John Wheeler discusses his idea of "the big crunch."

THE BIG CRUNCH

Ford:

John, could I interject a question about the universe at large? You said once in an earlier interview that you saw the inevitability of the Big Crunch. When I was a student, we were told that it depended on the mass density: The universe might expand forever, or it might turn around and collapse. But at some point you reached a conclusion that the collapse was inevitable. Could you discuss what led to that insight and conviction?

Wheeler:

Yes. What religious process [laughs] led me to feel that collapse was inevitable? Well, one could call it the principle of ecological clean-up. That might trigger a question about the extent to which I let what I might call aesthetic considerations influence my attitude to questions in physics.