The Past and Future of the Astrophysical Universe
Avi Loeb (Harvard University)
The initial conditions of our Universe can be summarized on a single sheet
of paper. Yet the Universe is full of complex structures today, such as
stars, galaxies and groups of galaxies. I will describe how complexity
emerged in the form of the first stars out of the simple initial state of
the Universe at early cosmic times.
The future of the Universe is even more surprising. Over the past decade it
was realized that the cosmic expansion has been accelerating. If this
accelerated expansion will continue into the future, then within a hundred
billion years there will be no galaxies left for us to observe within the
cosmic horizon except one: the merger product between our own Milky Way
galaxy and its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy.
