The End of the World

The end of the universe just got a little closer, at least on a cosmic timescale.  

Scientists at Radboud University in the Netherlands calculated that the final stellar remnants in the universe – white dwarf stars – will evaporate about 10^78 years from now.  

That is a one followed by 78 zeroes.  

While it’s still unfathomably far off, it’s much earlier than the previous estimate of 10^1100 years. 

“So the ultimate end of the universe comes much sooner than expected, but fortunately it still takes a very long time,” lead author Heino Falcke said in a statement. 

The new estimate followed a review of the Hawking radiation, the phenomenon proposed by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s, suggesting that black holes slowly emit radiation and evaporate over time.  

Falke and his team extended this idea to other dense cosmic objects, calculating how long they’d take to “evaporate” under similar physics. 

Their findings showed that not only do black holes and neutron stars decay over the same timescale – around 10^67 years – but white dwarfs, considered the universe’s most durable objects, eventually fizzle out after about 10^78 years. 

“By asking these kinds of questions and looking at extreme cases, we want to better understand the theory, and perhaps one day, we unravel the mystery of Hawking radiation,” noted co-author Walter van Suijlekom. 

In a playful twist, the researchers also calculated that it would take 10^90 years for the Moon and a human to vanish via Hawking-like radiation.  

Still, they explained that other forces might take care of us well before that. 

The findings come as new data has raised questions about the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force thought to be accelerating the universe’s expansion.  

If dark energy is weakening, the cosmos could eventually reverse course and collapse in a “Big Crunch.”  

Or, it might keep expanding forever, growing increasingly dark and lonely. 

“Now, there is the possibility that everything comes to an end,” cosmologist and study collaborator Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki told CBS News. “Would we consider that a good or bad thing? I don’t know.”