Expand Then Crunch?

[Labguy]

Seen this one?
Linde is "highly respected", as is Rees, but Rees can get a little too "far-out" at times.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992759

[LURCH]

An interseting thought. The artical says that according to certain theories of Quantum Gravity, the expansuion of the universe is driven by a scalar feild which will, at some point in the future, become a force of attraction, rather than repulsion. But it offers no further details.

I can't help being reminded of the school of thought in string theory which says that, below a certain critically small size, contraction becomes expansion. I wonder if this is an attempt to apply the opposite side of that same law, saying that above a certain critically large size, expansion becomes contraction.

I also wonder; if we were living in the cosmological phase during which repulsive forces have become forces of attraction, would I be getting lots of dates?