For a long time, physicists have held the belief that ‘the universe will end with an icy sputter known as “heat death”.’ This is the phenomenon when ‘the universe finally uses up all its energy, with all motion stopping and all the atoms in creation grinding to a halt.’ Now, a group of Australian physicists have come up with some new and startling calculations that the end of the universe through heat death may come even sooner than previously expected.

Heat death revolves around the concept of entropy which means that ‘disordered states are more stable than ordered states.’ Black holes greatly cause this entropy in the universe because they ‘break down matter and energy in their gravitational maelstroms.’ Earlier calculations ‘measured the rate of this disorder using the destructive power of the smaller, more common black holes.’ The Australian physicists, however, have now discovered that ‘super massive black holes are breaking them faster than we could have imagined.’

These super massive black holes are now consuming the universe at a faster rate. The old calculations did not take into account how much of the universe has already been eaten by these super massive black holes. ‘This new calculation reveals the age of the universe to be closer to 90 than 50.’ Both old and new calculations, though, agree that heat death is still billions of years away.

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Via U.S. News & World Report