Beyond Knowing

So what would you do if you ran out
of time? Shrug. Fair enough. What could
be done if the existence of the Universe
ran out of time? This is no idle question.
The most brilliant minds on this planet
are struggling with the possibility that...
time may run out...really. That does require
some explication: time, as in nothing left
a vacuum, everything in the cosmos simply
explodes, rips asunder, disappears; this is
not a Humpty-Dumpty scenario. Should
this occur there will be nothing left to be
put back together again. The immensity
of the universe will have been -- for an
unaccountable period of time -- and run
its course. Physicists, cosmologists and
astronomers gather to discuss amongst
themselves the latest findings and analyses
to debate the likelihood of brilliant and
perhaps troubling hypotheses; troubling
in the sense of what they portend, brilliant
in that these ineluctable conclusions 
are based on the genius of minds capable
of grasping nature's elusive architecture.
And what they propose variously is the
existence of lightweight subatomic particles
energizing the universe to store ever more
energy as it expands with ever greater
momentum; it may stabilize, but if not
eventually everything that exists will
become more remote and the universe
darker and the chasm that it may produce
sinister to existence. And then there is
phantom energy where expansion causes
the loss of energy, gravity overcome
and all would rip apart, atoms last to go.