credit:
Kitt Peak National Obsevatory
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What's
happened to the
universe since the Big Bang?
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What
would slow the expansion of the universe?
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What's
causing the universe's expansion?
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ACCELERATING,
EXPANDING UNIVERSE
Two
independent teams of astronomers, both with NSF support, have concluded
the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
While it has been known for many years that the universe has been continually
expanding since the Big Bang, the discovery by these research teams has
drawn an unexpected new picture of a universe that isgetting
bigger at an ever increasing rate,driven
by a yet unknown force.
It was previously unknown if thegravitational
attraction between galaxieswould
be enough to slow the expansion of the universe. However, NSF-funded astronomers
Saul Perlmutter, Robert Kirshner and Alexi Filippenko, as well as a team
of astronomers at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, an
NSF facility, have discovered that not
enough matter exists to slow the paceof
the expanding universe.
In fact, expansion of the universe is actually speeding up. Science
magazine named this discovery as the science discovery of the year in
1998.
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