Nobel Prize winner Adam Riess, who discovered that the universe’s expansion is accelerating, now believes the theory of the universe built off his own groundbreaking theory might be wrong.

In 2011, Riess won the Nobel Prize for proving the universe isn’t just expanding—it’s speeding up, driven by mysterious “dark energy” that makes up 68% of everything. This repulsive force pushes galaxies apart, and as more space gets created, it grows stronger, leading to our current “standard model of cosmology.” According to this model, the universe will end in a “Big Rip”—everything flying apart forever until even atoms tear apart, leaving only cold, isolated darkness.

But there’s a problem: Riess’s precise measurements of galaxy distances keep contradicting what the standard model predicts. This discrepancy is so significant it has an official name—the “Hubble tension.” While most cosmologists extrapolate expansion rates from Big Bang afterglow data (assuming the standard model is correct), Riess actually measures real distances by photographing exploding stars and calculating brightness.

Riess’s data suggests dark energy isn’t constant—it’s weakening over time like a dying battery. If true, this completely flips our universe’s ending. There is data to suggest that dark energy lost most of its kick several billion years ago. DESI data has shown hints that dark energy might be weakening over time, but scientists emphasize these are preliminary results from just the first year of a five-year survey. But if confirmed, instead of infinite expansion, dark energy could fade to zero or even turn negative, pulling galaxies back together in a “Big Crunch”—everything reuniting in a fiery collision similar to the Big Bang’s reverse.

This isn’t just Riess going rogue—other scientists are finding similar discrepancies, though the scientific community is not throwing out the standard model anytime soon. Even Riess isn’t asking to abandon the standard model, just refine it.


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