Two brilliant young physicists, Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin, captured the attention of the world when they announced they had identified the five ages of time. But is it possible for us to know the complete life story of the universe from beginning to end?

The astonishing truth is that recent study has defined the essential mechanisms of astrophysics so well that science can now determine the five ages the universe will go through over its ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion - year existence. We now know how the cosmos was born, how it grew up, how it will shuffle into its old age, and how it will celebrate its googolth (10[superscript 100]) birthday.

With The Five Ages of the Universe, the mythologies of eternity and apocalypse can now be matched against scientific fact. Adams and Laughlin study the far future of a universe that, according to current astronomical observations, will expand forever. They show what will actually happen if a black hole enters our solar system, how life might exist beyond the atmosphere of a white dwarf, even how new universes could be produced and how we would travel to them.