Scientists have long assumed our universe would continue on for trillions of years, but a new study presents a much shorter life span for the cosmos: Our universe might last only another 33 billion years.
That's just a cosmic blink before everything collapses in on itself — a process dubbed the "Big Crunch," where expansion reverses, causing all matter and space-time to collapse back into an extremely dense state similar to the conditions of the Big Bang. While long considered a discarded possibility for the fate of the universe, because of accelerating cosmic expansion, this new research has reopened the surprising — and slightly unsettling — option.
