The Return of a Static Universe and the End of Cosmology

Abstract

We demonstrate that as we extrapolate the current $\Lambda$CDM universe forward in time, all evidence of the Hubble expansion will disappear, so that observers in our "island universe" will be fundamentally incapable of determining the true nature of the universe, including the existence of the highly dominant vacuum energy, the existence of the CMB, and the primordial origin of light elements. With these pillars of the modern Big Bang gone, this epoch will mark the end of cosmology and the return of a static universe. In this sense, the coordinate system appropriate for future observers will perhaps fittingly resemble the static coordinate system in which the de Sitter universe was first presented.

arXiv comment5th prize 2007 Gravity Research Foundation Essay Competition, to appear, GRG October 2007; typos corrected; references updated

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• The cosmic web for density perturbations of various scales
• SDSS DR7 superclusters. Principal component analysis
• The Future of the Local Large Scale Structure: the roles of Dark Matter and Dark Energy
• The Evolution of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Cosmology with Hypervelocity Stars
• Limitations of anthropic predictions for the cosmological constant $\Lambda$: Cosmic Heat Death of Anthropic Observers
• The Self-Organized de Sitter Universe
• Superluminal velocities in Schwarzschild-de Sitter space
• Recessional velocities and Hubble's law in Schwarzschild-de Sitter space
• A local self-tuning mechanism for the cosmological constant
• Causal structures in cosmology
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• The cosmological constant in the brane world of string theory on $S^1/Z_2$
• Late transient acceleration of the universe in string theory on $S^1/Z_2$
• Einstein gravity with torsion induced by the scalar field
• Brane cosmology in the Horava-Witten heterotic M-Theory on $S^1/Z_2$
• The Adventures of the Rocketeer: Accelerated Motion Under the Influence of Expanding Space
• Metastability of the False Vacuum in a Higgs-Seesaw Model of Dark Energy
• The Big Bang, Modern Cosmology and the Fate of the Universe: Impacts upon Culture
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• Orbifold Branes in the $M_D\times M_{d^{+}}\times M_{d^{-}}$ Compactification of type II string on $S^1/Z_2$ and their cosmological applications