What happens to the universe as it expands?

If the Universe holds enough matter, including dark matter, the combined gravitational attraction of everything will gradually halt this expansion and precipitate the ultimate collapse. Over time, galaxies, then individual stars, will smash into each other more frequently, killing off any life on nearby planets.

What is the expanding universe expanding into?

The universe is everything, so it isn’t expanding into anything. It’s just expanding. All of the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other, and every region of space is being stretched, but there’s no center they’re expanding from and no outer edge to expand into anything else.

What keeps the universe from expanding?

It might have enough energy density to stop its expansion and recollapse, it might have so little energy density that it would never stop expanding, but gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time went on. The universe is full of matter and the attractive force of gravity pulls all matter together.

How can the universe expand if its infinite?

The other answers simply explain that an infinite universe can continuously expand because the increase in size is filled with space, not new matter.

What is going to happen to the universe in the future?

As the Universe continues to expand, all the stars and galaxies will eventually exhaust their energy and the Universe will cool down, ending in the ‘Big Chill’. If the density of the Universe is equal to critical density, gravity will be just sufficient to stop its expansion, but only after an infinite time.

What does an infinite universe mean?

To be clear, a truly infinite universe means that anything that is not impossible (no matter how obscure) will happen, must happen and must happen, weirdly, an infinite number of times.

Is the universe expanding or expanding?

It’s just expanding. All of the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other, and every region of space is being stretched, but there’s no center they’re expanding from and no outer edge to expand into anything else. But that doesn’t mean that the universe is infinite. That brings us to the long answer.

Why is the universe moving so fast?

There are a few possible explanations for the universe’s excessive speed. One possibility is that dark energy, already known to be accelerating the universe, may be shoving galaxies away from each other with even greater — or growing — strength.

Did space expand during the Big Bang?

For example, most cosmologists think space exponentially expanded at the start of the Big Bang during a period known as inflation, which was driven by a different kind of dark energy than the one that exists today. Such dark energy-dominated periods are thought to “occur occasionally throughout the history of the universe,” Kamionkowski said.

Does the universe have a center?

However, the galaxies are not moving through space, they are moving in space, because space is also moving. In other words, the universe has no center; everything is moving away from everything else.