(published on 10/22/2007)
(published on 10/22/2007)
(published on 05/16/2011)
We have no idea. It's hard to even imagine what an answer would be like. Yet it's tempting to wonder about.
Mike W.
(published on 02/26/2014)
There are several plausible theories of the fate of the universe, the one you are proposing is one of them. However there is experimental evidence that the universe is actually expanding at an ever increasing rate. This is attributed to "Dark Energy", which contributes a repulsive term in the Friedman equation that describes how the energy in the universe drives its expansion.
You might want to check out some of these references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_expansion_of_the_universe
LeeH
Just to add a few responses to some points in your question:
1) The dark energy doesn't cause the expansion, it just gradully speeds it up.
2) So far as we can tell from various lines of data, the dark energy density isn't changing. It's not being "depleted". Ordinary matter density does go down as the universe expands, so that makes the acceleration increase a little. As Lee's links point out, however, we don't know what will happen in the very long run. /Mike W.
(published on 11/12/2016)