I watched National Geographic last night, and there was a documentary on Big Bang and whether or not the universe was expanding or if there was enough mass to start pulling all the matter back together. Turns out the universe is accelerating and in a hundred billion years or so, it's all going to be empty and dead. No galaxies, no stars, nothing producing anything. There won't be ANYTHING left.
Base a new religion on that. Great expectations, eh?
What do you mean by the universe accelerating?
Big Bang tells us that the universe was once a great big ball of energy, mass, and all that, but the ball exploded and the universe started to expand. Stars formed, galaxies formed, etc, and the universe continued expanding.
The big question now is if there's enough mass in the universe for the gravitational pull to do its thing and start pulling all this expanding mass back together. There are three theories: 1, there is more than enough, so the universe starts contracting and eventually, it will again be a great big ball of mass, energy, etc. 2, there is just enough to stop the expansion and create an equilibrium. The universe will stop expanding, but there is not enough mass to pull it all back to that big ball.
And 3, there isn't enough mass, and the universe continues expanding, and will in fact accelerate. Eventually, the stars and the galaxies will be so far apart that we'll be practically alone. But the expansion won't stop there because eventually, the stars die, everything dies, and things won't be able to hold together, at all, down to and including molecular level.
Right now, it looks like alternative 3 is what we're facing. It all depends if there is more mass in the universe than we can observe. There is some, it seems, but not nearly enough.
All this is an ugly approximation, however, and we need quite a bit of mathematics to get a better look. Intensity isn't the right place for the math, though, so I'll refrain.