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Date Posted: 12:20:26 03/20/02 Wed
Author: Buffy's vampire
Subject: When we wish upon a star

Wave goodbye to the universe. The expansion of the universe, which began about 15 billon years ago with the Big Bang, is mysteriously getting faster, Australian and British astronomers say.

However, they admitted yesterday they did not have a clue what "dark energy" was driving the galaxies to defy gravity and fly apart with ever increasing speed.

"We don't understand the physical process," said Matthew Colless, of the Australian National University.

But, "eventually the universe will accelerate so rapidly the more distant galaxies we can see today will move away faster than the speed of light and will disappear over the horizon."

Expansion faster than light is possible because, not only are galaxies flying apart at extraordinary speeds, but space itself is expanding, carrying the galaxies away with it.


Until 1998 astrophysicists were debating whether gravity was slowing the expansion enough to eventually cause the universe to collapse in a Big Crunch.

That year other astronomers, including Brian Schmidt, of the ANU's Mount Stromlo Observatory, near Canberra, produced the first solid evidence that the expansion was accelerating.

Studying exploding stars, they found that the more distant ones were fainter - and thus further - than seemed possible. They concluded an accelerating universe was to blame.

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