If the universe begins to contract, what will happen to our galaxy?

Question

If the universe begins to contract, what will happen to our galaxy?

Answer 1

A useful analogy for imagining the expansion and contraction of the universe is to think of an inflated balloon with little dots drawn on its surface with a marker.  If the balloon expands, the dots move further apart.  This is what we see in our Universe; we're able to measure that galaxies are moving away from us and each other.  In a way it's not the galaxies themselves that are moving, but rather the space between them is increasing (of course, the space inside galaxies is also increasing, but gravity keeps each galaxy cohesive).

If the Universe were to contract (which won't happen, since the current models of the Universe show we're on a one-way trip), then it would be like the balloon deflating.  Galaxies would come closer together, and eventually collide (we see a few examples of colliding galaxies today).

Answer 2

There is no expectation that the Universe will begin to contract.

But if it did, our galaxy would collide with more and more other galaxies as they were squeezed closer together, and eventually the galaxy would dissolve into a uniform sea of stars and gas.  Eventually those would be squashed into a glowing plasma punctuated by black holes.

Answer 3

If the universe began to contract, all matter existing within would be compressed into a smaller and smaller space... our galaxy included.  There is a large degree of empty space between even the smallest of molecules, so in theory, everything in the universe could be compressed into an area smaller than a pinhead.  Kind of like how all the matter that is "sucked" into a black hole is compressed into an infinitely small singularity.

Our galaxy would make up only the tiniest fraction of a fraction of a fraction, and so on, of this singularity.

A universal contraction would take us back to what things were like immediately before the big bang.

Answer 4

Our galaxy will too.  I'll make some popcorn, we can watch it together.

Answer 5

we're actually on a collision course with another galaxy (Andromeda if i'm not mistaken)... but we're about 2.5 billion (or million, can't remember...doesn't matter to us anyways!) years from impact

and when that happens, our galaxies will merge with the usual explosions and destroying/creating of planets and stars

but our two galaxies are an exceptions... most other bodies in the universe are expanding (something about wavelengths expanding and pushing... i dunno, it's been a while since i learned it...)