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Preprint Forecasts Big Crunch for the Universe Around 33.3 Billion Years After the Big Bang

An unreviewed arXiv study uses an axion model to explain new survey hints of changing dark energy.

A swirl of purple and blue gas dotted with red stars moves around a central glowing core, blending together to make a giant spiral galaxy.
The standard model of cosmology suggests that cosmic expansion will continue to accelerate over time. However, if dark energy is dynamic, as some recent surveys hint, then the universe could one day reverse course and collapse on itself.
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Overview

  • A research team at the Donostia International Physics Center posted an arXiv analysis that fits recent DES and DESI signals of time‑varying dark energy and projects a cosmic collapse about 33.3 billion years after the Big Bang, roughly 20 billion years from now.
  • The work relies on an axion dark energy model that mixes a hypothesized ultra‑light axion field with a cosmological constant so the outward push of dark energy can weaken and eventually reverse into a pull.
  • DES and early DESI galaxy maps hint that dark energy may change over time, but DESI’s full results and formal papers are still forthcoming and the observational input remains provisional.
  • The authors caution that the finding is preliminary because the paper is not peer‑reviewed and will need more data and independent checks before any prediction about a future collapse can stand.
  • If the model is right, a contracting universe would squeeze matter together and could speed up black hole growth and mergers, possibly ending with giant black holes that hide the final singularity.