The State of the Universe (aka Gravity Part V)

There's a fairly large question about the universe that cosmologists have been unable to definitively answer, and that's 'Why does the universe look like it does?'. An amazingly simple question, I think you'll agree, and it doesn't take a genius to come up with an amazingly simple answer to this question... or perhaps it does.

In the likely event that you're in the dark as to what the universe looks like, let me enlighten you. This universe (for it is probable that there are many) is comprised of a few hundred billion galaxies. These galaxies are not scattered completely randomly, but are instead spread out in a three dimensional stringy web-like pattern. A good analogy that has been made for this is a load of washing-up bubbles, where the washing-up liquid that makes up the bubbles themselves represent the galaxies, and the air within the bubbles represents the vast gaps of nothing in the universe.

Theoretical physicists have the problem that they don't know how the universe got into this state. Well, it seems pretty obvious to me. I mean, I'm no astrophysicist, but it's hardly rocket science: The galaxies remain in a stretched out web pattern because matter naturally distorts space-time, which has an instantaneous effect on the propagation of any and all matter relative to both the distance and the combined mass of any and all of the masses within the system. The net effect of all of this intergalactic mass is a sort of mass intergalactic net effect, and the appearance of the universe as it has been observed fits in exactly as predicted by the above model.

You probably realised that this is a description of gravity, but I really wanted to explain what is happening without confusing matters... and people seem to get confused whenever someone mentions the G-word. They think it's a force or something!  ...the idiots.

So what's the prob?
The cosmic boffins still have the issue of explaining why the universe is still expanding, when gravity should've started making it contract by now. They've attributed this to Dark Energy [cue mystical/scary music].
Dark energy is just a phrase they've invented, because they can't think of they're own explanation that doesn't involve magic, witchcraft, god or anything else made up.

It all seems quite self-evident to this genius: The universe is still expanding because the explosion that created this universe was bloody massive. You can't even begin to imagine how big it was. Sure, the effect of gravity has slowed the expansion substantially since the universe began, but that's small beans compared to how fast it was originally going at 13.7 billion years ago. Back then it was all relatively pretty close to the cosmic speed limit. So of course gravity hasn't put the breaks on fully. If/when that eventually happens, our universe will start to contract slowly. But then as time goes on, the speed of contraction will continue to accelerate... to the point that it will eventually reach a point (by which I mean a singularity) just at the point when the relative speed reaches the cosmic speed limit of the universe.