The universe will end. Not soon -- perhaps it will take another two hundred billion years or more -- but the universe will end.

Recent findings from astronomers have left scientists with that uncomfortable conclusion. Five separate teams of scientists from Princeton, Yale, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Harvard have all recently announced studies that show that the universe, which began with the cosmic explosion called the "Big Bang" approximately fifteen billion years ago, will expand forever, until nothing remains throughout space but widely scattered hydrogen atoms and cold rocks.

Scientists investigating the possibility of a future "Big Crunch," where all the matter in the universe combines to form a single extremely dense package and then blasts outward in a rerun of the Big Bang, discovered that the universe contains only twenty percent of the mass needed. The universe is "open" and will not "close," they say.

The results of these years-long studies are provoking an uproar among those scientists wedded to the steady-state hypothesis, the notion that the universe is "closed". The skull-splitting question: if the steady-state hypothesis is true, at least 80% of the matter in the universe is undetected and undetectable. Where is, they ask, the missing 80% of the universe's mass necessary to bring on the next Big Crunch/Big Bang cycle?

Dr. Erwin Rice, director of the Astronomy Department at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, is unsurprised by the findings -- or the furor. At a Macalester College debate in Minneapolis last week on the implications of the study, Rice said, "These steady-staters believe in a universe that goes back and forth like a yo-yo. No grand design -- it's a video game: push the Big Bang button and start over."

Rice calls the steady-stater's theories, "wishful thinking and sloppy science -- like running another study if you don't like the results you got the first time." Rice says the five studies are "jointly and severally conclusive;" and says, "It proves what we already know."

Assistant Professor Kim Coleman of the University of Minnesota's Astronomy Department, speaking at the same gathering, said the study doesn't answer as many questions as it raises. "Where did the matter go? Why can't our instruments detect it? If it's gone, when and how did it get converted to energy -- and why haven't we picked up the traces of such a process? If the steady-state theory is correct, how does the necessary mass reassemble itself?" 

"That's a meaningless question, scientifically, Rice interjects. "But if the evidence states the Big Bang was a singular event that will not be repeated, how many alternative studies can we con the taxpayer into funding?"

Coleman admits that some of the hypotheses suggested to shore up the steady-state model are "pretty far-out" -- ranging from new types of interference that block the effects of gravity to pocket universes straight out of sci-fi novels.

"Or maybe the cat knocked it under the couch," jokes Rice. "We're talking enormous amounts of lost matter here -- at least four times all the measurable matter in the universe! -- not some little key chain doo-dad you can leave lying around someplace and forget!"

The Reverend Georges Friedmann, who holds a PhD in Astronomy from Cal Tech as well as a Master of Divinity from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, and who teaches two classes in astronomy each semester at Macalester in addition to his duties as Associate Pastor at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, finds the controversy both fascinating and amusing. "If the universe is open, and proceeds from a beginning, I think the religious implications are obvious," he says, smiling smugly. "If you find my smile smug, you have gotten my point."

"Well, maybe you should have your Jehovah check his pockets," answers Coleman. "The fact is, we won't know what happened to it until we look further. And, not having certain funding advantages -- "

Debates may end in rancor, but the question remains: if the steady-staters are right, and the Universe is an un-created, self-regulating series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, then where's the missing mass?

Whoever borrowed that extra matter had better put it back, according to Rice, or the steady-staters are going to be "very, very unhappy." Rice waggles an admonitory finger. "And very, very embarrassed, when the study after study shows the same result: the universe is open."

Friedmann is more conciliatory. "It's long been a fundamental cornerstone of science that the existence of an extra-normal Creator is untestable, and as a scientist, I have to say that it still is. But as a man of God, I'm not entirely displeased that the cornerstone seems to be crumbling just a little."

Professor Coleman declined comment.