ALERT THE CABLE NEWS NETWORKS:

Universe might yet collapse in 'big crunch' (Hazel Muir, September 02, 2002, New Scientist.com)

The Universe might yet collapse in a devastating "big crunch". Physicists have shown that even though its growth is speeding up, it could still start to implode by the time it is only twice its current age.

The Universe looks as if it will last forever, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions "A few years ago, nobody would even think seriously about the end of the world within the next 10 to 20 billion years, especially since we learned that the Universe's expansion is accelerating," says Andrei Linde of Stanford University. "Now we see it is a real possibility."

In 1998, astronomers studying distant supernovae found evidence that the expansion of the Universe is getting faster. This suggests that some kind of "dark energy" is pushing space apart.

Most theories of dark energy propose that the Universe's accelerating expansion is driven by a cosmos-wide repulsive "scalar field" that has a uniform magnitude right across space. A similar energy field is thought to have made the Universe expand incredibly quickly just after the big bang, a period known as inflation. In August, Linde won the Dirac medal for his role in developing this theory.

Scientists have assumed that the repulsion of the field will drop as the Universe grows, eventually falling to zero. Though this would slow the rate of expansion of the Universe, it would never actually stop expanding. But Linde says this assumption could be wrong.

Is there any hyperbole left over for when the world actually ends? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 12, 2002 8:00 AM