beskeptical and Hale_Bopp:

Thank you for the information and/or the link to the audio. It cut out on the player part of the way through, so I did not hear the complete program.

I have the articles and research papers in SCIENCE online for 24 May 2002 and will read further about this interesting topic.

However, just like the other scenarios, most of the story is long into the future and at present all we can view is the accelerated expansion. I have always liked theory linked to observation. Computer programming is fine, so long as it can show something which can be partially checked.

Incidentally, for a long time I thought that we lived in a repeating universe of Big Bangs and Big Crunches (but that universe had a deceleration which we do not have as yet. We used to think that there was a deceleration, but the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team changed that in the NATURE Letter of 1-1-98 and SCIENCE awarded the Accelerating Universe the Discovery of the Year in its issue of 12-18-98.

I do not count computer programs as observation, so I am a real old fogey. However, I will keep the subject open for further explanation.

SCIENCE for 24 May 2002 certainly gave it the *full treatment* and I will let the real cosmologists (both theoretical and observational) tell me what it is all about. At least, it is a wonderful surprise.

I feel a little sorry for the folks whose research and life work has gone down the drain (if only temporarily).

Thanks again, both of you.

ljbrs [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]
(Armchair cosmologist since 3 years of age.)

__________________
"There is in the universe neither center nor circumference." Giordano Bruno Born 1548. Torched 1600.