The astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno presents a beginner's guide to ideas, both ancient and modern, about how the universe will end.
Scientists in the 1950s did not like the idea that the universe actually had a beginning - they were trying to get away from the biblical Creation story, a universe that went on forever was much more comforting. But the Big Bang theory forced thinkers into coming to terms with the idea that, if there was a beginning, presumably there must also be an end.