'Death date' of universe revealed as scientists say clock is ticking for Earth

A 'death date' for the universe has been revealed as a new study has claimed that the universe will begin to shrink seven billion years from now.

Scientists have stated that the clock is ticking for planet Earth after it reached its peak size, and things will start to contract until 'everything collapses back into a single point'. The theory has just been published by physicists from Cornell University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The catastrophic event has been dubbed the Big Crunch - and likened to a reverse Big Bang. They studied data from various astronomical surveys including the Dark Energy Survey and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. But it seems the universe will take quite some time to shrink.

The so called Big Crunch will take place in approximately 34 billion years, so there's plenty of time to get your affairs in order. But anyone still around by that point faces a tricky time - the universe will expand like a "rubber band", they outline, causing everything to "snap back together".

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According to other research, there could be nobody left to experience it. Earth will be "engulfed by our dying sun" in approximately seven billion years. But Sir Isaac Newtonpredicted we've got not much time left at all - he said the world will end in 2060 in a chilling letter scrawled above a maths calculation more than 300 years ago.

The renowned scientist, who discovered gravity and invented calculus, wrote about a second coming of Christin just over four decades time - marking an end to life as we know it in 2060. Newton wrote this ominous warning on a letter slip in 1704.

Born in 1643, Newton was considered an insightful theologian who had a life-long interest in the existence of God and religion. He based a lot of his religious writings on his readings of the Bible and believed in biblical visions of the Apocalypse — especially the Battle of Armageddon.

Writing under the alias 'Jehovah Sanctus Unus' predicted the world would "reset" at 2060 at which point the Earth will once again become “the Kingdom of God”, theDaily Mail reports. Newton wrote: "So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, recconing twelve months to a yeare & 30 days to a month as was done in the Calendar of the primitive year.

"And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of lived kingdoms, the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end A.C. 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner."

In another prediction referencing the date 2060, Newton stated: "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, [and] by doing so bring the sacred prophecies into discredit as often as their predictions fail. Christ comes as a thief in the night, [and] it is not for us to know the times [and] seasons [which] God hath put into his own breast."