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’s only twice its current age.
“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.…
