How will the universe end? Whether you think the universe is good, bad or indifferent, it will come to an end…someday. How will that happen? Will it simply die a slow death over time? Will it die dramatically in a big explosion as the universe is ripped apart? Or will we see a big bang in reverse as the universe ends in a colossal crunch? There are three factors that will determine the ultimate fate of the galaxy: The overall shape of the universe, The amount of dark energy, And the rate of growth of dark energy. There are three possibilities for the shape of the universe – closed, open and 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, which would result eventually in everything ending in a black hole type of singularity. If the universe is open, that means it is shaped like saddle, which means that it will keep expanding forever, and the ultimate fate of universe in this case – is most likely a big freeze, where galaxies would be become very far apart, such that we would not be able to see any other galaxies besides our own. 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 black holes. The third possibility is that the universe is neither closed nor open but is flat, shaped like three dimensional piece of paper. This means it will keep expanding forever. So what really is the shape of the universe. The most recent observations suggest that it is in fact flat. This was verified by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy or WMAP probe. For a long time, physicists thought that the big freeze is how the universe will end, even with a flat u