There is a theory also based off of the inverse of the big bang, known as the “big crunch” of which the theory plays out so that the universe deccelerates at a constant level, and slows to a crawl, at which point the totality of the gravity of the universe reaches it’s peak, before the universe begins to collapse under the weight of it’s own gravity.

Which is significant because it is theorized that the universe would continue to crunch, as black holes over took all matter, until black holes overlapped black holes, compressing matter several times over itself, until all matter condenses down to the last few particles, which would then RE-ignite the fuse to the big bang. This allows multiple iterations of the same universe over, advancing this theory scientists and theologians have determined that if that were the case, then we would be in our sixth iteration, of about 20 total before the universe would break free of the cycle, by successfully achieving an explosion of a great enough magnitude to not crunch again.

The subsidiary theory to this, in turn, is that our current iteration of the universe has a little over the mass required in order to spawn new universes out of our own.

So… think about that show “Sliders” only… not so much the same world, as different ones entirely.

I hadn’t seen anything that specifically stated that the universe was accelerating, I’m remembering what I read at a library visit some years back when I was thumbing through “A brief history of the Universe” or whatever Hawking’s book that was.

In it, he showed that there were three posssible outcomes for the universe, either it would expand infinitely, it would expand to it’s limit, and slow to a crawl, or it would expand to finality, until the gravity of all mass caused everything to contract.

*looks up wikipedia*

Ahh, well then, they disproved it for now, how about’s that. =3

For an even more interesting read, consider what was there before the theorized “Big Bang” could of taken place..?

www.superstringtheory.com/cosmo/cosmo4.html