Podcaster's Journal: Physicists predict the death of cosmology

Space.com are running a short interview with Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and co-author of an upcoming paper in The Journal of Relativity and Gravitation in which it is claimed that billions of years in the future our descendents will no longer be able to study cosmology.

Without a cosmological frame of reference, Krauss explained, future observers will be clueless that their universe is still expanding. "It will be a sort of twisted situation, where thinking returns to what it was at the turn of the 20th century," he said. In other words, observers will think the universe is just a static--or non-expanding--cluster of galaxies just as scientists thought until the 1920s. "The static universe," as the journal article states, "will have returned with a vengeance."

Say what?

[billsoxs]

From the article: "The universe is rapidly expanding--perhaps not rapidly enough to rip to shreds, but enough that distant galaxies will eventually be moving away faster than the speed of light. "

How is this? Does that not cause all sorts of infinite mass - e.g. energy - issues? Sounds like there is a problem with the model.

No problems with infinity

[benhocking]

Space itself would be expanding faster than the speed of light. This is different (and has different consequences) than traveling near or at (or faster than) the speed of light. There are still associated redshifts, however. The same thing is thought to have happened during the inflationary period, shortly after the big bang.