From the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD:
The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate — or is it?
Five years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astronomers for their discovery, in the late 1990s, that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace.
Their conclusions were based on analysis of Type Ia supernovae – the spectacular thermonuclear explosion of dying stars – picked up by the Hubble space telescope and large ground-based telescopes. It led to the widespread acceptance of the idea that the universe is dominated by a mysterious substance named ‘dark energy’ that drives this accelerating expansion.
Now, a team of scientists led by Professor Subir Sarkar of Oxford University’s Department of Physics has cast doubt on this standard cosmological concept. Making use of a vastly increased data set – a catalogue of 740 Type Ia supernovae, more than ten times the original sample size – the researchers have found that the evidence for acceleration may be flimsier than previously thought, with the data being consistent with a constant rate of expansion.
The study is published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
Professor Sarkar, who also holds a position at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, said: ‘The discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe won the Nobel Prize, the Gruber Cosmology Prize, and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. It led to the widespread acceptance of the idea that the universe is dominated by “dark energy” that behaves like a cosmological constant – this is now the “standard model” of cosmology.
‘However, there now exists a much bigger database of supernovae on which to perform rigorous and detailed statistical analyses. We analysed the latest catalogue of 740 Type Ia supernovae – over ten times bigger than the original samples on which the discovery claim was based – and found that the evidence for accelerated expansion is, at most, what physicists call “3 sigma”. This is far short of the “5 sigma” standard required to claim a discovery of fundamental significance.
‘An analogous example in this context would be the recent suggestion for a new particle weighing 750 GeV based on data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It initially had even higher significance – 3.9 and 3.4 sigma in December last year – and stimulated over 500 theoretical papers. However, it was announced in August that new data shows that the significance has dropped to less than 1 sigma. It was just a statistical fluctuation, and there is no such particle.’
There is other data available that appears to support the idea of an accelerating universe, such as information on the cosmic microwave background – the faint afterglow of the Big Bang – from the Planck satellite. However, Professor Sarkar said: ‘All of these tests are indirect, carried out in the framework of an assumed model, and the cosmic microwave background is not directly affected by dark energy. Actually, there is indeed a subtle effect, the late-integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, but this has not been convincingly detected.
‘So it is quite possible that we are being misled and that the apparent manifestation of dark energy is a consequence of analysing the data in an oversimplified theoretical model – one that was in fact constructed in the 1930s, long before there was any real data. A more sophisticated theoretical framework accounting for the observation that the universe is not exactly homogeneous and that its matter content may not behave as an ideal gas – two key assumptions of standard cosmology – may well be able to account for all observations without requiring dark energy. Indeed, vacuum energy is something of which we have absolutely no understanding in fundamental theory.’
Professor Sarkar added: ‘Naturally, a lot of work will be necessary to convince the physics community of this, but our work serves to demonstrate that a key pillar of the standard cosmological model is rather shaky. Hopefully this will motivate better analyses of cosmological data, as well as inspiring theorists to investigate more nuanced cosmological models. Significant progress will be made when the European Extremely Large Telescope makes observations with an ultrasensitive “laser comb” to directly measure over a ten to 15-year period whether the expansion rate is indeed accelerating.’
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The Theory of “Dark Matter” originated when the speed of rotation of a galaxy was first measured, and found to be faster than the surmised weight of the galaxy could confine. There are other theories to account for this, mainly based on an assumption that gravity is slightly different at galactic scale. There remains absolutely no proof of either school of thought.
“Dark Energy” is based on the assumption that all Type IIa (not Type Ia) supernovae are identical. Subsequent research gives strong indication that all Type IIa supernovae are not identical. This could be the first Noble Prize revoked. I wonder if they will ask for their money back.
Oops, Type Ia
“The Theory of “Dark Matter” originated when the speed of rotation of a galaxy was first measured, and found to be faster than the surmised weight of the galaxy could confine. There are other theories to account for this, mainly based on an assumption that gravity is slightly different at galactic scale. ”
==============================
The theory of Dark Matter is also based on an estimation that galaxies are over 13 billion years old. The Big Bang theory cannot explain how galaxies were able to form so quickly after the “bang”, nor can the theory explain how galaxies could have held together since their formation, if it was so long ago.
SR
The Big Bang Theory has no trouble explaining an earlier than previously thought formation of stars and galaxies. Gravity holds galaxies together, so no mystery there. Besides, the HST observed a galaxy that might no longer exist.
https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1106/
If dark matter does not exist, not only would any early galaxy no longer exist, galaxy formation is called into question.
SR
Or the non-existence of dark matter means an alternative hypothesis is correct. It wouldn’t be the first time that a famous physicist from a previous century was proved wrong at very large or very small scales.
Two of the leading alternative hypothesis are MonD and MiHsC (that I know of, I bet there are others)
Peter,
Such as EHT (Extended Heim Theory).
I think we can be fairly certain that galaxies form, questions notwithstanding.
It seems that in the realms of the very large and the very small, cosmology and particle physics, it is more common for an ad hoc “theory” to be dreamed up one fine day by some supposedly smart as a whip cookie, and if no one can immediately poke huge holes in said idea, before you know it, people in the field are strutting around talking about these ideas as if they are established facts, rather than some eggheads brainchild…which may or may not be in any way correct.
Cosmic inflation is a great example of this, as is dark energy. Dark matter has a somewhat stronger foundation, but it is still based more so on something that is unknown rather than something that IS known.
..I have always considered “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy” to just be simple mathematical place holders for the stuff the scientists don’t know yet…Most likely they are made up of multiple particles and energy that we have not been able to imagine ! IMHO
just as Gravity once was…
..It was pretty easy to prove that gravity existed……You are comparing apples to Italian meatballs !
I think that is the proper perspective for those terms.
3 standard deviations are pretty good in my book.
That their much larger sample has a higher noise level and that the fit therefore is poorer [only 3 sigma] is quite natural. Their Figure 2 http://www.leif.org/research/No-Acceleration.png shows the best result [the middle of the innermost red-dashed oval which is just the same as the standard model. All they have shown is that their data has higher noise.
The comments here on WUWT generally show how scientifically illiterate people are.
Dr. Svalgaard…true dat!
But overall the knowledge of the crowd here is far higher that in the general population, in my estimation anywho.
There do seem to be several people who are more sure of themselves than their actual knowledge should permit.
A little dash of humility in such matters goes a long way, IMO.
Don’t know about “models” but in classical statistics larger samples are better and “noise” results in a less convincing relationship which is what has been found in this study.
“Gruber Cosmology Prize” that’s a give away right there, if named after the MIT economist Jonathan Gruber—the architect of Obamacare—who mocked “the stupidity of the American voter”
“the stupidity of the American voter”
Obama was elected President twice. Hillary Clinton may well be our next President. Gruber may be on to something.
The real story of interest this week ( to me) is how the number of galaxies in the universe has increased from 100 to 200 billion to 2 trillion – a factor 10. Turns out they have used models to extrapolate with what we can observe, to fill in large scale voids we can’t. I think they are trying to save general relativity. The thing is the public, when they get hold of it, will not know the difference and go for the higher – made-up – number of 2 trillion.
Except that the increase is based upon new observations, which naturally require rethinking assumptions about those parts of the universe still not directly observable.
It’s not a plot of some kind.
I’m not suggesting it is; I am just not happy with modelling.
“They were able to plot the number of galaxies of a given mass that corresponded to various distances away from Earth. The researchers then extrapolated their estimates to encompass galaxies too small and faint for telescopes to pick up. Based on this, they calculated that the observable Universe should contain 2 trillion galaxies. The paper1 will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/universe-has-10-times-more-galaxies-than-researchers-thought/
The new, higher estimate is based upon the same assumptions as the old, lower estimates. That is, you observe a region of the universe, count the galaxies there and scale that number up by the whole volume, assuming the density will be about the same in unobserved regions.
What changed is that a galaxy was observed earlier in the universe than previously thought to have occurred. Hence, there are or were more galaxies than believed in the unobserved reaches of the universe.
If you don’t like the assumptions now, then you should not have liked them before, under the lower estimates. Not every region of the universe does have the same density of galaxies, but it’s close enough for government work, ie a range factor of two, ie the prior guess of 100 to 200 billion.
The WiggleZ survey showed a thinning out. Sure there are galaxies out there, but not as clustered as nearby. If we add galaxies to the large scales, we may miss a vital clue to the geometry: if the universe is expanding (and it is still doing that even if not (possibly) accelerating) then why should concentrations be the same at large scales (or early time)? Maybe matter is emergent, who knows, but must not contaminate what we can see with conjecture or extrapolation. If we model, we muddle, just like with the climate.
“I’m not suggesting it is; I am just not happy with modelling.”
but son, it’s ALL modelling
The take home message is :
Using a model that assumes a framework to confirm the framework is a error of magnitude.
An astronomy article (Sept 2015) I read this morning said they thought there were two types of Type Ia supernova. One where two white dwarfs merge and explode, and one where a white dwarf accumulates material from a larger, main sequence companion causing an explosion on the white dwarf. Our “standard candle” for distance is a little more complicated than we realized.
A type Ia supernova occurs in binary systems (two stars orbiting one another), in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. The companion can be of any size from a giant star to an even smaller white dwarf. It needn’t be a main sequence companion similar to the Sun.
Chimp:
One thing…Not limited to binary systems…many such dwarfs have two or more companions.
And the case of two white dwarfs colliding is not limited to situations in which they started out in orbit about each other. It is thought that in elliptical galaxies, the vast majority of type 1a supernovae are from collisions between two dwarfs. If such collisions were mostly from stars in orbit with each other, it would not matter what sort of galaxy they reside in.
Another thing…”main sequence” does not in any way imply a sun-like star, merely one that is fusing hydrogen in it’s core. On the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, it is the main band of stars. A given star’s position on the main sequence is determined mainly by it’s mass, and to a lesser extent it’s metalicity and some other factors. TA is correct.
I know that stars larger and smaller than the sun can be on the main sequence. I mentioned the sun because it’s in between large and small stars.
It remains the case that to be a Type Ia Supernova, the system needs at least one white dwarf. The other star (or stars) can be big, small or in between.
Menicholas, I would think that a collision between two white dwarfs is far less common than one white dwarf accumulating mass from a companion non-degenerate star. A star expanding beyond it’s Roche limit and dumping mass on a companion is fairly common, actual collisions between two stars are very rare. There may be a form of supernova that comes from two white dwarfs, but we’ve probably only observed one or two at the most.
@Chimp
Your description hits on the significant point. The type 1a supernova is characterized by the Chandrasekhar Limit, which is the basis for its use as a standard candle i.e. all type 1a explosions will have the same characteristic energy.
Scarlet Macaw,
Just relaying what I believe to be the mainstream line of thought on this.
I was surprised to hear that as well.
As elliptical galaxies are likely formed by the merger of two or more spiral galaxies, the orbits of the stars within them are less unidirectional than in a spiral, where everything is very generally moving in the same direction on the larger scale.
I agree that the conventional wisdom has always been that stellar collisions are very rare, and that even when two galaxies collide head on, the space between individual stars is so great that stellar collisions are unlikely.
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/type1a/
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/mar/HQ_12-086_Swift_TypeIa_Origins.html
Not so Alan.
See links above and research the subject.
“Combined with the previous results, less than 20 per cent of type Iae occur through the single degenerate channel. ”
Not saying I agree or that this is the last word…just passing it on.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1948
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/uoa-aun041015.php
@Menicholas October 22, 2016 at 8:55 am
“Not so Alan. See links above and research the subject.”
From what I’ve read (and DO provide the correct links/explanation if I’m wrong) it is possible to distinguish the characteristic brightness-time curves of the two types of 1A supernova in question. This therefore preserves the status of the single (1x) Chandrasekhar mass explosions as standard candles.
Maybe I’m just dence 😉 but we know why water rotate s what makes a gas cloud rotate as in collapse s in to a star ? What is the Coralie’s effect that makes everything spin in the same direction ? Sun and planets right perspective bottom looking up but galaxies left black holes right . Brain crapping just a stupid question but bigs me 😉
Not all celestial bodies orbit in the same direction.
Venus, Uranus, some moons and many comets show retrograde rather than prograde motion.
Not what I asked my point was why spin at all how does the spin start from collapsing gas from nowhere . Geez like I don’t know about isentric orbit’s . does space time it’s self have a force to add different spins on different mass ?
Either I’m dense or your question was hard to understand.
By spin, I assume you mean rotation rather than orbiting. The planets spin for the same reason that a glancing hit from a cue ball sends a pool ball spinning.
It’s hypothesized that when the solar system was still a cloud of gas and dust, a shock wave from a nearby supernova bounced up against it and caused it to collapse. As it collapsed, its own gravitational forces pulled it into a flat, spinning “planetary” disk. Since our solar system was formed from that disk, its momentum sent nearly everything spinning in the same direction. Exceptions like Uranus and Venus probably derive their divergent spins from subsequent collisions with asteroids or other bodies.
The planets have continued spinning because of inertia. In the near vacuum of space, rotating objects maintain the momentum and direction of their spin because no external forces have been applied to stop them.
Iorne, I understand your question, and it is a good one.
The clouds of material from which stars and planets form always have some degree of angular momentum, taking the clouds as a whole.
When it is a large cloud of gas and dust, the random motion of the various atoms and molecules are in every different which way, but overall, these motions are extremely unlikely to all exactly cancel…hence the overall angular momentum is merely the sum of the various random or near-random motions.
As the cloud collapses, this angular momentum becomes concentrated in a much smaller volume, and the various random motions cancel out as particles interact with each other and jostle around, leaving only the net angular momentum of the original cloud as a whole concentrated into the spin of the ensuing condensed matter in the system.
This same phenomenon on different scales results in spinning spiral galaxies, spinning stars, and planets, and moons, etc.
Capisce?
Dear Iorne50, you might get some insights from a book by Frederick Kantor titled “Information Mechanics.” It is no longer in print but can be found used. Kantor passed away and there is, regrettably, very little left to know about him. Among his conjectures was the idea that conservation of momentum was not entirely linear in its additions, with the result that it would be inevitable for any large mass to have a residuum of angular momentum, and thus would rotate.
I’d say there’s a lot more than that bigging you. 😉
Type Ia supernovae were considered to be “cosmic mile markers” and “standard candles” of fairly uniform brightness. This was based on the idea that “the star doing the exploding is a white dwarf with a fairly standard mass, so the supernova’s brightness is predictable.” But they are now discovering that type la supernovae are not as uniform as they thought. They have discovered much variation. There is still a lot we don’t know about these supernovae. Estimates of the expanding universe were based on the assumption that these supernovae were standard candles and could be used to estimate distance. Now that assumption has been questioned. At the very least, estimates of distance that are based on la supernovae must be given much larger error bars.
White dwarfs!
What is the matter with them, anyway?
Bunch of degenerates!
All this points to the fraudulence of Einstein.
But being a sacred cow he is deemed untouchable.
Please point to any experiments which have shown relativity to be incorrect.
Or don’t you like the scientific method?
I posted this in a previous thread, but you know, it fits here, too:
Does this mean that we can forget that ‘Dark Energy’ and ‘Dark Matter’ business now?
Nope.
Dark energy and dark matter still needed to explain observations, or some other comparable hypothesis:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/10/19/no-number-of-additional-galaxies-can-prevent-the-universe-from-needing-dark-matter/#509f26f94fe1
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/universe-2-trillion-galaxies/
I am mindful of three things: (1) the observations of Halton Arp, which were made without regard to any presumed theory; (2) the Cosmological Principle, which forbids that matter “out there” should be different from matter “right here;” and (3) the fact that the vast majority of matter in the universe is a plasma subject to electromagnetic forces, which are vastly more powerful than gravity. The presumption that gravity explains everything is simply intellectual ossification.
And wrapping it up in relativity theory is still a dubious enterprise. (The Correspondence Principle, for example, is false.)
But the farther afield one goes in the Universe, the farther back in time one is looking, and so “out there” is not just “out there”, but also “back then”.
And “back then”, the average metalicity of the various stars and also of the galaxies and of the entire Universe was less and less, the further back one goes.
So stars in the original populations of stars to form had zero metalicity, save for the tiny amount of lithium thought to have been created in the big bang (recall that, in cosmology, a “metal” is any atom heavier that helium).
And subsequent generations of stars became, on average, more and more enriched in metals, flung out into space from older stars as they cast away planetary nebulae and exploded into supernovae.
And so the composition of stars has changed over time, on average.
Some hydrogen and helium are getting used up, and other heavier atoms are becoming more common.
So stars “out there” are different, and become more different the farther out one goes.
* All assuming, of course, that there really was a Big Bang 14 or so billion years ago.
Hard to come up with a convincing alternative explanation other than the BBT for the CMB and its red shift.
Yes, indeed.
I have wracked my mind and come up empty on that one more than once.
Still…I find the argument that the Universe is not only stranger than we understand, but stranger than we can understand.
There are mundane examples from everyday quantum mechanics that defy logical explanation in human terms.
What caused anything ? If you go back to the big bang, how did all that stuff get in there and what made it, whatever made the stuff that made it? Some things are beyond our ability to understand. In one way I don’t think the universe ever started, it always existed. Which is like a post I made earlier about black holes, time doesn’t exist in them. So if a black hole rotates, there is no sheer forces. Everything moves in sync. Not that I would know. Time is probably just a human construct .
Few if any scientific theories are perfect, ie without any problems, but IMO the BBT adequately explains the CMB radiation, so doesn’t really need an alternative. Just further development.
It’s also neat that obscure physicists had predicted the CMB fairly closely, long before its discovery and while the Steady State Theory was the consensus favorite. Furthermore, the CMB would have been found by those looking for it because of the predictions, rather than accidentally by Bell Labs researchers, soon had the serendipitous discoverers not beat the purposeful lookers to the draw.
Chimp
Indeed Steven Weinberg in “The first three minutes” considers it strange that there wasn’t more effort to find the CMB, since cosmology in the 50’s or even 40’s predicted it. Apparently experimentalists were unduly skeptical that it could be detected while theorists did not have the confidence to call the search for it. So in the end it was stumbled upon by radio engineers Penzias and Wilson.
Ptolemy,
IIRC, however, some Russian scientists in late ’50s or early ’60s rediscovered the American theoreticians’ predictions (~5 K) from the late ’40s or early ’50s and publicized it, leading to some experimentalists to start to set up detectors, about the same time that Penzias and Wilson stumbled onto it (~2.75 K).
I like to think about the brief interval (some thousands of years, maybe) during which the early universe was cozy, ie, say, 60 to 80 degrees F. Dunno what matter if any existed then beyond maybe hydrogen atoms.
According to Weinberg, it was Zeldovich in Russia who picked up the scent of the CMB from the theoretical work of Alpher and Herman in 1953. But by that time Penzias and Wilson (unaware of Alpher and Herman’s predictions) had already started cleaning pidgeon poo out of the Holmdel radio antenna and trying to measure radio emissions from space. According to Weinberg it was the breakdown in communication between theorists and experimentalists that probably delayed this discovery by a decade.
I’ve been well brainwashed in the Big Bang Theory, and have a hard time setting it aside. But I’ve always wondered why anyone would think that if something happened once, that it therefore could never happen again? If ongoing expansion in parts of the universe is real, wouldn’t this explain some areas of sky where we see blue shifted light?
To my mind, it is very interesting that all these comments take no issue with the points I raise.
By the way, Edwin Hubble did not agree that the distance red shift was a result of the Doppler effect. He had arguments to disprove that assumption. (I read his paper, but can’t recall more detail.)
‘So it is quite possible that we are being misled and that the apparent manifestation of dark energy is a consequence of analysing the data in an oversimplified theoretical model – one that was in fact constructed in the 1930s, long before there was any real data…”
Shit, noooooooooooooo! How can that possibly be?!?!?!?
Oh, by the way – /Sarc off
Help me out here
Dark matter is needed to slow the universe’s expansion.
Dark energy is needed to speed up the universe’s expansion?!
Why not let them just cancel eachother out?
Or else merge them together into “dark fudge” – the extra something needed to make the maths work while protecting our initial assumptions.
“Dark Fudge” is hereby disallowed. Dark Fudge Factor is acceptable, however. ha ha ha
Dark Matter… a great new SC-fi TV series 🙂
As the entire Big Band model is based on the assumption that red-Chshifting of light from distant stars is from their motion away from us, the Doppler Effect, it begs the question of why they ignore the redshifting of light as it climbs out of a stars gravity well. The more massive the star, the greater the redshift. Their minds only recognize this effect when talking about black holes which suddenly redshift everything. With the likelihood that balck holes do not exist and that redshifting is first and foremost caused by gravitation effects, the Big Bang model is sreiously flawed. A steady state universe is much more likely and it does not call for the fabrication of Black, matter, black energy, and black forces—a whole new balck pysics that is supposedly undetectable. How great to have an undetectable major aspect of the universe that will require large grants forever, because they will never find what they seek but they know (believe, have faith) it is there.
higley, if the redshift was gravitational rather than from expansion of the universe then distant galaxies would have the same redshift as nearby galaxies of the same mass.
@higley7 “A steady state universe is much more likely and it does not call for the fabrication of Black, matter, black energy, and black forces—a whole new balck pysics that is supposedly undetectable.”
If you want a static universe, you’ll have to introduce an extra term into Einstein’s field equations – a sort of cosmological constant. Oh, wait … already been done! It used to be called a … cosmological constant. Now it’s on the other side of the equals sign and it’s called dark energy. Take your pick.
We have a long way to be able to understand all these issues.
My guess is that it will turn out to be very different that we currently imagine.
Dark Matter alone such a conundrum because every 100 experiments that has been tried to detect it has found nothing.
One issue which has not been taken into account properly in all the explanations I have heard is that gravity only propagates at the speed of light. The stars on the far side of the galaxy are exerting a gravitational influence on our solar system based on where they were 100,000 years ago, not today. Other galaxies are exerting a gravitational influence on our galaxy from where they were as much as 13 billion years ago. Surely this changes things.
I think it was the late Tom Van Flandern who performed calculations of orbital stability based on the idea that gravitation propagated at the speed of light, and he arrived at the result that we should be seeing the effects of such instability…which we don’t. His estimate for the minimum speed of gravity was much faster than light (if not instantaneous).
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
This is important. Dark energy cannot be explained with invoking magic, at least not so far. If the expansion rate of the universe is not increasing, there seems to be no dark energy and no need for the magic. Seems like progress, or at least acknowledgement that we may not be on the right track with it.
‘The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate — or is it?
Five years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astronomers for their discovery, in the late 1990s, that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace.’
_______________________________________
Easy now – ain’t it 3 questions:
a) accelerating expansion or
b) still accelerating expansion and then
c) why and to what extension still expanding expansion.
What causes “action at a distance”, i.e. the influence of CHARGE (+ and -)??? What causes a MAGNETIC FORCE line? What is the basic nature of the “Yukka Force” the mysterious force that topples charge repulsion and allows multi bodies nuclei to exist? The ONLY person I ever found who has tried in the least bit to answer these with other than “hand waving” was Richard Feynmann . Then there is this: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/OrianiRAenergeticp.pdf Since CR-39 is used for detecting environmental RADON gas, since there is NO OTHER SOURCE that could account for 300 particles hitting a 2 mm by 2 mm piece of CR-39, and leaving tracks pointing to a central source. (With some 40 tracks on another 2 mm by 2mm piece on the “other side” of the source, the implication is that of a burst of 300,000 alpha particles at one time..from ???? where. Rather than realizing the huge implications of this, Dr. Oriani has been dismissed as a “aging crank”. Here is a tribute to him in “Corrosion Research” magazine. I might quickly point out that the list of about 30 publications is a subset of the 300 some publications made during his life in electrochemistry. But then again, he’s obviously a quack, working on “Cold Fusion”…which of COURSE the hoity toits of Physics have “proven” does not exist. To their peril!
And easy now 2 –
‘Indeed, vacuum energy is something of which we have absolutely no understanding in fundamental theory.’
_____________________________________
maybe here’s a reverse of anthropocentric view interesting:
not an energy concentrated amongst our locale expands the visible universe around us:
but the visible universe around us ‘falls’ into an heavier outer realm we haven’t the sensors to detect / except, of course, the recognition of expanding /.
I thought about this when I was much younger.
I realized that if the space the galaxies are imbedded in were falling and contracting, instead of expanding, objects ahead of or and behind us would be getting more distant. But objects perpendicular to these directions would be getting closer.
Anyway I can’t find an argument in that study contradicting the state of the art.
Glad to get corrected / enriched – Hans
Without taking into account the effects of electro magnetism and the effects of charged plasma, etc and so forth, much of what passes for bedrock knowledge is mostly just guesswork based on potentially flawed assumptions.
Yep.
I too found that there are a mountain of assumptions behind the idea that the Universe is expanding, and that this expansion is accelerating.