Will the universe’s expansion put an end to science as we know it?

Well, that’s what some cosmologists fear. Call it a futurist’s dystopia if you like.

Big Bang/NASA

Sci-tech writer Geoff Manaugh explains at BLDGBLOG:

As the universe expands over hundreds of billions of years, Reynolds explained, there will be a point, in the very far future, at which all galaxies will be so far apart that they will no longer be visible from one another.

Upon reaching that moment, it will no longer be possible to understand the universe’s history—or perhaps even that it had one—as all evidence of a broader cosmos outside of one’s own galaxy will have forever disappeared. Cosmology itself will be impossible.

…

There would be no reason to theorize that other galaxies had ever existed in the first place. The universe, in effect, will have disappeared over its own horizon, into a state of irreversible amnesia.More.

For Manaugh, these thoughts riff off a recent article on the “crisis brewing in the cosmos” (the universe seems to be expanding too fast).

Hmmm. We could probably put off worry about it for a little, especially because we don’t seem to have anything like a program yet for the  End of All Things. Keep the file open.

See also: Crisis in cosmology: Universe expanding too fast?

Now fierce debate over universe expansion speed

New physics? Conflict in universe’s expansion data

and

Universe expansion speed just right for life?

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