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The universe is now predicted to die significantly earlier than once thought, according to a new study by Dutch scientists — though the end is still incomprehensibly far off.
Researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands say the final death of the universe could occur in 10⁷⁸ years — that’s a one followed by 78 zeros. While this remains an almost unimaginably distant future, it represents a drastic shift from earlier scientific estimates of around 10¹¹⁰⁰ years.
“The end of the universe is arriving sooner than previously expected, but thankfully it’s still an extraordinarily long time away,” said Professor Heino Falcke, the study’s lead author.
The research, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, sought to determine when the most resilient celestial objects — white dwarf stars — will ultimately disappear.
The team based their projections on the concept of Hawking radiation, a phenomenon first proposed by British physicist Stephen Hawking in the 1970s. Hawking theorised that black holes are not eternal, but instead gradually lose mass and energy via this radiation, eventually evaporating completely.
The Radboud researchers applied this concept more broadly to other dense cosmic objects. Their work suggests that the rate of evaporation is closely linked to the density of the object in question. Using this insight, they were able to estimate the lifespan of white dwarfs, the remnants of stars like our Sun that can persist for billions of years.
“By asking these kinds of questions and focusing on extreme scenarios, we aim to deepen our understanding of theoretical physics and perhaps one day solve the riddle of Hawking radiation,” said co-author Walter van Suijlekom.
Despite the accelerated timeline, the findings are unlikely to worry humanity. Our own prospects are far more limited: scientists believe Earth will become uninhabitable within a billion years as the Sun grows hotter, eventually boiling away the oceans.
Roughly eight billion years from now, the sun is expected to expand dramatically, engulfing the planet and bringing an end to any lingering traces of life.
