Quote:
Originally posted by Raw Kuts
Almost a year ago I swore I read something that supposedly proved that the universe will never contract then expand then contract then expand. I think they determined that the amount of mass in the universe is not enough to create the gravity needed to pull everything back together, so for so called forever everything just expands away from each other.
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There is not enought "normal" matter, thats for sure. However, a huge amount of the mass of the universe is made up of
dark matter, which is extremely difficult to detect. It is possible that the mass of the dark matter would be enough to bring the universe past the threshold value.
But current estimates show that it is unlikely that enough dark matter exists, so instead of a "Big Crunch", we are more likely to end up as a total heat death, i.e. a state of maximum entropy, with all of the matter/energy in the universe evenly spead over an incredibly large distance.