Apart from a shake-up over the geometry of space, there has been another surprise in recent cosmology. An article in the January 1999 Scientific American, "Surveying Space-time with Supernovae" [Craig J. Hogan, Robert P. Kirshner, and Nicholas B. Suntzeff, pp. 46-51], discusses observational data that seems to indicate that the expansion of the universe has accelerated over time, not decelerated as it should under the influence of gravity alone. This implies the existence of Einstein's "Cosmological Constant" or some other exotic force that would override the attraction of gravity. It also may clear up another pecularity about "standard" cosmology that had been swept under the rug. That is, all closed universes, where deceleration would be enough to produce a collapse into the "Big Crunch," preferred by cosmologists like Stephen Hawking, would have to be younger than 2/3 of the Hubble Time (1/H). This would also mean that no objects in the universe could have a red shift larger than 2/3 of the velocity of light (c), since the red shift gives us the distance in proportion to the Hubble Radius (c/H), and also the age in proportion to the Hubble Time. Thus, in the diagram at right, all the universes under the green curve are closed, and all those above the green curve are open. Now, many quasars have red shifts larger than 2/3 c. Many are even over 90% of c. This has been prima facie evidence since the 70's that the universe was open, but nobody of any influence seems to have noticed. Now, however, if the universe is accelerating, then all possible universes are above the straight red line in the diagram which indicates the Hubble Constant. They will all be older than the Hubble Time. This suddenly makes it quite reasonable that very old objects, like many quasars, would have very, very large red shifts. Indeed, the Big Bang itself would appear to be receding faster than the velocity of light -- it would have an infinite red shift. So again we have an object lesson in the history of science, that a careful examination of the implications of a theory is sometimes neglected by professional science. Inconsistencies can be revealed by even a lay examination.

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