Oops, Scientists May Have Embarrassingly Miscalculated the End of Existence

“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commissions or revenue from certain merchandise through these links.”

As you read this story, you will learn the following:

• As spectacular as the birth of the universe was, it was likely that it would eventually disappear without a trace, with little drama.

• As we know, a black hole would evaporate via Hawking radiation, with one of the two identical quantum entangled particles floating off into space and the other staying behind.

• Other objects evaporate in a process similar to Hawking radiation, with the densest objects disappearing fastest.

While the universe may have begun with a bang, it probably didn’t end with a bang. But whatever the outcome, that end may come much sooner than we think.

If you ask astrophysicist Heino Falcke, quantum physicist Michael Wondrak and mathematician Walter van Suijlekom, they’ll tell you that the final days won’t erupt with catastrophic explosions worthy of sci-fi special effects. Instead, the last remaining traces of all matter simply evaporate into particles floating in the void.

In 2023, the trio speculated that it was possible for objects other than black holes to slowly evaporate via Hawking radiation, sparking curiosity about how often this might happen. Now, there is a hypothetical answer.

But don’t prepare for the end of the world just yet – Earth is about 5 billion years away from being swallowed by the sun. So, according to the team, if our species manages to spread beyond the solar system and colonize some distant moon or planet, there are about 10 more⁷⁸ The universe has a few years left. That is, 1 is followed by 78 zeros. Even Twinkies don’t last that long.

It may seem unfathomable, but the maximum age of the universe is mind-boggling far away down from the previous forecast of 10¹¹⁰⁰ year (i.e. 1 vs. 1100 zeros). While this previous assumption did include the time it took for the black hole to evaporate, it did not account for the evaporation of other objects.

“Using gravitational curvature radiation, we find that neutron stars and white dwarfs also decay within finite times in the presence of gravitational pair creation,” the researchers said in a study published in the journal Science. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

When a pair of particles forms at the edge of a black hole’s gaping mouth, one particle can be pulled past the inevitable event horizon while the other escapes into nearby space. Because these particles are thought to be quantumly entangled, those rogue particles could potentially carry information about the black hole’s interior (until, of course, Hawking’s information paradox comes along). This is called Hawking radiation. It has long been thought that only black holes emit Hawking radiation, but in their study, these researchers suggested that similar phenomena may affect other ultra-dense objects without event horizons, such as white dwarfs (the corpses of stars left behind when the gas of red giants dissipates) and neutron stars.

Any object with mass has a gravitational pull that distorts space-time. The denser an object is, the greater the distortion, but objects with less mass still have Some Effects on the space-time continuum. Objects with strong gravitational fields evaporate faster – white dwarfs, supermassive black holes and dark matter supercluster halos expected to last 10 years⁷⁸ years, while neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes should exist for about 10 years⁶⁷ Year. Anything with a gravitational field is prone to evaporation. (This includes humans, and may cause problems in our pursuit of immortality. Should require 10⁹⁰ Our bodies disappear for years. )

Although black holes’ intense gravitational fields cause them to evaporate faster, they delay complete annihilation as long as possible because, unlike white dwarfs or neutron stars, they have no surface and tend to reabsorb some of the escaping particles.

“In the absence of an event horizon, electron pairs are created outside the object, causing particles to hit the surface, and electron pairs are also created inside the object,” the researchers said. “We hypothesize that these particles are absorbed by the object and add and redistribute internal energy. Both components would lead to surface emission, which is not present in a black hole.”

So, in enough time to cover 78 zeros, black holes and everything else in the universe will be nothing but particles and radiation. You (assuming immortality) and anything you buy in bulk for the end of the world will also evaporate. No matter when it comes, there is really no escaping the ending.

You may also like