Local Artist Mark James has kindly donated his painting on wood panel, "The Eternal and Infinite Universe" to the Living Museum collection.
He explains:
"This painting, TEIAU 2019, is a smaller 2019 version of The Eternal And Infinite Universe 1994 with the same text (but without the last half - which would have made it too long for this painting). The text simply encapsulates a theory of the universe, or multiverse, according to which our visible universe should be accelerating apart (because it is falling gravitationally out towards the greater mass of the infinity and many other cosmoses).
Historically, back in 1994 when the original was painted, no one thought that the 'universe' could be accelerating apart. It was thought that after the initial expansion of the big bang (whatever caused that) gravity would be slowing the momentum down. There was a mystery in this scenario though, which was that according to the present rate of expansion (aka the Hubble constant) the universe was calculably only 10 billion years old, and many astronomers thought that was not old enough to account for the apparent age and state of evolution of many galaxies in our visible universe.
I figured that if, instead of the expansion having slowed down from a faster time, it had speeded up from a slower time, then that would mean the visible universe was older, and could then account for its state of evolution. Of course I also needed to think of an explanation for why the visible universe would be accelerating part - and that was included in the 94 painting."