2070, Bryan Apt. They are posted on my office door with my class schedule. These are legitimate scientific questions. In fact, the most recent observational data is so detailed that we are able to reject many popular cosmological theories as untenable.
Cosmology has within the last thirty years become a mature science.
We shall first review the current state of the universe. We will survey this new generation of instruments, then explore the next generation which promises within the next ten years or so to permit us to track the evolution of the universe to a tiny fraction of a second after space and time came into existence in the Big Bang. Then we will turn to a more detailed description of the evolution of the universe, noting how this description is both constrained and supported by current observations. These are the really tough questions. We will all have different responses.