I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been pretty happy to have not been around when the Big Bang started it all.

I mean, it sounds like a lot to deal with, right?

Well, buckle up, because it sounds like scientists believe there might be more coming (though we probably won’t be around for those, either).

This paper by two University of Portsmouth theoretical physicists is yet to be peer reviewed, but in it, they suggest that dark energy could switch on and off – which means someday, it will come back on.

There’s a lot we still don’t understand about the Big Bang that brought our universe into existence in the first place. For example, a “singularity” that followed immediately afterward, in which there was likely a point of “infinite density where the math breaks down.”

Then, a period of “inflation,” in which the universe expanded rapidly.

The paper’s authors suggest that dark energy was behind this push-and-pull dynamic, and that the one that created our universe was a single Bang in a line of others.

Dark energy could therefore cause the universe to contract and then “bang” again, over and over ad infinitum.

The theory is known as the “Big Bounce,” and posits that a singularity never had to happen at all.

There are some drawbacks to this dark energy model, and the researchers admit they had to insert an artificial value to explain the current rate of expansion – but they don’t think that’s a dealbreaker.

“Nonetheless, our qualitative analysis serves as a basis for the construction of more realistic models with realistic quantitative behavior.”

We still don’t know the fate of our universe, and honestly, I’m not sure that we would want to take a peek at the gory details.

Ignorance remains bliss, at least for the moment.