THE universe is about to die much faster than we thought previously, according to new research by Dutch scientists.
But there is no need to panic. We still have 10 at the power of 78 years before it happens – it is only one with 78 zeros.
However, this is a major revision of the previous estimate of 10 at the power of 1,100 years, notes the research document of Radboud University, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
“The final of the universe arrives much earlier than expected, but fortunately, it still takes a long time,” said the main author Heino Falcke.
A trio of scientists from Radboud has decided to calculate when the most “durable” celestial bodies – white dwarf stars – would end up going out.
They based their calculations on the radiation of hawking, named after the famous British physicist Stephen Hawking.
Hawking postulated in the mid -1970s that black holes disclosed the radiation, slowly dissolving like aspirin in a glass of water – giving them a finished life.
Radboud scientists have extended this to other objects from the universe, calculating that “evaporation time” depends on density.
This allowed them to calculate the theoretical dissolution of the most durable body, white dwarf.
“By asking these kinds of questions and examining extreme cases, we want to better understand the theory, and perhaps that one day, we can unravel the mystery of hawking radiation,” said co-author Walter Van Suijlekom.
Humanity does not need to worry too much about the end of the universe. Unless we escape the planet Earth, we will have been a long time.
Scientists think that our sun will be too hot for life in about a billion years, boiling our oceans.
In about 8 billion years, our star will eventually develop towards the earth, finally encompassing our sterile and lifeless by–that planet and condemning it to ardent death.
Shed light on dark energy
Research comes a few weeks after Scientists have published new discoveries This can also shed light on the fate of the universe. Researchers in March said that new data show that dark energy – a mysterious force that represents almost 70% of the universe – could actually weaken.
If the dark energy is constant, an idea introduced for the first time by Albert Einstein In his theory of relativity, scientists say that our universe can continue to develop forever, more and more cold, more lonely and still. If the dark energy reflects time, the universe could one day stop expanding and finally collapsing on itself in what is called The “Big Crunch”.
“Now it is possible that everything is coming to an end,” said cosmologist and study collaborator Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki from the University of Texas in Dallas. “Would we consider that it is a good or a bad thing? I don’t know.”
NSF’s Noillab via AP 
Other efforts around the world have an eye on dark energy and aim to publish their own data in the years to come, including the Euclid mission of the European Space Agency and the Vera C. Rubin observatory in Chile.
Launched in 2023, the Euclid space telescope of $ 1.5 billion from ESA is equipped with a 3 -foot 11 inch wide mirror and two instruments: a light camera visible of 600 megapixels and an infrared imaging spectrometer of 64 megapixels. The field of vision of the telescope is almost double the size of the full moon.