https://youtu.be/atm-hOsvOV0

We know the universe had a beginning. But what happens at the end of the story?

With lively wit and wry humour, astrophysicist Dr Katie Mack takes us on a mind-bending tour through each of the cosmos' possible finales: the Big Crunch, Heat Death, Vacuum Decay, the Big Rip and the Bounce. Guiding us through major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory and much more, she describes how small tweaks to our incomplete understanding of reality can result in starkly different futures. Our universe could collapse in upon itself, or rip itself apart, or even - in the next five minutes - succumb to an inescapable expanding bubble of doom.

In conversation with theoretical physicist Prof Jim Al-Khalili, host of BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific. 

This event is in partnership with the Institute of Physics. 

About the speaker

Katie Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist (and one of the most popular scientists on Twitter!). Throughout her career as a researcher at Caltech, Princeton, Cambridge, Melbourne and now North Carolina State University, she has studied dark matter, black holes, cosmic strings and the formation of the first galaxies. As a science writer, she has been published by Slate, Time, and Scientific American, as well as having a regular column in Cosmos magazine.