Truth in an Encyclopedia

Last year I got a chance to read through the Gale Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. I was shocked to discover a very interesting paragraph under the heading Eschatology (the study of last things):

Biology, paleontology, geology, and astronomy help one appreciate the transience and fragility of all that exists, even though nature continually brings new things and new life out of dissolution and death. No individual entity or species continues forever. Cosmology assures us that the observable universe itself will eventually become sterile and evanesce as it expands forever, undergoing heat death (p.300)

Of course we don't yet conclusively know which way the universe is actually going to die (although it really is either the big crunch or the big freeze), but even if you don't want to think that far ahead, just remember that your own personal existence is just as fragile as the rest of the universe.