The following is a simple model of our Universe. It explains the Big Bang, red-shift, the ever expanding nature of the universe, the role of gravity and the fact that the universe has no beginning, no middle and no end. It’s called the Ripple Theory and it goes like this…

When you throw a rock into a pond it creates ripples which travel outward in all directions. Suppose there was a surfer riding one of those ripples, he would see himself traveling along at a constant speed, the speed of the ripple. Now suppose there was a second surfer riding the same ripple. As each surfer looked at the other they would see themselves moving away from one another and if you were to give both surfers a flashlight and they were to shine it at one another each would see that the light from the other surfer was red-shifted. And if there was a third surfer farther away the light from his flashlight would be red-shifted even more, all because of the constant outward expansion of the ripple.

Now suppose our first surfer instead of traveling perpendicular to the ripple turned his surfboard on an angle. As he surfed along the circumference of the ripple he would soon discover that the ripple (his universe) had no beginning, no middle and no end.

You and I don’t live in the two dimensions of a ripple however making the jump to three dimensions is easy - just inflate a balloon. As a balloon expands the individual points on it’s surface move away from one another just as our three surfers riding on the ripple. Our Universe therefore is nothing more than an ever expanding spherical balloon of matter and energy.

Going back to the pond, the pond is just a body of water, an inert medium through which the ripple travels. And the ripple? The ripple, while made of water is merely a “disturbance” or “distortion” of the water medium. Similarly the matter and energy which we see as our Universe is nothing more than a disturbance or distortion of the medium which comprises the pond of our universe. And what is this medium that our cosmic pond is made of?

Gravity.

In the same way the ripple distorts the medium of water as it travels through it matter distorts the medium of gravity as it travels through it (Einstein showed this). Water is a component of the ripple just as gravity is a component of matter. And how do we know this? Take the humble hydrogen atom, we don’t think of it as having a gravitational field because it’s so small but if you put about a trillion, trillion, trillion hydrogen atoms together what do you get? The sun, an object with a very large gravitational field. And what’s the difference between the sun and a hydrogen atom? Nothing (except quantity).

In conclusion, just as a ripple is made up of the inert medium we call water, matter is made up of the inert medium we call gravity. Gravity - the fabric of the universe, the water in our cosmic pond. Understanding gravity means understanding our universe.

One final note, as for the notion that one day the universe will stop expanding and collapse back on itself, it will never happen just like the ripples on a pond will never reverse direction and converge back to the point where the rock hit the water (Big Bang). Our universe will continue to expand outward forever like the ripples on a pond.