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THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE
Is our universe expanding? All we know now is that our universe is expanding and is continuing to do so at a rapid rate. The discovery that our universe was expanding was discovered by Edwin Hubble when he observed that there were red shifts in the spectra of other galaxies. This indicates that all the galaxies are moving away from us. Using this information scientists have calculated this expansion to have started about 13 billion years ago.
Will our universe continue expanding? Scientists have proposed many theories about the future of our Universe. Some scientists think that our universe will continue expanding forever as there is not enough mass in the universe to pull it back together. Others believe that gravity may eventually have enough force of attraction to pull the mass in our universe back together and halt the expansion. Instead, the universe will start to contract and the galaxies will start to fall together until everything collides together in what we call the Big Crunch. No one yet can tell whether the universe is going to remain ‘open’ (to
expand forever) or whether it will become ‘closed’ (collapse upon itself).
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