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If it forever expands, the most likely explanation is the heat death of the universe via entropy.
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That was the mainstream opinion until recently, when an article was published that suggested that the universe's expansion is accelerating fast enough that the rip will happen before heat death. I don't know if that's widely accepted yet or not, though.
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Not
The universe tearing itself in two
How does that even work?
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It's not that the universe would tear in two. It's that everything would be too far apart for gravity to hold it together. Each star would split apart from the rest of their galaxy, the planets would fly away from their stars and, eventually, the stars and planets and all matter would fall apart.