>In my understanding, it is the General Theory of Relativity that leads to the result that the Universe can't stay stable for a while.

I don't quite understand this. It seems to me that the result was "a uniform distribution of stars would collapse on itself" and that this can't be.

So? The universe doesn't have a uniform distribution of stars. The universe has galaxies of stars which are more or less a huge cluster of stars that are in fact collapsing on itself.

Surely there must be more to the prediction that I don't understand, though I haven't been able to find a good text that actually addresses my concerns. Know of any that deal with this specific subject?