1) The universe may have an elasticity to it like water. I forget the name of it, but you know when you pour a puddle of water onto a desktop, and look at it from the side, you see the water has a depth and curves down to the desktop. It has a thickness, but it also retains shape. Same as we dee a drop of water in a spaeship, being round or oblong etc and spinning, but these droplets retain their shape until they interact with something, yes? Well, if the universe were like that, it would expand endlessly until it reached the limit of that elasticity, though it doesn't explain a reason to contract.
Which leads me to 2> Dark Matter. They're discovering many things about Dark Matter, and I wonder: perhaps dark matter has gravitation forces to it. This would allow for elasticity, and could also somehow cause a it to retract, to collapse....
Anyhow, it seems the basic theory of physics would apply to the universe as they would to a puddle of water on a desktop, or a droplet in a spaceship.
What you call elasticity most people call surface tension. I don’t see any analogy between surface tension and the universe.
1.) `surface tension’