• Question: We have been told that the universe is continually expanding but at some point its going to start shrinking.why is this?

    Asked by sare13 to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 23 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      it ain’t necessarily so.
      evidence at the moment points to it expanding forever, at the moment the expansion is accelerating, but the acceleration is thought to be decreasing. this points to the conclusion that the force doing the accelerating is very nearly balanced by the force of gravity – this is what slows it down. we don’t yet know the origin of the accelerating force. people have started to call this “dark energy”

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 23 Nov 2011:

      What I find interesting about this is that it means eventually everything will be spread out really thinly over the whole of the universe, seems like a bit of a sad end for it all really.

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