> Thoughts?

Yes, that's it exactly! It's thoughts that are causing the universe to expand! :)

Think about it (oops!), hasn't there been an explosion of thought since the internet went commercial? What about all the thoughts beind each spam email? (You know, brand new thoughts like "Wow! I'm going to be rich!!!!!")

Every year, for thousands and thousands of years now, we've been getting more and more thought stuffed into this little universe of ours. No wonder it's expanding!

OK, now, follow my logic on this:

Remember, everyone who thinks "is", right?

When people aren't thinking, you have less "is" (translation, "less universe").

But when you get a whole bunch of people thinking up a whole bunch of new ideas, or even re-thinking up old ideas, and you add up all those "ises", why, you get an expanding universe.

It's simple. See?

Look, here's an experiment that will, once and for all prove it: If you could get everyone in the universe to stop thinking, just for a second or two, the whole thing would just collapse. But then everyone would start thinking about the collapsing universe, and we'd be right back where we started.

Oh well. I guess there's no escape. :)

---- Hugh