Todays Research On Cosmology

While cosmology research began long ago scientists only thought to believe that it was a story of how the world was created and continues to exist.  From reading the article entitled "Cosmology And The 21st Century," by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel Primack, it was clear how every culture had a certain cosmology but back then researchers did not have the tools to scientifically come up with one specific answer to why it made sense of the ordinary world and what it all meant about the universe.  In today's world astronomers are making vast leaps into finding how the universe is expanding and what we can expect for the future.

While reading from the website Facts On File: Today's Science News, one article entitled Cosmology, gave an in depth look to what the universe will do in upcoming years.  The first time astronomers realized that the universe will always be expanding was in 1998.  That same year they realized that with every passing year it will be expanding at a faster rate by some unknown force of anti-gravity.  This news looked at in more recent years was considered mind blowing to astronomers given the fact that they previously thought the universe would reach a peak expansion point or it would be easy to come up with an explanation to just how fast it was going to keep growing.  Now it is realized that if the universe was to keep expanding at a rapid pace it could collapse entirely.

Now astronomers know that the existence of the entire universe has a lot to do with its mass and density.  It could eventually collapse if it has too little density, which means it would keep expanding forever.  Thus making it collapse on itself because of its own density.

How to measure the ever expanding universe is done using light.  All the stars give off light in a reddish tint to the Earth and therefore scientists can tell how much the universe has expanded from previous years by measuring the "redshift."  

Although scientists are not positive why the universe is expanding at such a rapid rate they do have some different theory's on the idea such as the "Virtual Particles" theory or the "X Matter" idea.  None have yet to be proven to give solid answers but with more research a correct theory and plan could be made for the future.