Universe to Continue for 140 B. Years: Japanese-Led Team

Tokyo, Sept. 26 (Jiji Press)--The universe is likely to exist for at least the next 140 billion years, a Japanese-led research team said Wednesday. Existing theory suggests that the universe will eventually come to an end as a result of its accelerated expansion. The latest conclusion came from a project to analyze observation data on about 10 million galaxies from the Hyper Suprime-Cam wide-field imaging camera at Subaru Telescope in Hawaii of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The team said it has confirmed that the formation of large-scale structures due to the gravitational force of dark matter in the universe is slower than suggested by data from the Planck satellite of the European Space Agency, indicating that the universe may have a longer life span. The remaining lifespan compares with the universe's estimated age of about 13.8 billion years, calculated in a 2013 study using Planck data. The latest conclusion came after 11 pct of the HSC project, according to Chiaki Hikage, project assistant professor of the University of Tokyo, who leads the research team. A complete data analysis "will clarify whether the current standard cosmological model has any flaws," Hikage said. The international team also includes researchers from Princeton University in the United States and other Japanese and overseas institutions. END