This is when and how the universe should end

It shouldn’t happen anytime soon, but a scientist has calculated the end of the universe.

The research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, notes that over the “next trillion years,” when the universe is dead as we know it, the stars will continue to explode, not with a giant bang, but “Very, very slowly fizzing.”

“He [the universe] will be a bit of a sad, lonely and cold place, ”the study’s lead author, theoretical physicist Matt Caplan, said in a statement. “This is called ‘heat death’, where the universe will be mostly black holes and burnt stars.”

In the research, Caplan looked at potential stellar explosions and found that white dwarfs would explode in a supernova in the future. As they become more dense, these stars will become “black dwarf” stars capable of producing iron in their nucleus.

“Stars less than about 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,” Caplan explained. “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, it builds up, similar to poison, triggers the collapse of the star and becomes a supernova. Caplan estimates that the first of these theoretical explosions will occur in about 10 to the power of 1100 years. “For years it’s like saying the word ‘trillion’ almost a hundred times. If you wrote it, it would take most of a page, ”Caplan added. “It’s incredibly far into the future.”

Nonetheless, not all stars that turn into black dwarfs will explode, just those that are between 1.2 and 1.4 times the mass of the sun, or about one percent of all stars that exist today, Caplan pointed out. .

The remaining 99% of the stars will remain black dwarfs.

The larger black dwarfs will go into a supernova first, followed by the smaller ones, at which point the universe will likely be a giant void, completely unrecognizable.

“It’s hard to imagine anything after this, the black dwarf supernova could be the last interesting thing to happen in the universe,” Caplain said. “It may be the last supernova ever. The galaxies will have dispersed, the black holes will have evaporated, and the expansion of the universe will have pushed all the remaining objects so far away that none will ever see the others explode. It won’t even be physically possible for the light to travel that far.

Researchers continue to learn more about the state of the universe. In July, a separate panel of experts suggested the universe may be up to 1.2 billion years younger than the 13.8 billion years it is widely believed to be.