Univers expansion

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070219/full/070219-4.html

Two physicists have proposed that, a fraction of a second before a cataclysm that would destroy space-time itself, the Universe may escape by abruptly collapsing to a virtually empty state that 'resets' it for a fresh cycle of cosmic expansion.

The theory claims to reconcile the notion of a cyclic universe, which expands and contracts for eternity, with the second law of thermodynamics, which seems to imply that the current expansion cannot reverse.

As escape clauses go, this one is jaw-droppingly extravagant. Not only does the turnaround happen less than a thousand-trillion-trillionth (10-27) of a second before a 'Big Rip' in which everything falls apart, but it splits our Universe into countless new and independent ones.

And as the Universe has already gone through an infinite number of cycles, the model predicts an already infinite number of parallel universes, Lauris Baum and Paul Frampton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report in Physical Review Letters1.