The "last interesting thing" that ever happens in the universe won't be Winston Peters' retirement from politics, but the explosion of a long-dead black dwarf star, a scientist has claimed.
But it won't happen for a very, very long time - in years, the number one followed by 32,000 zeroes, according to theoretical physicist Matt Caplan of Illinois State University. That's about 15 pages' worth of zeroes.
By then, the universe will be a "bit of a sad, lonely, cold place", Dr Caplan said, the universe's neverending expansion having torn apart everything but a few remnant black holes and the remains of what used to be white dwarf stars, having cooled down and also turned black.
Big stars end their lives in supernova, exploding violently. Smaller stars don't have the power to do that, lacking enough iron, and instead shrink into white dwarfs.
"As white dwarfs cool down over the next few trillion years, they'll grow dimmer, eventually freeze solid, and become 'black dwarf' stars that no longer shine," said Dr Caplan.
White dwarfs don't have the energy to explode, but over trillions of trillions of years, Caplan says a process known as quantum tunneling will eventually result in enough iron to make them blow.
"Fusion happens, even at zero temperature, it just takes a really long time."
How long? Well, his calculations put the first black dwarf explosion so many years into the future, the number would be ridiculous to write down. It's the number one followed by 1100 zeroes.
"In years, it's like saying the word 'trillion' almost a hundred times. If you wrote it out, it would take up most of a page. It's mindbogglingly far in the future."
And that's just the first. The sheer size of the universe means there will be several trillion of these explosions taking many more years than there are atoms in the universe.
"It's hard to imagine anything coming after that, black dwarf supernova might be the last interesting thing to happen in the universe. They may be the last supernova ever," said Dr Caplan.
Perhaps the saddest part is that no one will even see it, even if they were alive at the time. Not even Peters.
"Galaxies will have dispersed, black holes will have evaporated, and the expansion of the universe will have pulled all remaining objects so far apart that none will ever see any of the others explode.It won't even be physically possible for light to travel that far."
His research was published in journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
