A Study Confirms the Universe Will Start Shrinking Very Soon – Teach Me About Science

The size of the universe has not been the same all the time. 13.8 billion years ago, when the universe was just a dense and hot point, it was smaller than a subatomic particle, but it was because of a repulsive energy field that this point began to expand, to such an extent that this point expanded Started.

We know this event as Big Bang and currently it has not stopped, it is faster than before. However, a recent study suggests that the universe, despite its accelerated expansion, may be entering a phase of contraction. All of this raises questions like: How quickly can this change happen? And at what point will it be detected? The findings suggest that this could happen very soon.

What keeps objects close is gravity, and when they move apart, it is identified as a type of antigravity currently known as “dark energy.” It cannot be directly observed or detected, although it can be measured by its effect on ordinary matter, so in this case it is related to the expansion of the universe. However, a surprising fact is that more than 95% of the energy density of the universe is in a form that has not been detected, and dark energy accounts for 70%.

The same study interprets dark energy as a type of quintessence that may come to an end. “This paper presents a simple mechanism by which a dynamic form of dark energy (known as quintessence) can stop the acceleration and bring about a smooth transition from an expansion to a slow contraction phase,” Comment from the study’s authors.

Because of the approach, if dark energy is indeed shown in this study, the conclusions about the contraction of the universe bear a “near” date, perhaps less than 100 million years from now.

This seems like an enormous amount of time, but from a cosmological perspective, the minimum time interval before the end of acceleration and the end of expansion is surprisingly short, because, when compared to the geological time scale, time is minimal. The period before the end of the expansion is close to the period when life has existed on Earth, and the interval that remains until the end of the acceleration is less than the time that has passed since the disappearance of the dinosaurs due to the Chicxulub asteroid.

Given this, another doubt arises: what will happen when the universe shrinks? The scenarios that are predicted are two: the universe becomes so dense to a point that it can recreate the Big Bang and the other is that the universe is reborn.

Like any approach, it needs to be verified, and if it turns out to be correct, it would mean a true revolution for cosmology, so we will have to wait for some discovery to be announced on this topic.