"We are led inexorably to a very strange conclusion. The window during which intelligent observers can deduce the true nature of our expanding universe might be very short indeed. "
~ Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer
Uber-cosmologists Krauss and Scherrer point out an interesting fact about our ever accelerating expansionary universe. There will come a point where scientists on earth will not be able to detect other galaxies. They won't be able to see beyond the Milky Way. It will be impossible due to the stretching properties of dark energy. Not only will we seem to be alone, but the wealth of observational data that led to the discovery of an expanding universe will disappear too! Hubble's redshifts? Gone. Cosmic background radiation? Gone. Chemical traces of early gases like deuterium? Gone.
We live in a unique time in the history of the universe. We are able to observe so much about past. Future cosmologists, however, will be shrouded in ignorance. It is quite conceivable that they will know less than us about the origins of the universe. The history of the big bang will exist only in archives handed down from prior generations. The question is, will they believe the archives or dismiss them as primitive, unenlightened thinking.
Will their chronological snobbery, like the chronological snobbery that exists in today's progressive mindset, blind them to the truth?
Future cosmologists, however, will be shrouded in ignorance.
Well, this assumes that there will still be "cosmologists" around billions or even trillions of years hence. :)
Posted by: tgirsch | March 04, 2008 at 16:38
You don't sound too optimistic there ;)
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | March 04, 2008 at 16:46
Ha! Tgirsch beat me to it. Human beings won't be around that long.
Posted by: Rob Ryan | March 04, 2008 at 20:11
I'm not sure I'd say that we live in a 'unique' time - the articles saying that if we'd been born just 100 billion years later we'd look around and see nothing. Where I come from 100 billion years is considered quite long!
Posted by: Paul | March 05, 2008 at 07:26
Where I come from, 13 billion years is a long time ... and that is where we appear in the time line of the history of the universe ... right?
I know, I know. Dumb luck ;)
You guys are depressing me with all this talk about extinction and gloom and doom. C'mon ... where is that "Yes We Can!" optimism?
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | March 05, 2008 at 08:59