Don’t worry, it’s good news!
I am sure most of you are mindful to the fact that one day our big and beautiful universe will come to an end — including Earth! But, on the bright side, European researchers now confirm that this won’t happen for a very, very long time!
There are currently several hypotheses on how the universe will end, but only two of them are widely accepted in the scientific community.
The first is called the Big Freeze. Observations of stars and galaxies indicate that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate — meaning it is expanding faster and faster. Assuming this acceleration stays constant, eventually all the stars will die out, everything will drift further and further apart, and the universe will cool until it freezes solid.
The second, which has been gaining a lot of popularity recently, is called the Big Rip. The acceleration of the universe is thought to be due to what is called dark energy, which makes up 68 percent of the universe.
In the Big Rip scenario, the universe will continue to accelerate without limit due to the influence of dark energy, and eventually dark energy will become so strong that the universe will not be able to handle its increasing speed, resulting in gravitational, electromagnetic and nuclear forces ripping it apart. As a consequence, a gravitational singularity — a point where gravity is so strong that space, time and the laws of physics break down — will form.
One calculation pointed to this happening 22 billion years from now, but the question is Could it happen sooner?
SEE ALSO: Is it Possible to Imagine Infinity in Our Minds?
To find out, Diego Sáez-Gómez from the University of Lisbon and his colleagues modeled several scenarios and used the latest universe expansion data to calculate the worst case scenario.
The data used involved nearby galaxies, supernovae and ripples in the density of matter — known as baryon acoustic oscillations — which are all used to measure dark energy. What the team discovered is that the earliest a big rip can occur is 1.2 times the current age of the universe, or roughly 2.8 billion years from now.
“We’re safe,” Sáez-Gómez told New Scientist.
So, when is the latest this rip could happen?
“The upper bound goes to infinity,” said Sáez-Gómez. Meaning, the Big Rip never happens and instead we freeze solid… hooray?
Luckily, the sun is not expected to burn out for at least another 5 billion years, so it would be a surprise if the universe ended before that time. However, Sáez-Gómez explained to New Scientist that wondering about when the universe will end is a very useful exercise because scenarios like the Big Rip exist due to our lack of understanding of physics — particularly our current inability to happily unite quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity.
Exploring these types of scenarios and outcomes could lead to some new ideas of linking the two. However, one possibility known as quantum gravity. This theory approximates Einstein’s relativity equations far from a singularity — where the equations of relativity break down — but provides a description of new physics close to the singularity.
