The question of whether and how the world will end has been discussed over and over again. There have been many predictions over the years, some of which inspired iconic Hollywood movies worth watching. This time, scientists came with yet another prediction, and they are even stating the timing when the world may end.

While our lovely planet came into existence with a big bang, it seems it could end with some scientists describe as a “big crunch,” or a condition in which the universe would start expanding and everything it contains will be pulled back together.

This means that the world will collapse in on itself in what is dubbed “cosmic hell.”

Scientists from Cornell University working on a recent study calculated exactly when the “Big Crunch” could begin, and no, it’s not happening any time soon. In fact, they believe the end of the world may happen in 19.5 billion years. According to Henry Tye, a lead at the institution, the process may begin in 11 billion years time, and it will take 8.5 billion years more for it to complete.

Dr Ethan Yu–Cheng, from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, explained, “It is just like throwing a basketball vertically upwards in daily life. The negative cosmological constant acts like the Earth’s gravity, which pulls the basketball downward.

“The basketball will de–accelerate until reaching the maximum height and start to fall.”

Dr Hoang Nhan Luu, a researcher at the Donostia International Physics Center told Mail Online: “Intelligent civilizations at the scales of solar systems or even galactic scales would not notice any obvious phenomenon because these changes happen at much larger cosmological scales.

“Civilisations like us typically exist on time scales of hundreds to thousands of years while the changes happen on billion–year time scales, so we wouldn’t notice any obvious day–to–day phenomenon until the very last moment.”

Asked whether humans could survive this event, Tye answered, “To survive, human beings have to move to the edge of our solar system or beyond. We have a few billion years’ time to prepare for that trip.”