WASHINGTON (AP) - The conclusion that the universe will expand forever at a constantly accelerating rate has been selected as the top scientific advance of 1998 by the editors of Science, a leading research journal. 

 Two teams of astronomers announced this year that their measurements of light from distant exploding stars proved that all the matter in the universe was separating at a faster and faster rate. 

The studies indicated the universe would expand forever. This was contrary to some theories that a universe that began with a "big bang" would eventually collapse in on itself and end with a "big crunch." 

Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, selected the astronomy research as the most important of the top10 discoveries in 1998. 

Astronomers from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., independently came to the same conclusion about an expanding, accelerating universe. Their studies have since been confirmed by others. 

the see the entire article : www.cnn.com 

NOW! WHAT THE QURAN SAYS:

THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE IN THE QURAN 1400 YEARS AGO

The expansion of the Universe is the most imposing discovery of modern science. Today it is a firmly established 
concept and the only debate centres around the way this is taking place. It was first suggested by the general theory of relativity and is backed up by physics in the examination of the galactic spectrum; the regular movement towards the red section of their spectrum may be explained by the distancing of one galaxy from another. 
Thus the size of the Universe is probably constantly increasing and this increase will become bigger the further away the galaxies  are from us. The speeds at which these celestial bodies are moving may, in the course of this perpetual expansion, go from  fractions of the speed of light to speeds faster than this. 
The following verse of the Qur'an (sura 51, verse 47) where God is speaking, 
"The heaven, We have built it with power. Verily. We are expanding it." 
'Heaven' is the translation of the word sama' and this is exactly the extra-terrestrial world that is meant. 
'We are expanding it' is the translation of the plural present participle musi'una of the verb ausa'a meaning 'to make wider, more spacious, to extend, to expand'.