No. Unfortunately, the growth of the universe is speeding up. Here's an interesting question. When everything flies so far apart that the universe becomes near nothingness, does that provoke another big bang?

NO. The Universe is continuing to "speed away" like a runaway frieght train, at near light speed. Dark matter , for that matter, no matter has incumbered it's progress outward. Backgroud microwave blueprints have been taken of the entire sky, and results confirm, all matter is accellerating away from each other , and speeding up.

the universe is expanding. dark matter does not slow it down, it is merely the tie that binds ~ it holds the universe together and works in conjunction with dark energy. in my mind dark matter is analogous to the invisible air within the expanding accordion (universe) that creates music (energy exchange) through metal reeds that sound when air is forced past them by pleated bellows (visible physical universe with its chemical & electromagnetic reactions) operated by the player (god? or mysterious energy force behind this beautiful musical composition called life). the sections on nonlocality, dark matter/energy & interconnectedness distills the essence of what i imagine is the true nature of the universe. http://www.solonline.org/repository/download/SB4LearningthroughSil.pdf?item_id=471708 you can skip all the spiritual taoist stuff, i imagine thats not your cup of tea, and go straight to the goods if youre interested. i recall telling you before i believe the world is holographic in nature. bohm is my physics guru. he and hawking rocked my universe. bohms ink & glycerine model for explaining the visible/invisible universe is brilliant in its simplicity. hinduism aligns with bohms views interestingly enough. hindus believe the physical universe is the "maya" and that the notion that we are not all interconnected is an illusion of the ego/mind ~ theyve understood quantum mechanics for thousands of years. westeners are just a little slow to the punch. http://www.hinduism.co.za/hinduism.htm the section on their take on bells theorem/nonlocality is great ~ i love bells theorem ~ its one of the most profound theories imho. i believe everything is interconnected ~ you, me, that chair, that moon, that quasar, whatever. we are all part of one sentient energetic "organism" if you will ~ we just vibrate at differing frequencies and manifest with different chemical compositions. were all just a bunch of waves when you break it down ~ i picture it as being a part of a larger interconnected wave system ~ like an ocean with all physical matter as droplets within that larger body of water and the energy exchanges akin to the motion of the waves. i believe multiverses & parallel worlds can be found within the hidden implicate order ~ and black holes are the portals from which life springs forth (and will return). dark matter/energy is the link between the explicate order/visible physical universe to that invisible implicate order. and the implicate order remains unseen to us except in those rare miraculous occasions when we access a higher dimension in deja vus, dreams, synchronicites, etc. anyhow, this all might sound a little bizarre to you, maybe not. but it makes total sense to me. im just waiting for the physicists & astronomers to prove it right using their tools. i think were living in the golden age of cosmology and we might even have many of the answers to our burning questions on the nature of the universe within our lifetime...hope so.

Dark matter does slow down the growth of it - via gravity, BUT importantly, there are alot of other (heavier) factors that speed it up. Einstein theorized a "static" universe, but realized a problem that when he put all the mass together, we should at best be speeding towards each other, at worst slowing down the rate at which we are expanding from the explosion, so he included the idea of the cosmological constant as a repulsive force to balance the universe and make it static. As it so happens, he ended up regretting it, but didn't live to see the day where he was vindicated, in 1998 when people noticed the acceleration of the universe is progressively increasing, due to the dark ENERGY contribution. The dark matter, however, does slow down the rate of growth, as I said, via gravity (the only method that dark matter interacts with the surrounding world). --- See my comments http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/5066533 for a more categoric explanation