New research says our universe only has a quinvigintillion years left, so make ‘em good ones
Previously believed to die at an estimated 10 to the power of 1,100 years, the universe is now believed to die at an estimated 10 to the power of 78 years, according to a new study from Radboud University, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics on Monday.
For context, that's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 — or 1 quinvigintillion — years from now.
'The final end of the universe is coming much sooner than expected, but fortunately it still takes a very long time,' lead author of the study, Heino Falcke, professor of astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told CBS News.
Researchers looked closely at when white dwarf stars — when a star dies, creates a nebula and leaves behind its hot core — die, according to the study. They also looked at when larger stars die, causing a supernova and leaving behind small, dense cores that collapse on themselves and become black holes.
The authors followed a principle of general relativity called Hawking radiation, named after famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, to determine when white dwarf stars could inevitably disintegrate. In roughly 1 quinvigintillion years, these white dwarf stars should decay at a point when no other matter from other galaxies exists in the universe.
Well before that point, in 17 trillion years, most of the stars in the known universe will be extinguished before being reduced to white dwarf stars, Falcke told Live Science.
The solar system's sun is expected to die much sooner than the rest of the universe, according to NASA. Five billion years from now, the sun's expected to become a red giant when it expels all of its hydrogen and increase in size, gobbling up the planets in the inner solar system, including Earth. The sun could then collapse on itself after another billion years and become a white dwarf.
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Read the original article on MassLive.
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