The end of the Universe isn’t just darkness. If dark energy tears it apart, or it crunches back into a point like a reverse Big Bang, we hit a singularity — the moment where physics as we know it breaks down. For ages, we thought everything vanishes in this cosmic cataclysm. But the equation derived by Paul Dirac in 1928 revealed: matter particles, fermions, are like seeds that don’t burn, while force carriers, bosons (like photons of light), are flames destined to fizzle out.

At the heart of the singularity, where spacetime curvature becomes infinite, Dirac’s equation yields finite, calm solutions for them. For bosons, there’s no such loophole. Researchers first spotted this escape hatch by linking Dirac’s ideas with Stephen Hawking’s work on black holes.