The researchers used new data on black holes to calculate entropy -- the phenomenon where various types of energy are permanently converted to thermal energy.

The conclusion of entropy may be 'heat death' where all matter and energy in the universe eventually becomes thermal energy -- with no hope of reversing the process.

"We considered all contributions to the entropy of the observable universe -- stars, star light, the cosmic microwave background," said Chas Egan, a PhD student at the Australian National University's (ANU) Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"We even made an estimate of the entropy of dark matter."

"But it’s the entropy of super-massive black holes that dominates the entropy of the universe."

"When we used the new data on the number and size of super-massive black holes, we found that the entropy of the observable universe is about 30 times larger than previous calculations."

"Contrary to common opinion, the maintenance of all the complicated structures we see around us -- galaxies, stars, hurricanes and kangaroos -- have the net effect of increasing the disorder and entropy of the universe" said Dr Charley Lineweaver, co-ordinator of ANU’s Planetary Science Institute.

"But to be fair, their contributions are negligible compared to the entropy of super-massive black holes."

These findings have important implications for living systems on Earth and beyond.

"The universe started out in a low entropy state and, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy has been increasing ever since," Egan said.

"This is important because the amount of energy available to life in the universe, including terrestrial life, depends on the entropy of the universe."

"We’d like to know how much energy will be available to life forms anywhere in the universe, and where this energy is."

"The first step in this procedure is to determine the entropy of the universe."

"That is what we did."

The next phase of their research is to determine the point of maximum entropy to determine when we can expect heat death in the universe.

But there is one small reason to hope that the universe may not be ultimately doomed.

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger of Schrödinger's Cat fame helped to pioneer the mathematical analysis of living systems in his seminal 1944 book 'What is Life?'.

He believed that life itself was 'negative entropy' and that this quality was observable in living organisms.

Perhaps somewhere out there, extraterrestrial scientists are even now developing strategies to prevent the end of the universe.