Physics

Universe's End Coming Sooner, But Still Billions of Years Away

Published MAY 12 2025

Story

Above: Image released by NASA on July 12, 2022 showing Stephan's Quintet, a collection of five galaxies, as seen by MIRI from the James Webb Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI/Contributor/Handout/Xinhua via Getty Images News

The Facts

Dutch scientists from Radboud University have discovered that the universe will decay much faster than previously calculated, with the final stellar remnants persisting for about 10^78 years instead of the earlier estimate of 10^1100 years.
Independent
ScienceBlog.com
The research builds on their 2023 paper, which revealed that spacetime curvature alone can lead to evaporation via Hawking radiation, a process previously thought to apply exclusively to black holes.
PHYS
ScienceBlog.com
The team's calculations showed that the evaporation time of an object depends on its density, with denser objects decaying faster through this quantum process, leading to specific predictions about different cosmic objects' lifespans.
ScienceDaily
ScienceBlog.com
Neutron stars and stellar black holes would take approximately 10^67 years to decay, while white dwarf stars would persist for about 10^78 years, with objects like the Moon and human body lasting around 10^90 years.
PHYS
Independent
The research demonstrates that any object with a gravitational field experiences quantum effects similar to Hawking radiation, though ordinary matter undergoes this process at a much slower rate than black holes.
arXiv
ScienceBlog.com
The findings suggest that primordial objects with densities above approximately 3×10^53 g/cm^3 would have completely evaporated by now, even if they formed at the beginning of our universe.
arXiv

Sources Split

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The Spin

Narrative A

This discovery represents a fundamental shift in understanding cosmic longevity, establishing that nothing in the universe is truly permanent. This breakthrough challenges previous assumptions about matter stability and sets definitive upper limits on how long anything can exist — potentially affecting theories about multiple universes and the ultimate fate of all matter.

arXiv

ScienceBlog.com

Narrative B

While the calculations are theoretically sound, the timescales involved are so vast that they have no practical impact on human existence or even cosmic evolution as we know it. The process remains undetectable with current technology, and other natural processes would cause objects to disappear long before these quantum effects become relevant.

ScienceDaily

Independent