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The ever-growing number of deaths from the coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has made many of us question our mortality. But even so, most of us aren’t too worried about the end of the world that will be happening anytime soon.
And we can continue to have peace of mind since the expiration date of the universe is far away, although a scientist has calculated when and how the universe will end.
This will happen over the “next billion years,” according to theoretical physicist Matt Caplan. The end of the world as we know it will not come with a bang. Most stars “will sparkle very, very slowly when their temperature drops to zero,” he says.
Describing it as “a little sad, lonely and cold place,” Caplan said in a statement that no one will be around to witness this long farewell in the distant future.
“It’s called ‘heat death’ where the universe will be mostly black holes and burnt stars,” said the assistant professor of physics at Illinois State University, whose research has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In the research, Caplan looked at potential stellar explosions and found that even in the dark, there could be silent fireworks or explosions from the remnants of stars that were never meant to explode. Many white dwarfs can explode into supernovae when everything else in the universe is dead and calmed down. As they become more dense, these stars will become “black dwarf” stars capable of producing iron in their nucleus.
According to NASA, a supernova is the explosion of a star while a white dwarf is a star near the end of its life that has used up most or all of its nuclear fuel and has collapsed into a size similar to Earth.
“Stars less than 10 times the mass of the sun don’t have the gravity or density to produce iron in their cores like massive stars do, so they can’t explode in a supernova at this time,” said Caplan. “As the white dwarfs cool over the next trillion years, they will become darker, eventually freeze, and become ‘black dwarf’ stars that will no longer shine.
Since iron cannot be burnt by stars, it builds up like poison, triggering the star’s collapse creating a supernova.
According to Caplan’s calculations, the theoretical explosions he calls “black dwarf supernovas” will begin to occur in about 10 to 1,100 years.
“In a year, it’s like saying the word ‘trillion’ almost a hundred times,” he said.
And not all black dwarves will explode either. Caplan said only the most massive black dwarfs, about 1.2 to 1.4 times the mass of the sun, would blow.
In numbers, that means up to one percent of all stars that exist today, or roughly one billion trillion stars, will explode this way.
Caplan calculated that the more massive black dwarfs will explode first, followed by less and less massive stars, until there is nothing left to do after about 10 ^ 32,000 years. At this point, the universe can truly be dead and silent.
“It’s hard to imagine anything after this, the black dwarf supernova could be the last interesting thing to happen in the universe. They may be the last supernova of all time, ”he said.
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