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The kids themselves, as if mirroring the movie they’re in, talk excitedly of a “big crunch” coming, when the universe will expand and pop and everything will go backward.

This could lead to two extreme—and extremely divergent—outcomes: the “big crunch,” in which dark energy would become an attractive force and cause the universe to collapse, and the “big rip,” wherein dark energy would strengthen to tear apart matter and sunder spacetime itself.

It could be fickle again: It might cause the expansion to grow at a faster than exponential rate, tearing apart the cosmos in a “big rip,” or flip into an attractive force pulling the universe into a big crunch.

Mr. Butler said he had been prepared for a big crunch, given the doom and gloom swirling around the industry.

Astronomers call it the Big Crunch.