[RightWhale]

As soon as we figure out what is doing this, we should figure out a way to stop it, and do a few other things so the universe doesn't burn out just as we are getting started.

[randog]

"Right now, the universe is speeding up...

I thought I felt something the other day.

[Dr. Frank fan]

"We've been hoping to see this effect of slowing in the distant past.

That's weird, I just think this is an odd attitude for a scientist to have, 'hoping' to see one set of stats or another. Perhaps there are good reasons for this 'hoping' and the article just doesn't explain them.

[demlosers]

Astronomers discovered seven decades ago that the universe is expanding, with galaxies rushing away from each other in all directions. Physics suggested that the expansion, which began with the Big Bang, should slow down over time due to the combined gravitational pull from all matter in the cosmos.

I've read recently that the expansion will not collapse on itself -- lasting forever.

It's a "Go" Universe!

[JoeSixPack1]

Do We Live In A "Stop And Go" Universe?

Yes we do. Even our computers work on a super expanded explanation of "On or Off" to make computations and calculations in binary. Or at least that's how we have the ability to control computations, even if they are completed at the micron level.

[Gary Boldwater]

*PINK MATTER ALERT*

Well if it did slow down (perhaps even go in reverse) and then sped up, what does this say about the cosmological red shift assumption?
Wouldn't it be simpler to explain this all as the universe not really expanding (though it is moving about), but rather that the speed of light may have changed with time and location. It's a big assumption that the intrinsic impedance of space is the same all over for all time.
The cosmic background radiation may just be light that is absorbed by the matter (and there's lots of it) between the heavenly bodies and reradiated as heat. It may not be the left over light from the big bang doppler shifted.

[longshadow]

dark energy/accelerating expansion ping

[Saturnalia]

I for one would be interested in knowing what makes a universe stop.
Have the astronomers interviewed the Supremes lately?

[kuma]

Ah! It must be God expanding hell since the fall of man and even more so rapidly after the 60's.

[gcruse]

so the universe doesn't burn out just as we are getting started.

"The universe is going to collapse in a few billion years."
"Oh, my gawd!  It isn't fair.  What are we going to do?"
"What are you talking about?  A billion years is a long time."
"A billion?  Oh, man, I thought you said a million!"

[AndrewC]

Well, what do you know! We don't know.

That means lots of territory to have fun in.

[JusPasenThru]

This is exactly the point I've been trying to make for a long time....

[FreedomCalls]

the universe is speeding up, with galaxies zooming away from each other

Vishnu's breathing? Maybe he just inhaled.

Uh Oh -- maybe he's going to wake up.....

[WKB]

Anyone who drives is familiar with the frustration of being caught in "stop and go" traffic, a phenomenon found in urban areas all over the world

Rush Hour????

[ladyinred]

I do not mind all of the ridicule I will get for saying that once I got past the headline of this article, I was lost! Does that mean I am speeding up, or slowing down?

[Hot Tabasco]

"Right now, the universe is speeding up

THAT explains why my 3 day memorial day weekend only resulted in a day and a half of work! I woke up this morning thinking it was only Sunday!

Time to get our Senators involved to fix this crisis.......

[MHGinTN]

I wonder, RW, could it be that dimension time 'echos' between future and past, kind of like a wave in a pan that rebounds off of the side and back across to the other side, back and forth?

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,

Just remember that you're standing on a planet
That's evolving
And revolving
At nine thousand miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second,
so it's reckoned,
'Round the sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me,
and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm,
at fourteen thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle
sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us
it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years
From Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go,
that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute
And that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember,
when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life
Somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

-- Eric Idle

[Old Professer]

I agree with Walt -- it was all about slavery.

[aruanan]

Astronomers discovered seven decades ago that the universe is expanding, with galaxies rushing away from each other in all directions.

Or, more accurately stated:

Seven decades ago some astronomers assumed the red shift observed in all directions was evidence of recessional velocity and posited that the receding sources of light must have originally proceeded from a single point in what they came to call the Big Bang. This idea, in spite of many contrary observational data in the decades since, has become the standard dogma, the theoretical glass slipper for which many observational toes have been crushed to conform or simply ignored.

[LiteKeeper]

YEC read later