Data from dark-energy observatories indicate universe may ‘end in a big crunch’ at 33 billion years old

Thank God…. there is light at the end of the tunnel.

How long was Logan’s Run? Is it time for Carrousel?

Okay, this title is really misleading. Whats *really* happened is that a collaboration working on trying to measure the dark energy equation-of-state over the past few years has shown a mild (~2sigma) discrepency with the current favored cosmological model. It implies that maybe dark energy slightly changes behaviour through cosmic time. This is not new news.

*This* paper invokes a hypothetical particle as the source for dark energy, and extrapolates that if it were, it could be that the cosmological constant, Lambda, is negative, meaning the Universe would slow down and collapse.

Its worth noting that this is really fringe science. At present, it is well understood that whatever dark energy *is*, it is currently causing the Universe to expand *faster*, not slow down, and thats really all we know.

Jesus was 33 when he died. Checkmate, atheist!

Astronomer here! I wouldn’t bet on this in Vegas just yet, and I’d argue the title is misleading…

The claim is based on data from last spring from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which measures the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the universe. Dark energy is a mysterious form of energy that makes up ~70% of the “stuff” in our universe- we know this because the expansion of the universe is accelerating- that is, it is getting bigger faster over time- and we have nowhere enough normal matter (made up of you and me, stars, gas, galaxies, etc) to explain this accelerating expansion. But we also don’t know what dark energy could be- it was discovered in the 1990s, but it’s such a huge problem we frankly haven’t been able to study it in detail until now.

Anyway, this spring we had exciting news bc DESI is getting convincing data that dark energy evolves over time! Specifically, to date our “best” model to describe the universe, Lambda CDM, assumed that dark energy was constant over time. You can’t assume a giant thing like that is changing until you have good evidence of it, so you’d better get really good evidence like measurements from millions of galaxies, you know? And if you take the DESI data combine it with data from supernova explosions, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), and others, the odds of what DESI is claiming has 2.8 to 4.2 sigma significance. (A 3-sigma event has a 0.3% chance of being a statistical fluke, but many 3-sigma events in physics have faded away with more data.) So, we are not yet at the “gold standard” in physics of 5 sigma… but damn, this is intriguing AF.

Ok, so that’s great, dark energy may well be changing- what does that mean for the fate of the universe and why is this paper saying it shows a Big Crunch? Well, as of right now, as we can measure it, the universe is still just accelerating in its expansion with no real changing, and these new results don’t indicate that is going to change in the immediate future. But don’t let that stop a theorist- in [this paper](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2025/09/055) they introduce the [axion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion) to the mix, a hypothetical dark matter particle we don’t yet know exists. Short answer is the group argues that if the DESI results line up with their model of hypotheticals, we could be in like for a Big Crunch in 33 billion years (remember, we are about 13.8 billion years from the Big Bang right now).

So yeah I’m *really* not convinced on this one, and as I said I would argue saying the data itself shows this is misleading (as it’s only this *specific model* that shows it). But I know armchair philosophers like the symmetry of the Big Crunch even if there’s no evidence for it, so have fun if that’s your thing!

It’s most likely another Big Bounce, nothing to worry about