Article Posted on : - Feb 17, 2009

Lawrence M. Krauss, Arizona State University

NEW YORK (BNS): Significantly, in the last decade generations of researchers have brought us to the changing face of universe as visible today. The changes have had a significant effect upon the understanding of the future of the universe and life within it.

Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago on Monday, touched upon the subject that the universe was flat and the dominant form of energy in the universe resides in empty space.

Delivering a lecture on ‘Our Miserable Future’, Krauss said that significantly impacting the understanding of the future of the universe, these changes have also effected the questions asked in modern cosmology, forcing researchers to confront several profound questions.

“Are fundamental cosmological questions falsifiable? Are the laws of nature fixed, or environmental? Are there fundamental cosmological limits to knowledge, and to life?” asks Krauss, a professor in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences where he is a faculty member in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Physics Department.

“The revolutionary developments of the past decade have forced us to confront truly fundamental questions at the basis of science. In the far future all evidence of the big bang will disappear and scientists will think we live in a static eternal universe,” Krauss explained.

The professor said that looking out at a night sky twinkling with distant light, it's a disturbing challenge to imagine that one day, far in the future, we will be alone in a dark empty universe. The rest of the universe will disappear before our very eyes, he said.

“We may live at a very special time in the history of the universe. Understanding why that appears to be the case is one of the biggest open questions in cosmology,” Krauss added.