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The end of the universe as we know it has just been rescheduled, as scientists update a previous prediction to indicate that it's actually set to be trillions of years earlier than they thought.
There are far more pressing issues facing the world right now than the inevitable natural death of our universe – including the threat of nuclear war and the collapse of the climate – but the annihilation of everything has just been pushed forward.
Referencing the point at which our universe will suffer what's referred to as a 'heat death', where the continuous expansion of everything will be flipped on its head, causing planets, stars, and entire solar systems to suddenly collapse inwards into a single point.
This will involve the creation of terrifying black holes that simulations can only begin to recreate right now, yet while it was previously thought to be far in the distant future, it's now actually a lot closer than expected.
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This new prediction comes from scientists at the Donostia International Physics Center in a pre-print paper, who indicate that the universe will reach its conclusion roughly 33.3 billion years after the Big Bang took place.
This is estimated to be around 13.8 billion years into the past, giving the universe now 'just' 20 billion years before its death — thankfully nothing any of us living right now have to worry about at all.
That doesn't mean that Earth's death will come at the same time, however, as our planet will become inhospitable far sooner and is set to eventually be consumed by the Sun.
One thing to take into consideration is that this prediction remains subject to further rigorous testing, especially relating to factors relating to dark energy which remains one of the biggest question marks in the space and science world right now.
"Fortunately, a number of projects measuring different aspects of the dark energy are forthcoming in the near future," the study concludes, adding that "we look forward to a more precise determination of the universe's lifespan."
What this could mean then is that future calculations could adjust this prediction, perhaps pushing it forward even closer to our current time period — although unless anything dramatic changes it's still likely to not affect us, or any humans in future generations for that matter.
Another event that the study proposes is the collision of the Milky Way – our galaxy – with the nearby Andromeda galaxy, which is predicted to occur between 4 and 10 billion years into the future.
"It is interesting to re-evaluate the time of their collision (or no collision) before the big crunch," the researchers hypothesize.
