The universe could end much sooner than previously thought. According to astrophysicists from the Donostia International Physics Center in Spain, it would its end may have occurred 33.3 billion years after the big bang. So in about twenty billion years.
The age of the universe today is approximately 13.8 billion years, so less than twenty billion are calculated to remain. Until now, the prevailing opinion was that the universe would end in gradual thermal death in up to trillions of years. However, the new model envisages a different scenario – the so-called major collapse. With it, the expansion of the universe stops and reverses. Galaxies, stars, and planets begin to shrink back to one point.
“Ultimately, it is possible that the universe will end up in supermassive black holes,” say the authors from San Sebastián. Dark energy, the force that drives the expansion of the universe, plays a key role. New data from the DESI project, in which the authors mapped forty-seven million galaxies, suggests that dark energy is not constant but changes over time. This could mean that the expansion will slow and then reverse.
Scientists used a model according to which dark energy it is created by the combination of a very light form of dark matter – the so-called of the axion field – and the cosmological constant. This model leads precisely to a collapse scenario. The lead author of the study, Hoang Nhan Luu, said that the collapse will result in intensive formation of black holes. “As the universe collapses, one can imagine the matter being pushed together to form a supermassive black hole that will hide the collapse singularity. The collision of the Milky Way with the Andromeda galaxy is expected in four to ten billion years.”
However, the authors emphasize that the conclusions are not yet definitive. “In the near future, we expect better quality data and the model will be thoroughly tested. If it is confirmed, it will be possible to more accurately determine the parameters and lifetime of the universe,” Luu’s decision.
