The end of the universe has always had something of an unattainable horizon, a date so distant that, in practice, it was equivalent to “never.” For decades, cosmological models placed this outcome on time scales almost impossible to imagine: within trillions of trillions of years (a 1 followed by 100 zeros or ninety times more than the current age of the universe).
Now, a new study, published on arXiv, suggests something unexpected: that end could come much sooner than expected. Not tomorrow, nor in millions of years, but in a period that, compared to previous estimates, is surprisingly “close.” The key is how the universe ages.
For a long time, scientists have been based on the idea that everything that exists is subject to a slow but irreversible process: the degradation of energy. It is the domain of the second law of thermodynamics, according to which disorder (entropy) always increases. Applied to the cosmos, this leads to a scenario known as “heat death”: a cold, dark universe without complex structures.
But the new study, led by Henry Tye of Cornell University, introduces an important nuance. Suggest that certain fundamental processes, such as the disintegration of particles or the evaporation of extreme objects, could accelerate that path towards the end. And by the way, give us a more detailed explanation of what dark matter is.
Among the protagonists of this story are black holes. For years it was thought that they would be the last structures to disappear, surviving far beyond stars and galaxies. However, since Stephen Hawking proposed the radiation that bears his name, we know that even they are not eternal: They lose energy little by little until they evaporate. The new calculation reviews how long this process really takes… and the response drastically reduces the deadlines.
Instead of imagining a universe that goes out in the almost infinite future, Tye’s team proposes that many of its structures could disappear on time scales much smaller than expected, more precisely in 33 billion years. It is still an enormous amount of time, far above the current age of the universe, which is around 13.8 billion years, but it no longer belongs to that almost abstract territory of the inconceivable. What is interesting is not only the figure, but what it implies.
Because these types of studies do not try to predict “the day of judgment” of the cosmos, but rather to understand the deep mechanisms that govern it. Each adjustment to those models is actually a way to test our most fundamental theories: how particles interact, how gravity behaves under extreme conditions, what laws remain valid when time is stretched to its limits. It would be the complete opposite of the Big Bang: a universe that does not end suddenly, but, little by little, stops happening.