Scientists Think They Figured Out How and When the Universe Will End

When you read this story you will learn:

• A new paper adjusts an equation that describes our universe in response to recent new data.

• The cosmological constant that describes how our universe is expanding may not be constant after all.

• Since cosmology is already a complex field of study, changing variables is extra difficult.

Scientists recently used an updated understanding of the mathematics of our universe to theorize that the universe would end in a collapse rather than a loss of entropy. The field of cosmology can be quite dense in terms of vocabulary, but ultimately one of our important numbers, the cosmological constant, may have switched teams from positive to negative. (If you went from gaining a pound a week to losing a pound a week, you tooThe Great Crash”) And using this math, a research team estimated that our universe has a lifespan of about 33 billion years. That means we have about 19 billion years before it turns into a crunchy mess.

Cosmology, broadly speaking, is the study of how our universe began, how it currently exists, and how it will eventually end. Those who publish research on cosmology must work differently than most other sciences because pivotal moments such as the Big Bang and the eventual Big Crunch are almost completely outside current human understanding. We can rewind time by studying the stars. black holesWe believe that exotic structures and even shadows can lead to dark matter or dark energy. However, we are missing very large connecting pieces, such as how very small matter can explode and turn into the universe.

The cosmological constant is one effort to help answer these huge existential questions. We know that most of the mass and energy in our universe is invisible or “dark,” but we don’t know the nature or source of that missing stuff (though physics suggests we’re probably floating in the middle of dark matter all the time). dark energyIt is proposed as a way to balance our observations of how the universe is expanding, including the cosmological constant. Gravity as we know it everywhere around us will actually make our universe smaller, so if we are expanding all the time (like we are now), that means something is pushing parts of the universe apart.

To cosmologists, this meant a positive constant. The universe was “gaining weight,” so to speak, so it would continue to expand at an increasingly faster rate because “weight” was growing at a constant rate. However, this has changed after recent results from both the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). at the beginning of this year. Scientists examined the data and found that the cosmological constant may not be constant at all, but instead is changing over time, indicating that its influence may be weakening. This would change the most widely believed equation for the beginning of our universe. (Imagine if your math homework changed from “Solve x + 5 = 8” to “Solve x + y = 8”; that’s a completely different skill set!)

Cosmology has been making waves from these DES and DESI explanations for months, leading to studies like this new paper written by scientists based in the US, China and Spain. it seems now in a peer-reviewed journal Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. These scientists created a new, corrected model for expected expectations lifetime taking into account a possible negative cosmological constant. If the universe at some point stopped expanding and started contracting, this would be a huge change from our understanding of the situation at the same time a few years ago.

Their conclusions bring about some newly opened doors. Because science is built on repeated and reproducible data that helps researchers refine their results and test new hypotheses, “it is crucial that the DES/DESI observation be validated and the aDE model rigorously tested,” the researchers explain. The team also blocks an expected question about a supposed topic. Big BounceA theory in which the universe “cracks” and then expands again in a predictable cycle:

“Although it is very unlikely, it cannot be ruled out that there is a way for the universe to move on to the next cycle in the presence of quantum effects. However, this reincarnation would lead to a very different situation. universe not from our current universe to a cyclical universe.”

So for those hoping to leave a letter to the new universe 18.9 billion years from now, the next paradigm may not include people, papers, or even papers. stars. Plan accordingly!

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