Might this be the end of astronomy?

Whether the universe continues to expand or not... there *will* be a time when no new stars can be created, because there's not enough hydrogen left in the universe. Someday, the *last* star will be born... it will live it's life, then die - and... that will be the end of things.

Fortunately, that's billions of years in the future - and, the end of astronomy will be the last of our worries...

It's a good question...

It's this type of question that gave credence to Hoyle's steady state universe theory until the evidence appeared to favour the Big Bang theory, and why it still has some aherents (although Hoyle did admit that his theory was no longer valid.

Basically, the 'new' space is also generating new stars (material coalesces) so new galaxies are being formed, while old ones are 'dying'. So, although there is no new matter being created from nothing, there is enough existing matter to allow this to happen, even if there is no way for the universe to stop expanding.

Edwin Hubble did not discover that the universe was expanding, in fact he spent much of his career arguing against the expansion theory. He simply discovered the galactic redshift-distance correlation that was interpreted as a doppler effect which would imply that galaxies are moving away from each other and that the universe is expanding. There are many reasons to believe that this interpretaion is wrong though. This documentary may enlighten you...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfE7doPzm5I

Do you have any idea how many billions of years into the future that will be? We are going to have much bigger things to deal with before then, like the end of the Earth when the Sun goes red giant in about 5 billion years, that everything else becomes irrelevant.

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yes, space is expanding. It is going far away but new stars are originated which take place of older stars.