Satan's day off--so we're to blame:

(Schrodinger's Cat--from Robert Anton Wilson's Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy 's cover art.)

So, seems we've been agitating the universe--by looking at it. Damn shame, really. But bound to happen, I suppose. If you grok either the weak or the strong anthropic principle, it should've seemed likely enough to you that there would eventually be a sophont busybody prepared to gaze into the fabric of time/space, and even uncover your dark matter , thereby coming close enough to understanding what's what to collapse the whole vector state of the eternal whatsits.

Seems obvious, really. Toast always landing butter-side down, and all. But it is really so?

It seems to the amateur eschatologist that just being there isn't enough to bring on the "gnab gib". Rather, the universe was going to end anyway, and we were just here to appreciate what the end would mean, because the universe likes an audience. Or so I prefer to think. I'd not like to think we picked at the universe, and made it stop *trying*. Awkward.