Richard Kerner (Paris)

The end of the Universe - and what next?

The fate of our Universe has been of great concern to human beings since the dawn of civilization. We shall briefly expose various versions of birth and death of the Universe as perceived by several ancient civilizations; after that the development of a scientific approach to cosmogony and cosmology will be presented. We shall also discuss the standard model prevailing nowadays, with its strong and weak points. Numerical estimates of longevity of stars, galaxies and atoms will be given too, with some philosophical comments as concluding remarks.