mvisvitae - Saiph is correct. Except that our local section of universe is not simply expanding - but it also contracting with some blue shifting towards the Great Attractor(s).<br /><br />The Oscillating universe theory, to which you may be alluding, is not supported by the more recent evidence - rather eternal expansion is indicated on the grand scale - i.e. beyond our more local 500 million ly section.<br /><br />Your mentioning of voids, however, is also correct.<br /><br />However, galaxies are not consumed and leave a void. The actual way voids are formed is an ongoing field of research.<br /><br />Here is one research inciting quote on this:<br /><br />"Still another problem for the big bang has come from steadily mounting evidence of “bubbles” in the universe that are 100 million light-years in size, with galaxies on the outside and voids inside. Margaret Geller, John Huchra, and others at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found what they call a great wall of galaxies some 500 million light-years in length across the northern sky." - "Awake!," 1/22/96, p. 5.<br /><br />"The Milky Way, Andromeda, and some 20 other galaxies are bound gravitationally into a cluster, all of these being only a small neighborhood in a vast supercluster. The universe contains countless superclusters, and the picture does not end there.<br /><br />The clusters are not evenly distributed in space. On a grand scale, they look like thin sheets and filaments around vast bubblelike voids. Some features are so long and wide that they resemble great walls. This may surprise many who think that our universe created itself in a chance cosmic explosion. “The more clearly we can see the universe in all its glorious detail,” concludes a senior writer for Scientific American, “the more difficult it will be for us to explain with a simple theory how it came to be that way.”" - " Is There a Creator who cares about You?," 1998, pp.10,11<br /><br />I will research further on those bubbles and v