Enrichment:

 What is the fate of the universe? Will the universe continue to expand or will it
eventually contract because of gravity?

One of the biggest questions in science is "What will happen to the Universe"?
We think that the Universe started with a Big Bang, that all the galaxies are still moving apart
and the Universe expands. But what happens eventually will depend upon two things:
Since all the galaxies are moving apart, we might expect the Universe to expand forever and
simply cool down. However, gravity wants to pull things together and so is trying to slow
down the expansion. The fate of the Universe is a balance between these two. If the
expansion wins, everything will expand forever. If gravity wins, the expansion will stop, and
the Universe will collapse. Astronomers are trying to work out how much mass there is in
the Universe to help to answer this question - the more mass, the more likely it is that
gravity will win.
We're all worried about what will happen at the end of our lives. We see other living
things die, and we know it will happen to us. Because it's inevitable, we worry about when,
where and how it will happen. Many of us also wonder about the fate of Earth. Will it be a
hospitable blue ball forever, or will it eventually be consumed by the sun as it swells from a
medium-sized yellow star to a red giant? Or perhaps we'll poison our planet, and it will float,
cold and desolate, through space. If such a thing were to happen, how long would it take? A
hundred years? A thousand? A million?
To determine if the universe will expand forever, coast to a stop or collapse on itself,
astronomers must decide which of two opposing forces will win a cosmic tug-of-war. One of
these forces is the bang part of the big bang -- the explosion that catapulted the universe
outward in all directions. The other force is gravity, the pull one object exerts on another. If
the gravity within the universe is strong enough, it could reign in the expansion and cause
the universe to contract. If not, the universe will continue to expand forever.
Although astronomers know the universe is expanding, they can't precisely gauge the
force responsible for the expansion. Instead, they try to measure the density of the universe.
The higher the density, the greater the gravitational force. Applying this logic, there must be
a density threshold -- a critical limit -- that will determine if the gravity within the universe is
strong enough to halt the expansion and reel everything back in. If the density is greater
than the critical limit, then the universe will stop expanding and start contracting. If it's less
than the critical limit, then the universe will expand forever.