The future--the very, very, very distant future--does not look especially promising for the universe, says Lawrence Krauss, author, physicist, and director of the Origins Institute at Arizona State University. If you're thinking about cold temperatures and the end of energy as we know it, then you and Krauss are on a similar track.

He'll be one of the speakers at a symposium on Monday morning--"Origins and Endings: From the Beginning to the End of the Universe." That's from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, in Columbus Hall KL.

Alexis Madrigal at the Wired Science blog has a nice advance look at Krauss' ideas.