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New Universes Will be Born from Ours
David Shiga writes "What gruesome fate awaits our universe? Some physicists have argued that it is doomed to be ripped apart by runaway dark energy, while others think it is bouncing through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches. Now, scientists have combined these two ideas to create another option, in which our universe ultimately shatters into billions of pieces. Each shard would then subsequently grow into a whole new universe. The model could solve the mystery of why our early universe was surprisingly well ordered."
Right now, the theory with the most evidence in its favor is the theory which includes a dark energy described by Einstein's cosmological constant. In that theory, the universe's expansion will continue to accelerate forever, although not at such a great rate that there is a "Big Rip" which tears atoms apart. That is the "heat death" scenario, in which the universe lasts forever and runs down until nothing much is going on. Because of the accelerating expansion, we will see fewer and fewer distant galaxies as time goes on, because they will accelerate away from us faster than light can reach us. Ultimately we will only see a few local galaxies in the cluster in which we are bound.
This scenario is explored in more detail here.
However, it's possible that the dark energy is dynamical instead of constant, and so the expansion of the universe could accelerate or possibly even reverse and decelerate. With enough deceleration, a Big Crunch is still feasible. There are also the scenarios in which our universe spawns new "universes", such as the one discussed here.
I think the work being referred to may be in this paper, in which the universes are "causal patches" which are disconnected from each other causally by the Big Rip.
Intelligent Design is not as good a theory as any, as you say, unless you think theory means "gosh all this science is hard stuff! Let's throw up our hands in reverent awe and say that some unknowable entity poofed us into existence. Alright, time for lunch."