Question. Is it possible that in just few decades, with theoritical advances and technology, we are going to acheive a full understanding of the Universe. And what might be the consequences? Submitted by kalin at blazemail.com 9/99
I certainly hope not!
It does seem feasible, with the potential of the Planck satellite, together with several other ambitious astrophysical projects, that within about a decade we may have the basic answers to some of today's biggest cosmological mysteries. We will probably have a good idea of how fast the Universe is expanding, exactly how much dark matter it contains, and whether it is likely to expand forever, as well as some strong hints about the very early history of the Universe, and in particular where all the structure came from, and how it developed into galaxies.
However, that's far from being a ``full understanding of the Universe''! I can certainly think of many questions which I don't expect to be answered on that timescale. And I'm sure that further progress on today's big mysteries will lead to other questions that we haven't even thought of yet!
If we ever really came to understand the whole thing, then the obvious consequences are boredom. It's hard to imagine coming to work every day and having no obvious research projects to do because we understood everything!
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For any one interested in the latest in cosmic microwave background (CMB) work go here:
http://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/scott/cmb.html
Under faq_cmb you will find a long list of questions and answers, where the above quote comes in toward the end. This faq like the rest of this site range from technical to popular levels.
Among the cosmological parameters that can be deduced from CMB observation are Hubble's constant or the expansion rate of the radius and therefore the size, and the mean density of the universe along with the relative proporitions of matter and energy. These together with a few other observational findings definitively choose between cosmological models and these are then tweaked to answer most of the remaining big questions.
The latest result of the CMB work is that space-time is almost flat, and not curved either positive or negative, with the implication that exansion continues forever without either a collapse or a diffusion of matter beyond the reach of gravity. In other words we continue to evolve more or less along the same route forever.
So Les, check it out. If you do, set Netscape preferences so files with *.ps exension execute (gv %s) for ghostview since the articles and publications are mostly postscript.
Chuck Grimes