{"id":26656,"date":"2025-07-21T18:01:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/26656\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T18:01:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:01:11","slug":"the-world-started-with-a-bang-but-will-end-in-a-scary-big-crunch-and-scientists-think-they-know-when-that-will-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/26656\/","title":{"rendered":"The world started with a ‘bang’ but will end in a scary ‘big crunch’ \u2014 and scientists think they know when that will be"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our humble blue planet came into being with the Big Bang<\/a> \u2014 the sudden expansion of the universe outwards.<\/p>\n

Now, according to astrophysicists and cosmologists, Earth and all of its celestial siblings will likely be swallowed back into the super-small singularity they came from, in what is known as the \u201cbig crunch\u201d theory.<\/p>\n

Alarming as it sounds, physicists say there\u2019s no reason to fret just yet. <\/p>\n

In recent years, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has repeatedly predicted that humanity\u2019s doomsday is inching closer and closer<\/a>, echoing the sentiment that humanity likely won\u2019t be around to see the big crunch. Hero Design \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

According to leading experts on the matter, the big crunch theory supposes that the universe will eventually stop expanding and everything will be pulled back together. <\/p>\n

Cosmologists at Cornell University predict that the big crunch is billions of years away \u201419.5 to be exact. <\/p>\n

Henry Tye, a lead researcher at the institution, suggested that the big crunch will begin in 11 billion years, and will take another 8.5 billion years to conclude. <\/p>\n

\u201cCivilizations like us typically exist on time scales of hundreds to thousands of years while the changes happen on billion\u2013year time scales, so we wouldn\u2019t notice any obvious day\u2013to\u2013day phenomenon until the very last moment,\u201d added Luu. IgorZh \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Supposing humanity is still around billions of years from now<\/a>, scientists say it\u2019s unlikely we would notice any distinct changes while the big crunch takes place. <\/p>\n

\u201cIntelligent civilizations at the scales of solar systems or even galactic scales would not notice any obvious phenomenon because these changes happen at much larger cosmological scales,\u201d Dr Hoang Nhan Luu, a researcher at the Donostia International Physics Center, explained to the Daily Mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, one of the warning signs would be a rising cosmic temperature. <\/p>\n

In a few billion years, it\u2019s probable that the universe, including all of its major celestial bodies, will be the same temperature as the surface of the sun.<\/p>\n

\u2018Needless to say, all humans will burn up in the furnace of this cosmic hell,\u201d Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, told the Daily Mail<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Scientists suspect our universe\u2019s lifespan is around 33.3 billion years. sdecoret \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

The theory has been swirling among academic circles for decades, but fell out of favor among some camps of researchers several decades back. <\/p>\n

However, after dark energy \u2014 a repellent force that pushes things in the universe apart \u2014 was discovered in the \u201990s and research has progressed, it seems more and more experts are reevaluating their stances.<\/p>\n

Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas at Dallas, told Discover Magazine<\/a> that dark matter research has revealed that the universe isn\u2019t slowing down<\/a>, but rather, its expansion is accelerating less, and eventually, it will come to a slow halt. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo survive, human beings have to move to the edge of our solar system or beyond. We have a few billion years\u2019 time to prepare for that trip,\u201d Tye explained to the Daily Mail<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Dark energy is essentially the opposite of gravity, which pushes things together. Claudio Caridi \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

The big crunch theory spells trouble for humanity in several ways, but it\u2019s far from the first scary-sounding phenomenon that our planet has undergone. <\/p>\n

Earth\u2019s magnetic poles reversed<\/a> 780,000 years ago. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany created a soundscape of the geological gymnastics routine, which they dubbed a \u201cdisharmonic cacophony.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our humble blue planet came into being with the Big Bang \u2014 the sudden expansion of the universe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[23246,2300,149,79,15850,193],"class_list":["post-26656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apocalypse","tag-earth","tag-lifestyle","tag-science","tag-scientists","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}