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Dark energy is weakening and the universe could (eventually) collapse, study says (www.npr.org)

submitted 9 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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...Scientists have believed dark energy was a "cosmological constant," but it is actually changing over time in unexpected ways...current data shows that, at the beginning of the universe, dark energy was very strong. But it has weakened with time and will continue to do so...The new research builds on data released from DESI in April 2024 that found signs that dark energy was changing. DESI has been surveying the universe for four years and an analysis of five years' worth of data is next for its research

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

I still think we'll end up thinking of the Big Bang as not a singular thing not even a cyclical thing that keeps happening.

More like fireworks in an empty sky, where if we zoom out enough there's "big bangs" happening all over the fucking place, constantly.

Ours will fade out someday, but there were ones before, during, and after ours.

What we've been doing is like if we saw an apple after it started falling and declared it was never in the tree, and will never hit the ground.

We're just not looking at it on a long/big enough scale.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Well the problem is we may never be able to observe anything beyond our universe, thus can't observe anything on that scale or timescale.

But yes. If it can happen once, there's no reason it won't happen again, or be recreated artificially. Nothing else in the universe is once only. There's no precedent to think the big bang would be.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Who knows?

Our edge might be trillions of years from the closest edge and entropy will make us "nothing" before we collide.

Tomorrow the overlap could happen, an entire different reality with maybe complete different physics and life could just suddenly overlap with our boundaey. If it was "new" it would fly thru ours, almost instantly. If it was "old" it could take billions of years to notice. It might start off a chain reaction where we annihilate each other, we might merge, or even just pass thru each other with zero effect on either.

Like, this is just one of a literal dumbfounding amount of things that we just have zero idea about.

We want to never know the answers, but some day we might just find out with zero warning.