Scientists say the universe will die earlier than expected, in about 1 QUINVIGINTILLION...

The universe has an expiration date, scientists have been saying this for years. But when will it all vanish? They now have an answer to the eternal question. According to researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands, everything in the universe will go kaput in one quinvigintillion years. In simple terms, that is one followed by 78 zeros (though still not simple enough).

While it might look like a ginormous figure, it is much smaller than the previous prediction about the lifespan of the universe. Earlier, the universe was estimated to end in 10 to the power of 1,100 years, or a one followed by 1,100 zeros. That is quite a huge step down.

Their findings will be published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, but are currently housed on the pre-print server arXiv.

How did scientists estimate the lifespan of the universe?

What has led to such a massive downfall in the estimated lifespan of the universe? Scientists say it is because of a phenomenon linked to Hawking radiation. The latter states that as black holes 'evaporate' into nothing, they emit radiation.

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The researchers state that the same happens to neutron stars and white dwarfs as well. They also evaporate in a similar fashion to black holes, which means that they do not live on in the universe for as long as previously thought.

Neutron stars and white dwarfs occur towards the end of a star's life cycle. Stars that are several times bigger than our sun explode into supernovas and then collapse into neutron stars, while our own star will one day become a white dwarf since it is much smaller.

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The team of scientists studied the lifespan of these corpses. The universe dies when they die, and based on their research, this will happen earlier than thought.

Lead researcher Heino Falcke, professor of radio astronomy and astroparticle physics at Radboud University, states that previous studies on the lifespan of dead stars did not take into account Hawking radiation. This led to an overestimation of how long they can survive.

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They applied the Hawking-radiation-like process to these stars and came up with an end-all figure, which they say is one quinvigintillion years.

The team had suggested in a previous study that all things with a gravitational field likely evaporate like black holes. They calculated that the rate at which evaporation occurs is based on the object's density.

What is Hawking Radiation?

In 1975, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking contradicted Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that black holes continue to grow. Black holes are known to trap everything, but Hawking stated that some particles and radiation could escape from their clutches.

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Hawking stated that two temporary particles can form at the edge of a black hole, one of which gets sucked in and the other escapes. These escaped particles are Hawking radiation.

The black hole decays over time as more and more of these particles escape.