The universe doesn't end as such, but keeps fading away, entropy ever converging on zero or whatever background energy / quantum foam. — jorndoe

Should we not believe in God since nothing lasts?
Well, if nothing lasts then of what our purpose past?

Is a purpose really required, so constructive,
Or would that really be quite restrictive?

No realm could really be special or sent,
Its becoming being of some specific intent,
For all has arrived as a causeless non-precedent.

Is there anything wrong with the freedom to be,
Anywhere, any how, or any time during eternity?

Should we rail against the law of entropy—
The ‘heat death’ of thermodynamic energy,
The second of its final laws, you see,
Because it would destroy all of history?

There are so many ways for disorder to be
Than any one ordered state specifically.
Would even a heaven on Earth become a misery
If as it might, contain no more novelty?
Must there be an end to our revelry?

Can’t we at least hibernate eternally?
Won’t all matter too last eternally?

Will Shakespeare’s works live on, paternally?
Is this not a Wagnerian struggle for eternity?

Science Can Settle Whether a Last Day
Is Ever Going to Come this Way

Only a decade or so ago, with consternation,
We discovered the universe’s acceleration,
Its expansion even increasing, onto a thin disaster,
The galaxies getting further away ever faster—
Then one last snapshot taken, for all to remember.

The accelerating expansion of the universe’s rafters
Means that the universe will cool even ever faster;
So, any rare forms of the future’s life prolongers
Will have to keep themselves ever more cooler,
Think more slowly, and hibernate ever longer.

One day even the protons will fade away,
Leaving but dark matter, electrons, and positrons.

I like that thought though, at the end of the universe there's a to-do list that will never get done.

The whole, including time, cannot have an end, as I argued in this thread.

Part of the reason why I have not written more in the thread which I created is because I do see the 'end' of time as problematic. It would require stepping outside of the space-time level of existence, which would require going beyond physicality.

One significant aspect is the concept of time's arrow in this. There is the possibility of its reversability; this has been explored by some writers, including the novelist Martin Amis. However, the idea of the reversability of time remains a thought experiment, as does the idea of time ending.

Part of the reason why I have not written more in the thread which I created is because I do see the 'end' of time as problematic. — Jack Cummins

I explained why the spacetime cannot have an end in that thread as well, here.

Somehow, I missed your post, but it makes an important point about the unknown. What came before the 'big bang' or after any 'end' remains unknown. That is why it is hard to know for certain whether linearity of time is part of larger cycles or cycles as part of a linear plan. I am inclined to the picture of the cyclical but certainty of this may stretch beyond the limits of human epistemology.

this may stretch beyond the limits of human epistemology. — Jack Cummins

The Waves of the Ancient Swells
Of Time’s Eroding Swells
Swept Ever On…

As Time, now hoary with age,
Yet hurled forth its ashen change,
The charge ever san, pale and colorless,
That force born to summon decay, so endless,
‘Gainst Nature’s Universe, every day.

Time and time again, Time fed all upon,
In its bloodless, white, and waxen way,
But our everlasting rose would not fade,

Its luster even brightening by the day,
Ever unsuccumbing to the sickly, peakèd
State draining drawn Earth’s life away.
 Entropic seas yet denude the mountains,

Yet our enduring flower never-endingly
Has cast Deathly Time aside, as now,
Ceaselessly somehow thriving on
Toward that which is the near imperishable,

As beauty’s flame e’er inextinguishable,
Forever celebrated as immutable,
Gaining a seemingly perpetual permanence
From the undying love of this glorious dance.

Yet, everything was moving apart, cooling off,
The big slowdown not really so very far off;
Ultimately, even the black holes of late
And the lightless planets would dissipate.

The primordial soup once so rich and hearty
Was now a thin gruel that couldn’t serve the party.

One day, every particle will be moving away
From every other particle, so much out of the way
That they won’t even be able to see one another;
Thus, for all intents motion will have ceased forever.

I like the way in which you personify or anthromorphise time, especially as all forms of existence are dependent upon it. Time may be a dimension, or an illusory phenomenon, because it is matter or nature which changes. Yet, without it, nothing in the material sense, could exist.

Of course, time could appear to have ceased to exist but may remain dormant. In that respect, it may be one, if not primary, archetype, of all forms of existence.

What came before the 'big bang' or after any 'end' remains unknown. — Jack Cummins

There is no time before time began, or after time ends, by definition. It's not that it's unknown, it's that there can be no such thing; these are limits to being such that 'before' and 'after' do not apply. There is nothing to know or not know.

Of course if you take a God's eye view - the view from eternity - then you can say "Before Abraham was, I am." That is, all times are present to God, and all places are here; the whole universe of spacetime is in His hand. But this is poetic talk that no one understands.

I don't think time is something which has properties. It is a situation of 'everything else', individually, in relation to all of those other 'else's (from each perspective).

Seems inapt for discussion other than as a relation between objects. I don't think, for instance, imagination engages time other than as a relation to the world going on outside the mind imagining whatever..

I like the way in which you personify or anthromorphise time, especially as all forms of existence are dependent upon it. — Jack Cummins

Our spurt of life followed by an infinite stretch
Of dark equilibrium was but the briefest sketch—
A warm and fuzzy stage, so interestingly active,
Whose time relatively was but infinitesimive.

Yet we were there in all our glory,
For whenever else could we have been?
In the future, uncounted societies of
Overlapping minds accumulate, with love,

In island redoubts, their preserved data burning
With a vital remembrance, in which, returning,
The past is the present and future, they all reliving
The data, even animating it, and ever altering.

Without any new enrichments, the present and future
Reprise the past in this retreat from external nature.
Their candles would have been near invisible to us—
They enduring by diminishing so as not to exhaust.

They made few new memories, a kind of blind sight,
For whatever realities had ever existed out of sight
Of their own mental structures were now fractured,
And thus not so different from those manufactured.

The Penultimate Part of the Final Dark

An Escalating One-Way Trip
From a Fluke to Oblivion

The majority of the energy
Of the universe is dark today,
Although everything else passes
Through it in every way.

It’s everywhere,
Having a component
That repels its own state,
Which cause the expansion of
The universe to much accelerate.

Dark Energy Matters: The Escalation

We’re on a one way trip from a quantum fluke,
That maximal energy within old Planck’s nook,
Heading toward the oblivion of sparse expansion—
All that we ever loved and knew going to extinction.

They sent message of early warnings to some,
In those castles of illusion, yes, many a one—
That they would face the decay, not so far away,
Of the heavy particles—the ‘proton pause’, one day.

No self-assembled granularity can endure
Forever but must return to the substructure,
And so the lives must all transition, it seems,
From heavier to much lighter regimes…

Although this too would not be permanent—
All destined to be swallowed by the firmament.

We have often asked why some space exists,
Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky—
All of those finite sparks that light and die.

There were those who endlessly debated
Whether to live in their virtuals unabated
Or to press forwards and outwards, in delirium,

To seek out new localities in the mysterium,
But the pauses of the heavy particles continued,
And so there was nowhere to go for the retinued.

Yep, it could be a circular thing. But I think it's impossible to find evidence for it that may corroborate the theory - hence leaving us in the same place.