New Paper Overturns Theory of Eternal Expansion: The Universe May Only Have About 33.3 Billion Years of Life Remaining
The latest cosmological research, based on observations of dark energy, has yielded a surprising conclusion: the overall lifespan of the universe is approximately only 33.3 billion years, breaking the conventional understanding that the universe will expand indefinitely and exist forever. Researchers from the University of New Hampshire and other institutions published a paper in the journal *Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics* pointing out that, by analyzing the latest observational data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), the equation of state parameter w of dark energy is not equal to -1, and is not the constant cosmological constant traditionally believed.
The research team used the best-fit model to simulate the future of the universe, and the results showed that the overall lifespan of the universe is only about 33.3 billion years, which brings a new change to the traditional understanding of "the universe will continue to expand for trillions of years."
Since the Big Bang, the universe has existed for approximately 13.8 billion years, meaning we may have already passed about one-third of the universe's history.
According to the extrapolated trajectory, the universe will continue to expand for a long time, reach a peak volume, and then stop expanding, and subsequently gradually contract inward under the influence of gravity, eventually returning to a high-density singularity in a "Big Crunch," forming an evolutionary closed loop opposite to the Big Bang.
Of course, for humans, this timescale is still far away, and there is no need to worry. After all, the sun will enter the red giant stage in about 5 billion years, at which time the solar system ecosystem will no longer exist, and human civilization will not be able to personally experience the evolution of the end of the universe.