Mark Your Calendars: Universe to End--in About 10 Trillion Years

The end of the universe as humans know it will occur in about 10 trillion years, but certain physical processes will continue as far into the future as astronomers can imagine, according to researchers from the University of Michigan. For all practical purposes, what we think of as the universe will end when all the big stars, such as our sun, stop shining, said astrophysicist Fred Adams: “At that time, a human eye on Earth would observe the universe to be dark and black.”

But there will be no human eyes to observe it, Adams and his colleague Greg Laughlin said at the astronautical meeting, because the Earth will have been reduced to an uninhabitable cinder by the sun’s expansion before its death. To put their projection into context, they noted that the universe is only about 15 billion years old. “I’d like to make the point that the end is not that near,” Adams said.