Tuesday, 20 November 2012 NY Times science section had an interesting article: Amid Cosmic Fatigue, Scarcely a star is born The rate of star formation has steadily declined in the last 11 billion years. Current rate of star formation is 3% of the peak rate in the past. It is estimated that the universe has aready formed 95% of the star mass that it will ever make. Reduced star production & increasing rate of expansion will result in each galaxy or galactic cluster being alone in the observable universe of its inhabitants (if any). In the absence of historical records, the inhabitants of a galaxy will have a cosmology similar to that circa 1895-1915. In that era, our galaxy was believed to be the entire universe. Perhaps it was viewed as the only galaxy in an infinite sized, but otherwise empty universe. Without being able to observe other galaxies, Big Bang cosmology would not be developed.
That's an interesting thought. If a future civilization could only detect the galaxy around them, wouldn't that mean that the universe for them is that galaxy? If no information can come from farther out, well then nothing else would exist. We might be experiencing a similar circumstance without realizing it. You can only work with the information you have.
Lawrence Krauss covers this in his recent book. plus when this happens the plasma temperature of the galaxy will also swamp out the cmbr so we wont be able to use that to surmise a BB. we do live in interesting times.
