http://www.universetoday.com/110037/why-is-this-a-special-time-for-the-universe/#more-110037 You might be surprised to know that you’re living in a very special time in the Universe. And in the far future, our descendant astronomers will wish they could live in such an exciting time Let’s find out why. You might be interested to know that you are living in a unique important and special time in the age of the Universe. Our view of the night sky won’t be around forever, in fact, as we think about the vast time that lies ahead, our time in the Universe will sound very special. Astronomers figure the Universe has been around for 13.8 billion years. Everything in the entire Universe was once collected together into a singularity of space and time. And then, in a flash, Big Bang. Within a fraction of a second, the fundamental forces of the Universe came into existence, followed by the earliest types of matter and energy. For a few minutes, the entire Universe was like a core of a star, fusing hydrogen into helium. Approximately 377,000 years after the Big Bang, the entire Universe had cooled to the point that it became transparent. We see this flash of released light as the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Over the next few billion years, the first stars and galaxies formed, leading to the large scale structures of the Universe. These new galaxies with their furious star formation would have been an amazing sight. It would have been a very special time in the Universe, but it’s not our time. Over the next few billion years, the Universe continued to expand. And it was during this time that the mysterious force called dark energy crept in, further driving the expansion of the Universe. We don’t know what dark energy is, but we know it’s a constant pressure that’s accelerating the expansion of the Universe. As the volume of the Universe increases, the rate of its expansion increases. And over vast periods of time, it’ll make the Universe unrecognizable from what we see today. The further we look out into space, the faster galaxies are moving away from us. There are galaxies moving away from us faster than the speed of light. In other words, the light from those galaxies will never reach us. As dark energy increases, more and more galaxies will cross this cosmic horizon, invisible to us forever. And so, we can imagine a time in the far future, where the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation has been stretched away until it’s undetectable. And eventually there will be a time when there will be no other galaxies visible in the night sky. Future astronomers will see a Universe without a cosmological history. There will be no way to know that there was ever a Big Bang, that there was ever a large scale structure to the Universe. So how long will this be? According to Dr. Lawrence Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer, in as soon as 100 billion years, there will be no way to see other galaxies and calculate their velocity away from us. That sounds like a long time, but there are red dwarf stars that could live for more than a trillion years. We will have lost our history forever. Cherish and make the most of these next hundred billion years. Keep our history alive and remember to tell our great great grandchildren and their robotic companions the tales of a time when we knew about the Big Bang. What about you? What would you go see if you could witness any astronomical event in the history of the universe? Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/110037/why-is-this-a-special-time-for-the-universe/#ixzz2vEuunjwV Permission to publish whole article has been obtained from Universe Today:
Your source is expressing the consensus cosmology, and the predictions of that consensus for the billions of years ahead. The observations that are generally accepted serve as evidence of the Big Bang, Inflation, and acceleration of the expansion. Those observations can also be explained by various alternatives, and some of those alternatives offer explanations that suggest events that lead to the observed expansion. Is there a motivation for posting this generally accepted view, such as a discussion of the consensus for educational purposes, or does your source have any new material associated with Big Bang Theory that addresses the cause of the initial event?
I see it as rather interesting that in eons ahead, we will not be able to show what we know now.....simple as that. The scale of the universe, the expansion of space/time etc etc The Universe then [if we are around, or whatever we have evolved into] would be unrecognisable.
If your source assumes no changes in accepted theory, then billion year predictions might come true. But if we use the developments that have lead to the existing consensus over the past 100 years, aren't there likely to be new discoveries and/or explanations in the next 100 years that will change the consensus?
My guess is you don't know much about modern cosmology. If you did you wouldn't be so compelled to explain it with nonsense.
That post seems to be directed to the thread, and no one in particular. It also implies something about your own views, but I'd just be guessing about what you know or think. I'll just say that if you study cosmology you are aware of the observations involved, and you can make some sense out of how the current Big Bang consensus has developed. My post, in response to Paddoboy, was intended to mean that consensus on cosmology evolves as our tools improve, as we make new discoveries, and as the scientific community explores new explanations for existing observations. That consensus will continue to change and evolve. Right now, the best consensus is that there was a tiny hot dense ball of energy in the first measurable moment of time that has expanded and continues to expand to occupy more and more space. The origin of that energy is unknown. The tiny hot dense ball of energy is recognized as the best theory of our universe at the earliest moment of the consensus theory. The theory doesn't say there was a big bang. The name, "Big Bang" was attributed to it sarcastically during the period before it was considered the consensus. The name stuck because the popular media made it stick, but the consensus is that there is no "consensus" on "before or beyond" the Big Bang, and Big Bang Theory does not take a position on the topic.
My view sees any future QGT, merely extending the parameters of the BB. In other words the evidence we have for the BB is pretty strong, and will be entailed within any new theory.
You don't change evidence, you gather more evidence and broaden explantions of what the evidence might mean. The consensus is built as new evidence is gathered and as the scientific community sorts out the various opinions of what it means and how it fits with existing evidence. Nothing is static about the consensus, and BBT is evolving as new evidence and new ways of looking at existing evidence take place within the scientific community.
Who said anything about changing evidence? I'm speaking of evidence arising from new observations with new equipment in the future. The BB/Inflationary model, will need some tinkering around the edges, but other than that, again, I don't see any new QGT invalidating it......
I did, in response to your statement that "the evidence we have for BB is pretty strong". I said you, meaning, science in general, does not change evidence. But if you take that as a misinterpretation of what you said, then that is not what I meant.
Of course we weren't there...So??? How do we know dinosaurs roamed the earth? How do we know that a metor strike probably caused their downfall? It's called evidence. We have three main pillars of evidence that supports the BB theory [1] We see the Universe expanding [mentally reversing that expansion arrives at a logical point] [2] The relic/left over heat of the BB or the CMBR at a precise 2.7K [cosmic microwave background radiation] [3] The abundance of the lighter elements as logically expected...
The big bang is the best theory we have but there are problems which keep it from being a done deal. As a side note, the BB was actually invented by George Lemaitre who was a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest, who also calculated the Hubble Constant 2 years before Hubble. The ink below talks about 30 problems with the BB. http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/BB-top-30.asp An interesting problem was
They once said Pluto was a planet but recently they claim it isn't. Things change with new telescopes and research so I'm sure that many things we think are true today just might not be in the future but that is science isn't it?
In my books, I still refer to Pluto as a planet. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Force of habit I suppose....plus it's only a matter of classification anyway.
QGT, Quantum Gravity Theory, is certainly far from being discovered, but it could turn out to describe a micro realm, where GR doesn't apply. If that were the case, then the EFE's would still be the best math we have to describe the effect of gravity on macro objects. The improvement would be that those macro calculations would have physical mechanics that operates at the quantum level to make the macro objects move as in spacetime.
