The Return of a Static Universe and the End of Cosmology

Lawrence M. Krauss  1,2   and Robert J. Scherrer  2

1Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University,

Cleveland, OH 44106; email: krauss@cwru.edu and

2Department of Physics & Astronomy, Vanderbilt University,

Nashville, TN 37235; email: robert.scherrer@vanderbilt.edu

(Dated: March 20, 2007)

Abstract

We demonstrate that as we extrapolate the current АCDM 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.