Is the Universe Running Down?

With the first beautiful images now coming from the James Webb Space Telescope, we are being told that it allows us to see back to the time when the first galaxies and stars were created right after the “Big Bang.” The “Big Bang” and its associated “Second Law of Thermodynamics” assert that our universe began at a specific point in time, some 13.8 billion years ago, with a massive burst, that sent all matter from one initial ball, expanding to all corners of space.  According to this theory, we, and everything we can see, exist in this continuing expansion from that initial explosion. There are variations on the theme—some have the universe continuing to expand forever, others have it slow down, then contract into a universal Big Implosion somewhere billions of years down the line.