> We knew that before.

There was an amazing paper on this published on HN a year or three ago that explained at certain discrete points in the future, entire percentages of the known universe will be beyond our reach. It was profoundly beautiful and sad at the same time.

I'll try to dig it up.

Edit: found the post (three years ago) and some of the quotes and figures I pulled from it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26734913

Edit 2: another commenter had made a note about the Big Rip. I was writing a response, but they unfortunately deleted their (good) comment. I'll include my response below:

> wait until you find out about the Big Rip (paraphrasing)

That one's even wilder. To think every atom of every place and loved one you ever touched would vanish infinitely far away. Every atom and then subatomic particle of your own once corporal body, regardless of its final resting place, torn and scattered.

Last Contact is a great short story if you're in the mood [1].

Then there's vacuum collapse and all the other theories.

I wonder what humans or human descendents 500 years from now will figure out about the universe's ultimate fate.

[1] https://zestfullyblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/last-contact-by-s...