How Will the universe End? And how we can escape.

There are three main factors that are going to determine the ultimate fate of the galaxy.

The overall shape of the universe, the amount of dark energy it contains, and the rate of growth of that dark energy.

Scientists theorize that there are three possibilities for the shape of the universe.

Closed, open, or flat.

If the universe is closed, it means that it is shaped like a sphere.

So even though it may be expanding right now, it will eventually stop and converge into a big crunch, ultimate fate, crunch of the universe, which would result eventually in everything ending in a black hole and into a singularity.

If the universe is open, that means that it is shaped like a saddle, which means that it will keep expanding forever.

And the ultimate fate of the universe in this case is most likely a big freeze, where galaxies would become very far apart such that the stars would eventually burn out as all the hydrogen gas in the universe is used up.

The only things remaining would be black holes, and these too would eventually evaporate because of something called Hawking radiation.

This is where a small amount of matter is constantly being discarded and disappearing near the event horizon of a black hole.

The third possibility is that the universe is neither closed nor open, but is flat, shaped like a three-dimensional piece of paper.

This means it will keep expanding forever.

So what really is the shape of the universe? Well, the most recent observations suggest that the universe is not closed or open, but is in fact flat.

And this was verified by the Wilkinson Microwave Probe, or WMAP probe.