The Universe has four dimensions (three spatial and one temporal), which have neither a beginning nor an end. Statistically, it is isotropic with respect to them. It consists of a vacuum and matter. The matter fills the vacuum – in large scales – uniformly (spacetime is Euclidean) and occurs in various forms, whose total movement is equal to zero. Only locally – due to gravity – do changes in the density of matter occur, as it transitions into different forms of existence in continuously repeating, statistically closed cycles.
If the Universe is infinite in time and space, and matter is distributed uniformly, then – as Isaac Newton wrote in a letter to Richard Bentley – there is no single point in spacetime that can be regarded as a centre towards which all matter would gravitate. Hawking argued, however, that – given an infinite Universe – there is an infinite number of such points, so the Universe will collapse into any one of them [4]. I believe that the number of such points may indeed be infinite, but distinguishing those points from others must be regarded as random; that is, their distribution in spacetime should be uniform and their number infinitely large. Indeed, observations indicate that on very large (statistically representative) scales, the distribution of visible matter in spacetime differs from a perfectly homogeneous distribution by less than 10-4, whereas on smaller (local) scales, matter is distributed irregularly [5]. Consequently, the distribution of points toward which gravity acts may be considered uniform on large scales, but not on smaller ones.