Scary sign: The world around the Earth is shrinking

The endless space around our little Earth may not last forever, but is gradually entering a period of stagnation and degeneration, US researchers have revealed.

According to a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, after nearly 13.8 billion years of relentless expansion following the Big Bang, the universe may have come to a standstill and soon contracted. The conclusion comes from the fact that 3 US scientists modeled dark energy - the hypothetical type of energy that is believed to be the cause of the expansion of the universe.

Graphic image depicting the time of "the beginning of the world", when the first stars were born after the Big Bang

In the group's model, dark energy is not a constant force that can decay over time. After billions of years of acceleration, it seems that dark energy is showing signs of weakening.

The model reveals that the universe's acceleration of expansion will quickly end in the next 65 million years - a colossal period of time for short-lived Earthlings, but just a fraction of a second for the universe.

For the next 100 million years, the universe will stay the same size; will then enter an era of shrinking and gradually approaching "death", or possibly an unpredictable space-time rebirth.

According to scientist Paul Steinhardt, director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University (New Jersey, USA), co-author, there are two scenarios for the "death" of the universe.

• First, it can shrink, collapse to its original form before the Big Bang, and become a stationary "fossil".
• Second, maybe another Big Bang will happen, creating a new universe on the ashes.

A previous study by Professor Steinhardt and colleagues, published in Physics Letters B in 2019, also mentioned this second scenario. They even argue that the current universe that Earth exists in is not the first and only universe. Most likely, we are also the world reincarnated from some ancient "ashes".