Stephen Hawking predicted the universe's end in his final research paper finished just two weeks before his death, the article's coauthor said.
Thomas Hertog, professor for theoretical psychics at KU Leuven University in Belgium, said Hawking finished the research from his deathbed, The Sunday Sun reported.
The famed British theoretical physicist who suffered from a rare form of motor neurone disease that left him wheelchair-bound since 1964, best known for his 1988 work "A Brief History of Time," died March 14 at 76, The Independent reported.
The research paper predicted how the universe would eventually die when the stars run out of energy, but said humans could use probes to find new universes to inhabit, according to The Sun. Scientists said it is the first such theory that could actually be tested in experiments.
The Sunday Times said the research lays out the math needed for a space probe to find experimental evidence for the existence of a "multiverse" – the theory that our cosmos is only one of many universes.
The Independent said Hawking and Hertog's work, titled "A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation," is currently being reviewed by a leading scientific journal.
"He has often been nominated for the Nobel and should have won it," Hertog told the Sunday Times of Hawking's final work. "Now he never can."
The Sun said Hawking first hinted at the multiverse idea back in 1983 with the "no-boundary" theory he devised with James Hartle. In the "no boundary theory," the professors described how the Earth hurtled into existence during the Big Bang.
They suggested in the work that there was not just one "Big Bang" and that the phenomenon was accompanied by a number of other "Big Bangs" that created separate universes, The Sun noted.
The idea of a dying universe, though, has remained controversial with cosmologists like Hawking's friend Neil Turok, director of Canada's Perimeter Institute.
"I remain puzzled as to why he found this picture interesting," he said, per the Sun.
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