Are we learning more about the universe quickly?

Absolutely to both questions. 30 years ago we didn't have the Hubble telescope. A little known fact about the Hubble telescope is no other singular piece of equipment in human history has given us more knowledge. More research papers have been written off of evidence provided by the Hubble than any other device ever.

As to the future, the international community is set to launch dozens of new types of telescopes that will provide insights and knowledge on features of the universe we do not even know exist yet. As our super computers ramp up speeds increasingly complex simulations can be run to test out the validity of our cutting edge science theories. Even on the smallest scale we are looking at immense advances in knowledge through devices like the Large Hadron Collider.

In the modern era we have a lot of data at our fingertips which can help us learn a lot, but whether we do actually learn from it depends on how we interpret the data. There are some cosmologists who believe we are generally interpreting things wrongly which is giving us the wrong ideas. This documentary may enlighten you...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yTfRy0LTD0&playnex...

for all of human history maybe 300,000 years humans have guessed what the universe was "really like"

until 1650 it was all guess work and wrong. we were not a ball on tpo of giant (atlas)standing on a Turtle on top of elephants etc

we were not a glass ball held in the hand of god

until late 1800 we did not realize the stars were billions of other suns

until 1920 we did not know the fuzzy spots were other galaxies like our

until the late 1900s to today we did not have evidence that the universe is about 14 billion years old

Today , for the first time in hisotroy,

We are Certain of only one thing: what we think we know is almost certainly wrong and at lest incomplete

Well it's not like we're going to learn less, we can only learn more

and yes in 30 years we will know a sh*t load more than we do now.