Have you ever wondered what will happen to us? I don't mean tomorrow, next month or next year, I mean what will happen in a billion years or even more? Here you can find some parts of the answer...  If you though that the universe will exist as this forever then you're either a fool or you just took it for granted and never really considered the problem. And that problem is one of the biggest questions in the modern science in general. Maybe you know that our universe is constantly expanding. Every star is going away from every other, just as if you were blowing a baloon with dots on it's surface, just this baloon has a 3D surface. Will it go on forever like that or something else will happen? Various theories have been presented, but they all generally boil down to two completely opposite scenarios. Before I get to them I'd like to explain something about the mass of the universe. What the fuck the mass of the universe has got to do with anything? Well, it does, and it does in a great way. You know (or at least you should know) that in our universe there are only four kinds of forces. More about them in another (maybe!) article. The only one which is significant on the long range distances, and therefore intersting to us, is gravitational force. And what does it have to do with the mass? Wait a minute, I'll come to that. Gravitational force is the thing that keeps you pressed on your chair and the thing that makes the Moon go around the Earth and the Erath around the Sun. So, the next time someone tells you 'money makes the world go round' you tell him off! In fact gravitational force is the thing theat keeps our universe together. If there wasn't such force it will be nothing but a homogenous cloud of helium atoms. Now here comes the mass. Gravitational force of an object is directly proportional to it's mass. Therefore, the greater the mass => the greater it's gravity. Everything has it, including you. It's just that yours is so small that it's virtually impossible to detect. So, everything in the universe is attracting eacother. (So, if you want to be attractive to other girls - eat more!) But, then how come universe is expanding? Because of the initial velocity. Our universe was created when a single point of infinite density exploded at 0 time and since then it's expanding. (That's the current scientific explanation, nevermind the religious bullshit.) And as all the mass of the universe is drawn together by the gravitational force, it slows the initial expansion velocity. The key question for the future development of the universe is: Is that attraction (or in other words: the mass of the universe) big enough to stop the expansion completely? And the answer determines the future of our universe according to two scenarios: #1: No, it isn't! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Or, alternatively titled: 'Is it just me or is it getting cold in here?' The universe will continue to expand as it does today. Slowly, the skies will go black as one after one the space furnaces turn their fusion engines off (Yes, stupid, I meant to say that the stars will cool off and die). The process of star's dying was described in detail in one of the previous Science Corners so, I won't repeat myself. What this implies is that the universe will become a dead, black load of rocks at absolute zero. And, no, the human or any other race by no means will be able to survive it (unless -273°C is their living environment). #2: Yes, it is! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Or: 'Back where we started'. The universe will continue to expand, but constantly slowing, and so once it will slowly stop expanding. That will be the end of the first half of universe's life. After that point it will start to shrink. And it's abvious that the shrinking can last only as long as the expansion did. What will happen in the end? Well, the whole universe will collapse in a single point of infinite density. Sounds familiar? Yes, that's Big Bang, only backwards. According to this theory our current universe could be just one in a line of many, each beggining as the other ends. So, it would just be 'round and 'round till one of the universes created doesn't produce such fundamental constants which make scenario #1 possible, which is the end. What you probably want to know now is the answer to the 'big' question. Well, I can't give it to you. The answer is closely connected with the case of 'The Missing Mass'. Sounds like a crime-story? Well, it's far more exciting. Apparently, scientists observed far less mass in the universe than it should be there, according to the results of some experiments and measurments they conducted. I won't go any deeper into this as I'm threading on a thin ice here (I don't have the needed literature here with me). If you're intrigued by this, try reading 'The first three minutes' or 'A short history of time'. Those books are somewhat hard to swallow, but if you got at least high school physics knowledge, you should be able to understand it. I can't remeber the authors (I think Stephen Hawkings is the author of one). They are fairly known, so you shouldn't have trouble finding them. And maybe when you read them, you could write an article or two for the Science Corner?  So, when you look at it, why are we even trying to achieve anything? We'll either freeze to death or we'll be smashed in a gigantic black hole... Somehow, puts your struggle for grades in a entirely different perspective, doesn't it?