doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.24011
Credibility: 888
#Universe
For a long time, scientists believed that the Universe would continue expanding forever, lasting trillions of years into a cold and lonely future
However, new research suggests it may have a much shorter lifespan: there would only be about 33 billion years left until it ends.
In this scenario, the expansion would stop, reverse course and everything would collapse back into an extremely dense state, similar to the moment of the Big Bang.
This process is known as the “Big Crunch”, or Great Collapse, a possibility that seemed discarded, but is now being seriously considered again.
It all started with recent observations about dark energy, that mysterious force that accelerates the expansion of the cosmos.
Surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) have mapped hundreds of millions of galaxies with great precision.
The data indicates, with high confidence, that the influence of dark energy is not constant: it changes over time.
Instead of a fixed force, its “equation of state” – which relates pressure and energy density – varies, which opens up space for new explanatory models.
One of these models is the axion dark energy (aDE).
It combines a field of axions – an ultralight form of dark matter that moves through the Universe like a wave – with the cosmological constant, that background expansion present in the structure of space-time.
By applying this hybrid model to the DES data, the researchers found that it explains the current observations well.
But there is a surprising detail: in the distant future, the interaction between these components could reverse the effect.
Instead of pushing the Universe outward, dark energy would begin pulling it inward, triggering final collapse.
When scientists simulated the model forward in time, they arrived at a precise date: in approximately 33.3 billion years, the Universe would come to an end.
This is a cosmic blink of an eye compared to the trillions of years predicted in the traditional model, in which expansion would continue to accelerate indefinitely, leading to a “Big Freeze”, with galaxies increasingly distant and cold.
This idea is still new and needs further confirmation.
The DES and DESI data are impressive, but the science requires rigorous verification.
Different combinations of parameters can explain the same observations, although the scenario with a negative cosmological constant – which leads to the Big Crunch – is the most likely in this analysis.
More future observations will be essential to test the model with greater precision.
The Universe remains a great evolving mystery.
Each new map of the cosmos forces us to rethink what we thought we knew.
If this hypothesis is confirmed, our vision of cosmic destiny changes radically: instead of an eternal and solitary path, we would have a great return that would take us back to initial conditions.
Meanwhile, we continue collecting data, putting together the greatest story ever told – a story that, who knows, could end sooner than we expected.
Published in 04/29/2026 05h59
Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.
Reference article:
Original study: