In about 100 million years, the universe will begin to shrink.
After 13.8 billion years of continuous expansion, the universe may stop and then begin to slowly contract. This is evidenced by a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, briefly described by Live Science.
In the study, three scientists tried to model the nature of dark energy – a mysterious force that is believed to be forces the universe to expand faster and faster – based on past observations of space expansion. In the team model, dark energy is not a constant force of nature, but an entity called the quintessence, which can change over time.
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Researchers have found that even as the expansion of the universe has accelerated for billions of years, the power of repulsive dark energy may weaken. Modeling has shown that the acceleration of the universe can stop within 65 million years. In the next 100 million years, it may stop expanding and enter an era of slow compression that will end in billions of years, with the death or rebirth of space and time.
Scientists believe that this could happen “impressively” quickly.
“Going back 65 million years, this is the time when the asteroid Chixulub crashed into Earth and killed dinosaurs. On a space scale of 65 million years, this is surprisingly small, “said study co-author Paul Steinhardt.
Gary Hinshaw, who was not involved in the study, said there was nothing controversial or implausible about the new theory. At the same time, because it was based on previous observations of the expansion of the universe. In addition, the nature of dark matter is still a mystery to scientists, so it will be impossible to verify the findings of the study in the near future.
Scientists have realized that the universe is expanding in the 1990s. Now the distance between galaxies is increasing faster than billions of years ago. Scientists have called the force behind this acceleration dark energy, an invisible substance that works against gravity and repels massive objects rather than bringing them together.
Despite the fact that dark energy accounts for about 70% of the mass energy of the universe, its nature remains a mystery to scientists. The popular theory proposed by Albert Einstein is that dark energy is a cosmological constant – a constant form of energy woven into the fabric of space-time. If this is the case, and the force created by dark energy can never change, then the universe must continue to expand (and accelerate) forever.
But another theory suggests that dark energy does not have to be a constant to match past observations of cosmic expansion. Rather, dark energy is something called the quintessence, a dynamic field that changes over time.
Unlike the cosmological constant, the quintessence can be both repulsive and attractive. For the last 14 billion years, it has been repulsive, but the situation changed about five billion years ago, when it became the dominant component and its gravitational repulsion accelerated the expansion of the universe.
may be in the process of rapid decline, which began several billion years ago. In this scenario, the acceleration of the expansion of the universe is slowing down today. After 65 million years, the acceleration may stop completely, and after 100 million years, dark energy may begin to attract, causing the universe to shrink. That is, after 14 billion years of expansion, space may begin to shrink.
