Is there an end to our universe?

This is a theory with roots back to Einstein's theory. This old theory suggest that relativity everything in life follows a beginning and an ending; when one event occurs and reaches its high rock, the reverse is likely to occur. This means that if the universe expansion reaches its extreme, then eventually the opposite will become true where the biggest size of the universe is determined by the amount of energy. After reaching that, it will begin to collapse in on itself. In other word, this huge universe will end form a massive black hole that contains all matter, and everything will be squashed down to a miniscule size - which is why it's called the Big Crunch.

However, we don't yet fully understand everything in a universe and there are things that will affect our ultimate fate. First, the universe's expansion appears to be the interplay of two factors density and outward momentum density has a direct correlation to the amount of gravity that is present, so the denser the universe is, the more gravitational forces that take place. This on its own would mean that everything will eventually gravitate towards everything else and the final Big Crunch becomes inevitable. Although there's no friction in space, the effect of gravity would be more than enough to counteract the initial outward momentum caused by the Big Bang.

The problem with this though is that observations of the universe have shown that things are not behaving as simply as we would expect. The outer reaches appear to be expanding at a faster rate than those closer to us and galaxies are actually moving further apart from each other. Scientists don't know why this is happening but they have given a name to this unknown entity dark energy. This extra element in the expansion of the universe means that there are two potential outcomes; it will either continue to expand forever and objects will be so far apart from each other, or that everything will freeze were we could still face a Big Crunch. The determining factor is how much dark energy is actually there. If there is enough, which some scientists believe could be the case, and then everything will continue to expand. If there isn't enough though, then the forces of gravity will once more eventually over comment and bring everything back together again.

Some believe the seeming prevalence of dark energy could well signal the beginning of the Big Crunch; however, in a report released in 2015 it was suggested that the current increased rates of expansion is the last gasp of the expanding universe and that within tens of billions of years the contraction will begin.

So how would the Big Crunch happen?

If we assume that there isn't enough dark energy and that the Big Crunch does take place, then it won't be as spectacular as the Big Bang was. The universe will begin to contract evenly because matter is more or less distributed consistently. It would be a slow process for what begin to gradually pick up in speed. As galaxies got closer to one another and the forces of gravity have more of an effect in about a hundred billion years from now, as things reach and climax temperatures would significantly increase in this, will result in stars exploding and in vaporizing and all objects will be broken down into their constituent atoms which themselves will begin to break apart in the final stages as all matter from the universe compacts into a small space things will become extremely chaotic. Some predictions suggest as space-time will become so warped that it would shatter into droplets meaning all concepts of time distance and a direction would become meaningless. Of course no living organism would have been able to survive to this point in and we would have all been doomed a long time before this.

Finally, with our lack of full understanding of the process taking place in the universe, it's impossible to know for sure how everything will end. One of the scenarios is the Big Crunch which will see every piece of the matter returning to where it originated in and all that will remain to be an unimaginably large black hole. What happens at that point really is anyone's guess and it could potentially see the birth of a new universe. It’s also possible that this has all happened a number of times already and we're alive in just a long line of cyclical expansions and contractions. Again, only those of you who are planning to be alive for billions of years will really have to worry about this.