New study reveals that after roughly 13.8 billion years of continuous expansions, the Universe may soon come to a halt and begin to decrease. Researchers in a new publication seek to simulate the dynamics of dark energy, an enigmatic factor that appears to be accelerating the rate of expansion.
This is not a permanent natural force, but rather an entity known as quintessence, which decays with age in the team’s theory. Scientists have uncovered evidence that dark energy’s repulsive power may be waning despite the universe’s rapid expansion over the last millions and millions of years.
For the following 65 million years, as per their scenario, we might see a fast cessation of the Universe’s expansion. Within just 100 million years we could see a steady shrinkage that finishes eons from now in the demise of spacetime. And that might all happen “strikingly” fast. It is possible that the repulsive power of dark energy has been in decrease for millennia, as per the team’s hypothesis.
There is already a slowdown in the speed of the universe’s expansion throughout this type of situation. In around 65 million years, this momentum might come to an end, and then after a few hundred million years, dark energy could begin to pull, leading the cosmos to shrink.
As a result, after well almost ~14 billion years of expansion, space may begin to contract. Any hypothetical humanity remaining on Earth would never even detect a shift in the gradual initial shrinking of the Universe.
Regrettably, there really is no practical technique to verify if quintessence is genuine or if cosmic growth has slowed. ” For the time being, it’s only a question of matching the concept to existing data, which the authors achieve admirably in their latest study.
