According to three Dutch researchers, the cosmos could fade away in roughly 10⁷⁸ years — a shockingly short time compared with earlier estimates. Their work applies Hawking radiation to other celestial bodies, suggesting that even the Moon or a human could ultimately evaporate into nothingness.
The Universe appears to be disintegrating faster than expected. That’s what the latest calculations on Hawking radiation indicate. The phenomenon, first theorized in 1974 by physicist Stephen Hawking, describes how extremely dense objects like black holes or neutron stars gradually lose mass by emitting particles created by quantum effects near their gravitational fields.
The researchers expanded this process to other cosmic bodies, proposing that they too could slowly evaporate. In a study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, they report that the final stellar remnants will vanish in about 10⁷⁸ years — predicting the Universe’s end far earlier than previous models, which placed it around 10¹¹⁰⁰ years.
An innovative interpretation of Hawking radiation
After publishing a paper in 2023, the three scientists — Heino Falcke, Michael Wondrak, and Walter van Suijlekom — faced a wave of questions from the scientific community. Their conclusions rely on a fresh interpretation of Hawking radiation, extended to include other massive objects with gravitational fields, such as neutron stars.
They discovered that the time required for these bodies to evaporate depends solely on their density. To their surprise, they found that neutron stars and stellar black holes would disintegrate in about 10⁶⁷ years — a result that contradicts expectations, since stronger gravity should theoretically speed up the process.
The Moon and humans: only 10⁹⁰ years left to live?
Continuing their research, the team applied their equations to more familiar objects — the Moon and even people. They estimated that, in theory, these would take about 10⁹⁰ years to “evaporate” through a process similar to quantum Hawking radiation. This enormous figure highlights how incredibly slow the process would be for low-density bodies without extreme gravity. Of course, as the authors note, many other cosmic or biological events would wipe us out long before that.
Mathematician Walter van Suijlekom, co-author of the study, emphasizes the value of this interdisciplinary approach. “By asking such questions and testing extreme cases, we aim to better understand the theory — and maybe one day uncover the mystery of Hawking radiation,” he said. Though purely theoretical and deliberately speculative, this work showcases science’s ability to explore and challenge the laws that govern our cosmos.
