Well now, reading and studying on Stephen Hawking's thoughts and, even more importantly, Bee-Dubya's explanation above about expanding and contracting universe(s), I can only come to the conclusion that the Universe as we know it is actually a cosmic accordion! Yes! And we can only hope that who/whatever is playing the accordion is actually playing a tume (perhaps "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window" or "Lady of Spain" or "Beer Barrel Polka") instead of just screwing around squeezing the squeezebox. Because if the cosmic accordion player is really playing something then time will end when the last measure is played and perhaps we move on to something else -- go from 4/4 to 9/8 or something.

You'd just better hope that there aren't many time changes in the music, like from 3/4 to 6/8 to 4/4. That could really screw things up.