Universal decline: Astronomers say 95% of the stars that will ever exist have already been born



Scientist say our universe's creation of stars is slowing down

A staggering 95 per cent of potential stellar bodies are already out there

The universe has almost finished making stars, according to an international team of astronomers.

The researchers used three telescopes — the UK Infrared Telescope and the Subaru Telescope, both in Hawaii, and Chile’s Very Large Telescope — to study trends in star formation from the beginnings of our universe.



They believe that half of all the stars that have ever existed were created between 9 and 11 billion years ago, with the other half created in the years since, according to Wired magazine.

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A light that never goes out?: Scientists believe that of all the stars that will ever exist, 95 per cent have already been born

Roughly put, that means 95 per cent of all stars that will ever light up the night sky already exist, if the trend continues.



The study's lead author, David Sobral of Leiden University in the Netherlands, said: 'We are clearly living in a universe dominated by old stars.

'All of the action in the universe occurred billions of years ago.

'The production of stars in the Universe as a whole has been continuously declining over the last 11 billion years; it is 30 times lower today than at its likely peak 11 billion years ago.'

He added: 'If this trend continues, no more than five percent more stars will exist in the universe.'



The team's telescopes searched for alpha particles emitted by Hydrogen atoms throughout vast swathes of sky.



'Snapshots' of when the universe were taken when it was 2, 4, 6 and 9 billion years old. The scientists say the sample is 10 times larger than any similar study before it.



But anyone worried about this galactic slowdown can take heart from the fact that the last star to ever be born is likely to twinkle into existence in a few billion years.

Chile's VLT (the Very Large Telescope), situated at an altitude of 2,635m in Atacama Desert, was used in the most extensive study of its kind