World-Age & Cosmos
How the universe is said to be built, age, and fall, across cyclical and linear models.
Big Rip
A conjectured cosmic end in which accelerating dark energy tears the universe apart, from galaxies to atoms, in a finite time.
Ekpyrosis
The Stoic doctrine of periodic cosmic conflagration, in which the universe is consumed by fire and reborn from it in an endless cycle.
Kali Yuga
The last and worst of four world-ages in Hindu thought, an age of decline whose close brings the world to an end before it begins again.
Pralaya
The periodic dissolution of the universe in Hindu cosmology, when the world is absorbed back into the deity between cycles of creation.
Scientific Eschatology
What physics and cosmology say about how the universe will actually end: heat death, the Big Rip, Big Crunch, and the long dark.