A New Way to Think About How the Universe “Ends”
By Kevin L. Brown, Independent Researcher
Published: November 2025 • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17608092
Introduction: Why the Universe’s Future Still Isn’t Settled
For more than a century, cosmologists have tried to answer a deceptively simple question:
How does the Universe end?
The usual answers feel like opposites:
- A Big Freeze, where everything fades into cold emptiness
- A Big Rip, where expansion accelerates until structure tears apart
- Or a Heat Death, where entropy rises without limit
But recent observations still leave room for a different possibility — a Universe that never tears apart, never collapses, and never freezes entirely, but instead slides into a stable, ever-expanding state.
That is the idea behind Asymptotic Null Cosmology (ANC).
The Core Insight: Expansion Doesn’t Have to Diverge Forever
ANC is built around two simple but powerful mathematical constraints:
- The expansion rate settles down H(t)→H∞H(t) \to H_\inftyH(t)→H∞ not exploding, not collapsing — just coasting.
- Entropy rises but eventually levels off S(t)→S∞S(t) \to S_\inftyS(t)→S∞ meaning the Universe smooths out, but doesn’t degrade into pure randomness.
Together, these describe a Universe that expands forever while gradually losing large-scale gradients — becoming more even, more calm, more informationally quiet.
Not dead.
Not divergent.
Just stable.
The “Null” in Asymptotic Null Cosmology
In Einstein’s equations, the driver of acceleration is the combination: ρ+3P\rho + 3Pρ+3P
where ρ\rhoρ is energy density and PPP is pressure.
ANC proposes a future where this combination approaches zero—not because energy disappears, but because the effective behavior of the cosmic fluid slowly shifts until acceleration no longer grows or collapses.
This is the Informational Null Attractor: a long-term state where the Universe keeps expanding, but the forces driving that expansion “neutralize.”
Where THD Comes In
To help visualize this end-state, the paper uses an interpretive lens from Triune Harmonic Dynamics (THD).
THD treats every system as a combination of three fields:
- Informational
- Energetic
- Structural
In this view, the Universe at large can be described by: F(t)=(I(t),E(t),M(t))F(t) = (I(t), E(t), M(t))F(t)=(I(t),E(t),M(t))
and the ANC end-state is simply the point where all three components stabilize together — a harmonic fixed point.
Importantly, this is not a physical claim about cosmology. It’s a conceptual map: a way of talking about the ANC limit in the same tri-field language used across the THD ecosystem.
What ANC Actually Lets Us Talk About
ANC doesn’t rewrite cosmology — it reframes a possibility that is still consistent with current observational limits.
Using ANC, researchers can:
1. Distinguish between different “end-state” futures
Instead of picking between Big Rip or Heat Death, ANC gives a mathematically clean “middle path” to test against data.
2. Make concrete, falsifiable predictions
ANC includes explicit fail conditions:
- If H(t)H(t)H(t) diverges → ANC is wrong
- If entropy S(t)S(t)S(t) grows without bound → ANC is wrong
- If curvature refuses to flatten → ANC is wrong
- If the Universe cools to absolute zero → ANC is wrong
This makes ANC a testable cosmological hypothesis, not speculation.
3. Compare cosmology to informational models
By expressing the end-state in THD’s tri-field language, other informational frameworks (STI, EIE, TEI, ACM) can reference the same structure without claiming new physics.
Why This Isn’t Just “Another Cosmology Idea”
Three things make ANC distinctive:
1. It’s Explicitly Falsifiable
The paper lists clear observational thresholds that would invalidate the model.
2. It’s Minimal
No exotic fields, no new particles — just boundary conditions applied to standard equations.
3. It Links Physics and Informational Modeling Without Mixing Them
ANC is a cosmology model.
THD is an informational framework.
The paper keeps these roles separate, but shows how they can speak a shared mathematical language.
The Bigger Picture
ANC joins a family of works exploring the structure and stability of informational systems:
- Energy–Information Equivalence (EIE)
- Scalar Time Index (STI)
- THD Equilibrium Index (TEI)
- Awareness Continuum Mapping (ACM)
- Scalar Message Encoding Protocol (SMEP)
Together, they form a growing set of tools for understanding how complex systems — physical, informational, or hybrid — settle into long-term patterns.
ANC adds a new piece: a formal, testable way to think about the Universe’s far future that doesn’t rely on divergence or decay.