degenerate era

In the Degenerate Era almost all the mass in the universe is locked up in "degenerate" stars; the collapsed cores of once-glorious giants and other similar remnants. Dark matter will gravitate to these hulks where it will interact incredibly slowly and weakly with other matter. This activity will temporarily generate heat of up to 63 kelvin.

It is theoretically possible for protons to decay, which would happen if a quantum fluctuation gave a proton's quarks a large amount of energy. This is so unlikely that it would take around 10³⁰ years to occur. However, the time involved in this era is so unimaginably huge that proton decay happens "regularly". The degenerate stars will in this way begin to dissipate into particles such as pions and positrons.

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