The Last Three Minutes, by world-renowned physicist and author Paul Davies, is a wonderful, fun book - morbid to the core! - that combines the latest and most scientifically sound thinking about the ultimate fate of the universe with vivid scenarios of how it will feel to those of us still around when the end comes.

Look, if you will, past that last day of sunlight into perpetual night. Experience the onset of stardoom - when the nuclear energy of burning stars is finally exhausted. Journey through those eons of time when black holes are the last major source of energy, devouring the scattered remnants of burnt-out galaxies.

And then, perhaps, the big crunch - the last three minutes, when the temperature of the cosmos becomes so great that even atomic nuclei must disintegrate, when larger and larger regions of space are compressed into smaller and smaller volumes, when, as Davies writes, "the handiwork of the big bang, and of generations of stars in creating heavy chemical elements, is undone in less time than it takes you to read this sentence.".

Will this be the stage on which cosmic life plays out its final act? Or is the universe destined to end very differently and in the much less distant future, overwhelmed by a sudden and unexpected cosmic catastrophe? Indeed, will the universe end at all? If it endures forever, will humanity or our descendants, robots or flesh, find a way to survive through eternal night?