Updating the Fate

of the Universe
The hottest news in cosmology is
that space seems to contain an unknown
form of energy that exerts pressure on
cosmic scales, causing the universes expansion to speed up (S&T: September
1998, page 38). The evidence for this
cosmological constant also referred
to as Lambda (L), the fifth force, or
quintessence is still not entirely solid.
But its existence would solve several big
problems at once. It would reconcile the
universes expansion age with the seemingly greater ages of the oldest stars, a
long-standing embarrassment. And it
seems to provide just the right amount
of missing energy needed to make space
flat, fulfilling a key prediction made by
the inflation theory of cosmology.
If Lambda does exist, it will have big
consequences for the long-term future of
our universe. The time line of events for
the next 10120 years that was described in
Sky & Telescope last August (page 32)
will indeed come to pass, for the most
part but in a universe that will become much emptier and lonelier much
faster than expected.
Lawrence M. Krauss and Glenn D.
Starkman (Case Western Reserve University) have examined some consequences
of accelerating expansion in a paper
submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
A big change, they find, will come within a few hundred billion years an era
when numerous dwarf stars will still be
shining comfortably, with the prospect
of lighting and warming planets for ages
to come. By that time the accelerating
expansion will have utterly removed all
of the visible cosmos except for our local
Virgo Supercluster of galaxies, which
contains the Milky Way. More distant
objects those not gravitationally
bound to Virgo will have disappeared
at a cosmic horizon, an absolute visibility limit.
At that point each gravitationally
bound supercluster will be like a universe
unto itself. By then the galaxies comprising it will be merging into one great,
smooth swarm of stars (as illustrated on
last Augusts cover). Eventually many or
most of the superclusters stars will be
flung out by gravitational encounters
with each other. Each such free-ranging
star will itself become the sole object inside its own cosmic horizon.

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1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope July 1999

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