Light speed is no limit in the quantum world – so why can't we exploit that freedom? Perhaps because we're living in the dead husk of a richer cosmos
AS ENDINGS go, it is a bit of an anticlimax. As the universe enters old age, its stars burn out. Slowly, the temperature across the cosmos reaches equilibrium. With no heat flowing, thermodynamic laws make it impossible to transfer energy in a useful way. Nothing interesting or productive happens any more. Everything creaks to a standstill.
This "heat death" of the universe was a favoured topic of the gloomier sort of 19th-century physicist. These days, we console ourselves that, if it is to happen, it will not be for many, many multiples of the current age of the universe.
Antony Valentini, a theoretical physicist at Clemson University in South Carolina, is less ...
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