Our universe could die much faster than scientists thought, but it will always be there for a long time, a new study notes.
The researchers proposed a maximum theoretical lifespan updated for the universe based on Stephen Hawkingthe most famous prediction on black holes:: that they will eventually evaporate. The new estimate suggests that most of the remains of the latest stars will die after about 1 Quinvigintillion years – is 1 followed by 78 zeros, or 1078.
Thus, the universe will theoretically end with around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
A quinvigintillion of years may seem absurdly long, but it is actually much faster than the old higher estimate of the remaining stellar decomposition. THE original estimate was 101,100 years – Imagine the number above with 1,022 additional zeros. The new 1078 The estimate is so much earlier, it reduces the time with an actually inconceivable time.
New conclusions, published Monday May 12) in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle PhysicsProvide only potential higher age limit for stellar remains, and nothing guarantees that our universe will last near this long. However, the study helps to emphasize that all things will eventually perish.
“Everything will decompose, but there is still a lot of time to do great things,” studies the first author Heino FalckeA professor of astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told Live Science in an email.
In relation: Stephen Hawking’s black holes theory has great implications for the form of the universe, says the new study
How the dying universes
The stars lack fuel and die, but they do not disappear completely. Small to medium stars like our sun have lost their atmospheres during their dying days and leave behind a coolant or a white dwarf. The most massive stars encounter a more violent ending by exploding in a supernova, leaving smaller and dense nucleus, called neutron starsOr collapse on themselves to form black holes. These objects are called stellar remains.
In 1974, Hawking proposed that the black holes evaporate slowly by losing energy through a sort of radiation, which became known as Hawking. Quantum field theory, based on quantum mechanicsAssulates that the space of space is filled with tiny vibrations which can, with enough energy, create random virtual particles which produce a small amount of light, called photons. Hawking proposed that gravitational forces at the mouth of a black hole can create photons, which subsequently Drain the black hole energy, and finally make it disappear.
Almost 50 years later, a team in the Netherlands propose That all objects with enough mass can decompose in the same way as a black hole, including neutron stars and white dwarfs. In the new study, the same researchers estimated how long it would take the hawking radiation process, called the production of gravitational pairs, to kill all stellar remains according to their previous hypotheses and the masses of different objects.
The researchers concluded that neutron stars would evaporate after about 1068 years, which is a time scale similar to black holes, while white dwarfs would survive up to 1 Quinvigintillion (1078) years. Supermassive black holes could survive even more than 1 Quinvigintillion of years, with a potential lifespan of 1096 years, according to the study. All galaxies should have failed in equipment for star training Until then, which would indeed leave nothing to do in the universe.
The new discoveries are based solely on the duration of stellar remains to evaporate. Even if the researchers’ theory is correct, the universe will not necessarily live so long. And our current vision of the universe will go to the dark well before – on the basis of the current understanding of the cosmology of researchers, the universe will extend so quickly in the following 150 to 200 billion years that most galaxies will no longer be visible to us, said Falcke.
“Everything we will see (we will see) of the universe so these are the stars of our own galaxy,” said Falcke. “In about 17 billions of years, the last stars will be dead.”
Scientists predict that our sun will develop, swallow up and die in about 5 billion years, so this solar system Will be uninhabitable before the rest of the stars die. Once all the stars are dead, a hypothetical form of particle disintegration (Proton decomposition) could also put the rest at its end before the things inspired by Hawking put the last nail in the coffin of our universe. Falcke noted that there is currently only a lower limit of 1034-35 years of protein disintegration, if it exists at all.
Alex RichingsLecturer at the EA Milne Center for Astrophysics of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, which was not involved in the study, described the new stellar research as “very fascinating”.
“We generally consider these objects as the end point of the evolution of a star, who will remain forever,” Richings at Live Science told an email. “However, the authors of this study demonstrate that these remains have a possible maximum lifespan, because they will continue to decompose by emission by the production of gravitational pairs, a process similar to Hawking in black holes. “”