The universe, and the entire world as humans know it, may one day collapse with the Earth shrinking into a very hot and hard ball. Scientists have warned the risk of a collapse is now greater than previously thought with the process happening somewhere in the universe.

According to scientists, they have long predicted the collapse of the universe and every planet, star and everything in it will compress into a hard and small ball. Physicists from the University of Southern Denmark have calculated the possibility of a collapse happening in the universe.

Based on their calculations, the collapse of the universe may be happening sooner than expected. Scientists believe a radical shift in forces in the universe may cause all particles to change and become extremely heavy.

This includes every particle on every galaxy, solar system, planet and everything on Earth will be millions if not billions of times heavier than its current weight. When this happens, scientists believe that it will cause a disaster since the new and heavier weight will squeeze everything into an extremely hot and heavy ball.

According to scientists, the violent process is known as a phase transition which is similar to water turning into steam or a magnet heating up and losing its ability to attract metallic objects. The phase transition will begin in a subatomic particle known as Higgs boson, which normally has an ultra-dense state. It could bubble up suddenly in the universe at a certain time and place.

PhD student Jens Frederik Colding Krog at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology said there have been many theories and calculations that have been predicted about phase transition. He said they have performed precise calculations and has proven that the universe will indeed collapse sooner than what was previously predicted.

Mr Krog also said the process may also start somewhere away from the Earth's solar system in a billion years. The study is published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.