Yes, that is my feeling also, but also that it may have an opposite, ie anti verse, and that the could be any number of "universes" that this is happening to all the time.

May be multiverses too. But agreed no diety needed.

Hi Michael Spinter,I can think of it like this when you fire a bullet from a gun an explosion takes place which forces the bullit out from a standing start increasing exponational in speed then reaches maximum speed thengradually slows down until it stops by hitting the ground in the case of the universe collapsed back into pure energy.But I am confused by the pure energy what is that because Einstein formulae E=MC squared m=mass and C= speed of light squared but if energy is pure there would be no light or mass.very confusing.and the law that states energy can neither be created or destroyed.

Hi Wordywait,We both think on the same lines.

I agree. I believe that the universe is undergoing an unending cycle of collapse, then expansion.

We might as well party while we're here.

Observations of the universe indicate it is expanding at an ever increasing rate. How does that inform your viewpoint?

I'm with Michael on this one, but only to a degree. The entropy idea is based on our limited understanding of what the expansion means or how it might play out. We think the natural end state is a "fizzle" where all the fringe elements spread further out and decrease in matter and energy proportionally until they are, in a sense, "gone." Yet there is much this theory doesn't explain. The observable universe, itself difficult enough to contemplate, is by definition only what we're able to observe. We can't yet predict what has, does, or will occur outside of that - but it's safe to say things indeed DO exist and operate beyond our view. The energy has to go somewhere. It's possible that it comes back to the center, and furthermore it's possible that's how the center came to be in the first place - a constantly pulsating universe that begins at a single point as readily as it returns to it.

Perhaps someday we'll know more, but until we do, the "expand and then contract" theory is just as plausible as any other theory we can't yet test.