In 100 billion years, everything we can see except local galaxies will have been pushed so far away by the universe’s expansion that all other sources of light will have been redshifted beyond our ability to detect them, according to a paper that will appear in October.

All matter other than that in our galaxy will be invisible, and our view of the universe will look like it did in the pre-Hubble days. The cosmic microwave background, which has provided our most detailed understanding of the Big Bang, will also be gone.

The authors suggest that there’s another layer of complexity on top of the anthropic principle. We recognize that there is an anthropic principle because we came along at the right time. Too much earlier, and we wouldn’t be able to detect that the universe is in a new inflationary era, which tells us that it’s dominated by dark energy. Too much later, and we wouldn’t be able to know that there’s a universe at all.