The Universe's Countdown: New Insights into Cosmic Fate and Fungal Origins

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 This is Space Time, Series 28 Episode 120 for broadcast on 6 October 2025.

spk_0 Coming up on Space Time, a new study warns the universe will end in 20 billion years

spk_0 from now, and you three dimensional map of our Milky Way galaxy, and how fungi set the

spk_0 stage for life on land on planet Earth.

spk_0 All that and more coming up on Space Time.

spk_0 Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.

spk_0 A new study claims the universe is now approaching the midpoint of its 33 billion year lifespan,

spk_0 and will come to an end in around 20 billion years' time.

spk_0 A report in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics says calculations based on new data

spk_0 from dark energy observatories suggest that after expanding to its peak size in about 11 billion years

spk_0 from now, our universe will begin to contract, eventually snapping back like a rubber band to form a singularity at the end of time.

spk_0 The studies lead author Henry Ty from Cornell University says he reached his conclusion after adding new data

spk_0 to a model involving Albert Einstein's famous cosmological constant, a factor introduced more than a century ago by Einstein,

spk_0 and still used by cosmologists today to predict the future of the universe.

spk_0 Ty says that for the last 20 years, scientists believe the cosmological constant was positive,

spk_0 and the universe would therefore expand forever.

spk_0 But he claims the new data seems to indicate that in fact the cosmological constant is actually negative,

spk_0 and the universe will end up in a big crunch.

spk_0 Right now, the universe is 13.8 billion years old, and it's still expanding.

spk_0 Now according to current models based on dark energy, it's two simplest fates, a vettler either

spk_0 continuous present expansion forever, that's if the cosmological constant is positive,

spk_0 or alternatively, if the cosmological constant is actually negative, it'll reach a maximum size,

spk_0 before contracting, eventually collapsing back to zero.

spk_0 Ty says this big crunch defines the end of the universe, and he says that'll happen in around 20 billion years from now.

spk_0 The findings are based on observations by the dark energy survey in Chile,

spk_0 and the dark energy spectroscopic instrument Dezi in Arizona, which are both in good accord with each other's data.

spk_0 The whole idea of the dark energy survey of these two groups is to see whether dark energy,

spk_0 which makes up roughly 68% of the mass energy budget of the universe, really comes from a pure cosmological constant.

spk_0 The authors found that the universe is not just dominated by a cosmological constant known as dark energy.

spk_0 Ty and colleagues propose there's a hypothetical particle of very low mass that behaved like a cosmological constant

spk_0 early in the life of the universe, but doesn't anymore.

spk_0 And it's this simple model which fits the data so well, and tips the underlying cosmological constant into negative territory.

spk_0 Ty says scientists have said before that if the cosmological constant is negative, then the universe would eventually collapse.

spk_0 That's not new.

spk_0 However here, the model tells you when the universe collapses, and how it collapses.

spk_0 Hundreds of astronomers are busy measuring dark energy by observing millions of galaxies across the cosmos,

spk_0 and determining the distance between these galaxies, gathering more and more accurate data to feed into the model.

spk_0 Dezi will continue observations for another year, and observations are ongoing all soon begin with several other dark energy observatories,

spk_0 including this Vicki transient facility in San Diego, the European Euclid Space Telescope,

spk_0 NASA's recently launched VIRX mission and the VIRAC ribbon observatory.

spk_0 Ty says knowing both the beginning and the end of the universe provides a greater understanding of the cosmos.

spk_0 As to where the universe goes, once it contracts data to a big crunch, the answer's simple.

spk_0 The universe goes into the future.

spk_0 This is space time.

spk_0 Still to come, a new three-dimensional map of our Milky Way galaxy, and how fungi set the stage for life on land on planet Earth.

spk_0 All that and more still to come.

spk_0 On space time.

spk_0 The European Space Agency's Guy Space Telescope has created the most accurate three-dimensional map yet of star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy.

spk_0 This new map will teach astronomers more about these obscure molecular gas and dust clouds and the hot young stars born within them and which ultimately shaped them.

spk_0 It's notoriously difficult to map and study regions of space where stars form because they're usually hidden from view by thick clouds whose distances cannot be accurately directly measured.

spk_0 The guy itself doesn't see these clouds, but it can measure stellar positions and the circled extinction of stars.

spk_0 This means it can see how much light from the star is being blocked by dust.

spk_0 From this, astronomers can create three-dimensional map showing where the dust is and use those maps to figure out how much ionized gas is present, a tell-tale sign of star formation.

spk_0 The new three-dimensional map of star-forming regions of the Milky Way is based on guy observations of some 44 million ordinary stars and 87's Spetro-type O-Blue Stars.

spk_0 The map extends out to a distance of some 4,000 light years.

spk_0 Spetro-type O-Blue Stars are rare, they're young, massive and extremely bright and hot and they shine bright in ultraviolet light.

spk_0 These ultraviolet photons are so energetic they can quite literally strip electrons away from hydrogen atoms when hitting them.

spk_0 In this way, they ionize the hydrogen gas around hot stars, meaning it becomes a mixture of charged particles.

spk_0 Astronomers call these ionized hydrogen clouds hydrogen two regions.

spk_0 A characteristic signal that can be picked up from these regions is the hydrogen alpha or H alpha spectral line at a wavelength of 656.3 nanometers.

spk_0 This is one way that astronomers can identify regions in space where stars are being born.

spk_0 Many telescopes have observed these regions, so astronomers have a good idea of what they look like, but no one really knew what they look like in three dimensions or from an outside perspective, and that's where guy comes in.

spk_0 Guy has mapped the positions, velocities and motions across the sky of billions of celestial objects, including millions of stars.

spk_0 The result is the most accurate, multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way galaxy ever created, and it's giving astronomers the data to infer what the galaxy would look like from the perspective of someone outside the Milky Way.

spk_0 Guy has sky maps in all three special coordinates, plus three velocities that he's moving towards or away from the Earth and moving across the sky have revealed the precise motions and positions of millions of nearby stars.

spk_0 With this, the telescopes already revolutionized science's view of the solar neighborhood, allowing astronomers to comprehensively map the stars and interstellar material near the Sun in a way that they were simply unable to do before.

spk_0 One of the study's authors, Lewis McCallum from the University of San Andreas, says Guy is providing the first accurate view of what our section of the Milky Way galaxy really would look like from above.

spk_0 He says there's simply never been a model of the distribution of ionized gas in the local Milky Way that matches other telescopes observations of the sky, so well.

spk_0 That's why astronomers are so confident that Guy's top-down view and fly through the galaxy are a good approximation of what these clouds would really look like in three dimensions.

spk_0 Lewis's new map includes three dimensional views of the gum nebula, an North American nebula, the California nebula, and the Orion Aerodanus Superbubble.

spk_0 This data will allow astronomers to learn more about how giant spectrotype O stars energize gas and how far out their influence can reach.

spk_0 Lewis and colleagues already noticed that some of the clouds in the star-forming regions seem to have broken open, and streams of gas and dust are likely venting into a giant cavity.

spk_0 The map also shows how radiation from massive stars ionizes the surrounding interstellar medium, and how dust and gas interact with this radiation.

spk_0 The 3D model provides a detailed look at the processes that shape our local galactic environment, and it helps astronomers better understand interactions between the warm and cold water.

spk_0 The cold components of the local universe. In the future, this map, which requires huge computational power to develop, will expand even further, including an even larger area of the home galaxy.

spk_0 This report from ACED-TV.

spk_0 What does the Milky Way look like from the outside? No spacecraft can travel beyond our galaxy, so we can't take a selfie.

spk_0 But during its lifetime, Gaia made 3 trillion observations of 2 billion stars and other objects, giving us the best insight yet of what our home galaxy looks like.

spk_0 We can identify the Milky Way's central bar and its spiral arms based on Gaia data, we can see the galaxy edge on, and can identify its pulse and disc.

spk_0 Gaia showed that our galaxy's disc is warped and wobbles, possibly caused by a collision with another smaller galaxy moving further out.

spk_0 Gaia also studied other galaxies around the Milky Way, such as the large and the small megyllanic clouds and forcey other companions.

spk_0 Gaia revealed our galaxy's turbulent history by tracking the movements of streams of stars. Gaia gives a unique view of our Milky Way, scanning our galaxy from the inside out, building a more detailed map than ever before, fundamentally changing what we thought we knew about our home galaxy, where our sun is embedded among billions of stars.

spk_0 This is Space Time. Still to come, how fungal set the stage for life on land on planet Earth and later in the science report, a new state he says people whose parents have mental illnesses are more likely to die prematurely.

spk_0 Or that and more still to come, on Space Time.

spk_0 A new study examining life's evolution on planet Earth has found that fungi set the stage for life on land somewhere between 900 million and 1.4 billion years ago.

spk_0 That's hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought. The findings reported in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution used a novel gene swap method to shed new light on the timelines and pathways for the evolution of fungi.

spk_0 The discovery by researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology provides evidence for the evolution of fungi around terrestrial ecosystems and therefore the emergence of life on land.

spk_0 It suggests these ecosystems recycled nutrients and possibly partnered with other organisms.

spk_0 Pitting down their timelines shows fungi were diversifying long before plants and consistent with early partnerships with algae that likely helped pave the way for terrestrial ecosystems.

spk_0 Complex multicellular life that his organisms made from many cooperating cells with specialized jobs evolved independently on Earth on at least five major occasions, animals, land plants, fungi, red algae and brown algae.

spk_0 Understanding when these groups emerged is fundamental to piecing together the history of life on Earth.

spk_0 The complex multicellular life wasn't simply a matter of cells clumping together. It was the dawn of organisms where cells took on specialized jobs and were organized into distinct tissues and organs.

spk_0 For most of these groups, the fossil record acts as a geological calendar, providing anchor points in deep time.

spk_0 For example, red algae shows up as early as 1.6 billion years ago in candidates seaweed like fossils from India.

spk_0 Animals appeared around 600 million years ago based on etiacorant fossils such as the cultured pancake-like deconsonia.

spk_0 The first land plants took root roughly 470 million years ago based on the discovery of tiny fossil spores.

spk_0 And brown algae such as kelp diversified tens to hundreds of million years later still.

spk_0 And based on all this evidence, a chronological picture of life's complexity starts to emerge.

spk_0 But the notable exception to this fossil-based timeline has always been fungi.

spk_0 The fungal kingdom has long been an enigma for paleontologists.

spk_0 Their typically soft filamental aspodies means they really fossilize well.

spk_0 And unlike animals or plants, which appear to have a single origin of complex multicellularity, it seems fungi evolve this trait in multiple times.

spk_0 From the first unicellular ancestors, making it difficult to pinpoint a single origin event in the fossil record.

spk_0 To overcome the gaps in the fungal fossil record, scientists are relying on the steady rate at which genetic mutations accumulate in an organism's DNA over generations.

spk_0 By comparing the number of genetic differences between two species, scientists can reach an estimate of how long ago they diverged from a common ancestor.

spk_0 The problem is this molecular clock still uncalibrated. It can reveal relative time but not absolute years.

spk_0 To set the clock, scientists need to calibrate it with anchor points from the fossil record.

spk_0 And given the scarcity of fungal fossils, this has always been a major challenge.

spk_0 The new study addressed this, but incorporating rare gene swabs between different fungal lineages, a process known as horizontal gene transfer.

spk_0 While genes are normally passed down vertically from parent to child, horizontal gene transfer is like a gene jumping sideways from one species to another.

spk_0 And if a gene from linear j is found to have jumped into linear j, it establishes a clear rule.

spk_0 The ancestors of linear j must be older than the descendants of linear j.

spk_0 By identifying 17 such transfers, the authors established a series of older than younger than relationships.

spk_0 That, alongside fossil records, have helped to tighten ancon strain the fungal timeline.

spk_0 The analysis suggests a common ancestor for living fungal dating to between roughly 900 million to 1.4 billion years ago.

spk_0 That's all before land plants.

spk_0 That timing supports a long-period of fungal algae interactions, fundamentally reframing the story of life's colonization of land.

spk_0 It suggests that for hundreds of millions of years before the first true plants took root, fungi were already present, likely directing with algae in microbial communities.

spk_0 And this long-perparatory phase may have been essential for making Earth's continents habitable.

spk_0 By breaking down rock and recycling nutrients, these ancient fungi may have been the first true ecosystems engineers, creating the first primitive soils and fundamentally altering the terrestrial environment.

spk_0 It means plants didn't colonize a barren wasteland, but rather a war that had already been prepared for them over eons by the ancient persistent activity of the fungal kingdom.

spk_0 Meanwhile, a report in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is unearthed new evidence in the ancient rock record, suggesting that some of the first animals on Earth were likely ancestors of the modern-day sea sponge.

spk_0 The study's authors identified chemical fossils that may have been left by ancient sponges in rocks that are almost 541 million years old.

spk_0 A chemical fossil is a remnant of a biomolecule that originated from a living organism that has since been buried, transformed and preserved in sediment, sometimes for hundreds of millions of years.

spk_0 The newly identified fossils, are special types of stirrains, which are a geologically stable form of steriles, such as cholesterol, that are found in the cell membranes of complex organisms.

spk_0 The stirrains were found in rocks formed during the Eddie Aquin period, between roughly 541 and 635 million years ago.

spk_0 That's just before the Cambrian explosion, when planet Earth experienced a sudden global explosion of complex multicellular life forms.

spk_0 The authors traced these special stirrains to a class of sea sponges known as demospanters.

spk_0 Today, demospanters come in a huge variety of sizes and colors, and they live throughout the oceans of the Earth that soft filter feeders.

spk_0 The new discovery offers strong evidence that the ancestors of demospanters were among the very first animals to have evolved, and they likely did so much earlier than the rest of Earth's major animal groups.

spk_0 This is space time.

spk_0 And time that to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news insights this week with a science report.

spk_0 Scientists have found a significant link between drinking soda beverages and depression.

spk_0 The findings reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association also showed that this effect could be significantly mediated by how much of a specific bacterium could eager failure existed in a person's intestinal tract.

spk_0 The authors looked inside the soft drink habits and microbiomes of almost a thousand people, just over 400 of whom had been diagnosed with major depressive conditions.

spk_0 They believe that drinking pop make contribute to the condition through microbiome changes, especially those involving a githelium in female patients.

spk_0 While this kind of study cannot prove it or a connection between soft drinks and depression, the authors are suggesting prevention strategies that reduce consumption of these drinks and target the microbiome in treatment.

spk_0 Scientists say people whose parents have mental illnesses are more likely to die prematurely up to middle age.

spk_0 The findings reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined medical records for more than 3.5 million Swedish people, around 1.2 million of whom had parents with mental illnesses.

spk_0 They say the link between parental mental illness and premature death held true for all mental disorders and were strongest for unnatural deaths, which include suicides, murder and accidents, and if both parents were diagnosed with mental disorders.

spk_0 The findings highlight the importance of providing support for families with parents with mental disorders in order to minimize premature deaths among their children.

spk_0 One of the oldest people in the world who died just last year at the ripe old age of 117 may have survived so long because her body was still working as if she was at a much younger biological age.

spk_0 Among signs of a healthy body, the Journal's cell reports medicine found that her DNA had markings usually found in younger people, that she had read gene types linked to long life.

spk_0 They also found differences in a microbiome, including having more of a type that people typically lose with older age.

spk_0 The researchers say this shows that old age doesn't always have to be linked with disease.

spk_0 The guttering highlight of the Australian skeptical calendar is the annual scepticon conference, which this year was held in Melbourne.

spk_0 Of course, one of the highlights of the event is the Harley-Covidard Bent Spoon Award, which is presented annually to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudo-scientific piffle.

spk_0 The award is rumoured to have been fashioned out of a piece of Goverwood salvaged from Noah's Ark.

spk_0 Upon its sturdy base is the fixed a spoon rumoured to have been used at the last supper.

spk_0 The spoon was allegedly bent by Yuri Geller using old magic energies unknown to science.

spk_0 Past winners of this elegant trophy for displaying a total lack of a scientific understanding or an ability to pile a bull-up high

spk_0 have included the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the ABC, the demonstrating new lows in journalistic standards within motto, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

spk_0 The University of Wollongong for proving once and for all that you don't need to be smart or even right, or for that matter scientifically accurate in order to get a doctorate.

spk_0 Then there was the Adelaide Psychic and Dankbar, the herdest-scarory of the Colossus of Rhodes, which created something of a media frenzy, to the worst show to be nothing more than Mutton, Daughters Rubble.

spk_0 The ABC won it again for their television shows Second Opinion, which promoted so much unscientific quackery that they really should have gotten a few more opinions.

spk_0 Southern Cross University was another award winner for offering a degree course in naturopathy.

spk_0 Even though once exalted CSIRO has been awarded, with its chief Larry Marshall getting a special mention for his support of water-divining, the ABC won the award yet again for spending taxpayer money on psychic investigators.

spk_0 Then there was Racing Driver Peter Brock, whose highly touted energy polariser, generated more heat from the motoring media than what it did energy in his car.

spk_0 A special broadcasting service SPS won the award for their TV program Medicine or Myth.

spk_0 They were promoting alternative medical treatments as if they had some actual scientific credibility, as opposed to being nothing more than an occasional placebo effect.

spk_0 The Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works won their award for hiring a US psychic archaeologist to help detect non-existent electromagnetic photo fields.

spk_0 And once again the taxpayer fund at ABC won the award, this time for their television show The New Inventors, which seriously considered the pseudo-scientific benefits of an anti-biowater conditioning system, which probably should have been filtered through the kidneys a few more times.

spk_0 In case you're wondering, that's more than a billion dollars of Australian taxpayers' money spent by the ABC every year.

spk_0 And of course, there was paleo-pedal Evans for his promotion of the biocharger, a miraculous device that according to its manufacturers has been proven to restore strength, stamina, coordination and mental clarity.

spk_0 Like the ABC, Evans was a modable winner. He previously won the Spoonback in 2015, his paleo-died advocacy, which included promoting bone broth as a formula replacement for babies, as well as his campaigns against fluoridation and vaccination.

spk_0 Tim Minden from Australian Skeptics says this year's exalted winner was banned naturopath Barbara O'Neill.

spk_0 The question looked at what she was saying, was extremely dangerous, totally unqualified and wrong, and they actually banned her for life for a practicing in Australia in any medical capacity at all.

spk_0 So what she's done there, she goes overseas and stream stuff, she's been big in Ireland, the UK, and the US.

spk_0 She has a tendency to suggest people rub garlic and onions and things like that on them.

spk_0 I think this isn't it.

spk_0 To get rid of vampire, if only, it would be very handy.

spk_0 To cure all sorts of things, everything from cancer to medical conditions for some sort of another mental conditions even.

spk_0 We always have the suspicion that because she's recommending family vegetables, she's being paid for by big farmer for boom.

spk_0 But she is probably unqualified, even though she occasionally allows her to be called doctor, she's not.

spk_0 She's been really active in the last year.

spk_0 A lot of people see as what she is suggesting is not being dangerous in the term right, rubbing onions on your foot is not going to kill you, but the trouble is she is staying, don't go, don't do chemotherapy, don't do this, don't do that.

spk_0 It's going to kill your social life.

spk_0 But it also means you're turning away from actually medical procedures that do work in favor of this plaque, she promotes, and that's the way the danger is.

spk_0 She's anti-vaccination, she's all the usual anti-things.

spk_0 That's Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics.

spk_0 And that's the show for now.

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spk_0 You've been listening to space time with Stuart Gary.

spk_0 This has been another quality podcast production from Bites.com.

The Universe's Countdown: New Insights into Cosmic Fate and Fungal Origins

Interactive Transcript

Topics Covered

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