An international team of astronomers examined the data of more than 200,000 galaxies at different electromagnetic wavelengths. The conclusion is that in a section of the universe the energy output today is about half compared to two billion years ago. In essence, the universe is dying but you need not worry because it’s an extremely slow process. This research was presented at the International Astronomical Union XXIX General Assembly and will be published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society”.
This research is part of the GAMA (Galaxy and Mass Assembly) project, the largest multi-frequency survey ever conducted. It aims to exploit the latest generation space and ground-based instruments to study cosmology and the formation and evolution of galaxies. In total, the survey covers about 300,000 galaxies.
Among the telescopes used for this survey there are VISTA and VST ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile among the ground-based ones and NASA’s GALEX and WISE and ESA’s Herschel space telescopes. Simon Driver, ICRAR (International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research), The University of Western Australia, who heads the GAMA team, explained that he and his collaborators used as many space and ground-based telescopes as they could get our hands on to measure the energy output of over 200,000 galaxies across as broad a wavelength range as possible.
The data collected during the observations get stored and are available for subsequent searches, even of different types. The data used were collected by the GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) and WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) space telescopes some years ago, in the course of missions then terminated.
The use of data from such different instruments allowed to measure the galaxies output at 21 different wavelengths, from ultraviolet to the far infrared. Those are very useful observations within the GAMA project that for this specific research made it possible to detect a drop in the energy output from the galaxies examined.
Most of the energy in the universe was created in the Big Bang but new energy is constantly generated by stars. The measurements of this energy allowed to detect that it’s falling in all wavelengths. In essence, the universe is slowly fading.
This result is actually not at all surprising. The universe is expanding so its density is decreasing, the distances between galaxies are increasing and the stars use up their hydrogen for nuclear fusion therefore it’s inevitable that the universe is slowly fading.
This research is important because it provided the most extensive assessment of the energy output from the whole universe. This will allow a better understanding of the evolution and fate of the universe. The astronomers plan to continue this research in the coming years, possibly using data that will be collected by the SKA radio telescope, currently under construction.
After the publication of this research, some alarmist interpretations were reported by some media. However, these fears are unjustified because the universe will keep onliving at least for many billions of years. In essence there’s nothing to worry about.
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