{"id":559120,"date":"2026-04-30T17:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/559120\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T17:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:55:10","slug":"universe-may-end-trillions-of-years-sooner-than-expected-scientists-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/559120\/","title":{"rendered":"Universe may end ‘trillions of years sooner than expected’, scientists warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have calculated our universe may meet a violent end “trillions of years sooner than expected”.<\/p>\n

New studies suggest it will collapse in on itself approximately 19.5 billion years from now, in a catastrophic event known as the “Big Crunch.”<\/p>\n

Research conducted at Donostia International Physics Centre in Spain shows the cosmos has already completed 41 per cent of its existence.<\/p>\n

Rather than being a cosmic infant, the universe has effectively reached its thirties when measured against an average human lifespan.<\/p>\n

The study, published in pre-print form, proposes that everything we know will cease to exist when the universe reaches 33.3 billion years of age.<\/p>\n

This finding upends the long-held assumption the cosmos would continue expanding indefinitely before eventually fading into a frozen void over countless trillions of years.<\/p>\n

The Big Crunch theory had largely fallen out of favour among scientists because observational evidence indicated the universe’s expansion was actually speeding up.<\/p>\n

Researchers attributed this acceleration to dark energy, a mysterious force thought to be driving galaxies apart at an ever-increasing rate.<\/p>\n

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Scientists have calculated that our universe may meet a violent end ‘trillions of years sooner than expected’<\/p>\n

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GETTY<\/p>\n

The prevailing view held that dark energy maintained a consistent density regardless of how much the universe stretched.<\/p>\n

However, fresh data from instruments, including the Dark Energy Survey Instrument, now indicate this enigmatic force may not behave as scientists once assumed.<\/p>\n

The international team of researchers from Spain, China and the United States based their calculations on the “axion dark energy model,” which relies on theoretical ultra-light particles called axions that have yet to be detected.<\/p>\n

Their work also proposes the cosmological constant, previously believed to maintain the universe at a stable size, could in fact be negative.<\/p>\n

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New studies suggest the universe will collapse in on itself approximately 19.5 billion years from now<\/p>\n

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GETTY<\/p>\n

The researchers concluded: “Using the best-fit values of the model as a benchmark, we find the lifespan of our universe to be 33 billion years.”<\/p>\n

Some cosmologists have expressed scepticism about the remarkable precision of this predicted date.<\/p>\n

Ed Macaulay, a cosmologist at Queen Mary University of London who was not involved in the study, described cosmology as being on an exciting “knife-edge” between competing theories about whether the universe will expand eternally or eventually collapse.<\/p>\n

He described the research as “an interesting piece of work”.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Rather than being a cosmic infant, the universe has effectively reached its thirties when measured against an average human lifespan<\/p>\n

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GETTY<\/p>\n

Mr Macaulay noted the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, due for launch within the next year, could yield valuable new insights.<\/p>\n

Willem Elbers, a cosmologist at Durham University, cautioned “the specific value of the lifespan, and whether a Big Crunch will happen at all, is still subject to enormous uncertainty.”<\/p>\n

Regarding any immediate concerns, Mr Macaulay told the Times: “If you’ve got plans for the bank holiday, proceed as usual.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have calculated our universe may meet a violent end “trillions of years sooner than expected”. New studies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[50,90,2331,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-559120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-news","tag-science","tag-sgg","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}