will reveal where they have been
Long after life has given up the ghost,
With no-one left to mourn departed friends.
The greatest site this universe could boast
Will bring about the greatest of all ends.
When there’s no other matter to erode,
Then one by one the black holes will explode.
Author notes
Black holes are not quite black. As Stephen Hawking discovered they evaporate.
The smaller they are the faster this happens. As a result when all other
matter, dark matter and anything else has been eaten the black holes will start
to shrink. It will take trillions of years but eventually each black hole will
fall below a critical mass and what remains will boil away in a massive
explosion of gamma rays. Something like the mass of the Moon being converted to
energy in a billionth of a second should be quite a firework display!
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