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A newly published analysis of Type Ia supernovae calls into question the accelerating expansion of the universe and the existence of dark energy:
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 explosions 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.
Marginal evidence for cosmic acceleration from Type Ia supernovae (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep35596) (DX)
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @03:42AM
Have to admit dark energy/matter has been pretty convenient, much like aether, and has about as much backing evidence- it must be there otherwise how do you explain...
Anyway, it always struck me as poor hypothesizing, and while neutral about evidence to the contrary, hopefully it will get cosmologist to get their shit a little more together at explaining what is really happening.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Bogsnoticus on Thursday October 27 2016, @05:37AM
I was downvoted to oblivion in various forums for daring suggest that dark energy was just a modern name for aether.
Looks like i'm going to have to dig up those old posts, and accompany them with this more recent information, as well as a smug "I told you so" :)
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 3, Funny) by quintessence on Thursday October 27 2016, @09:45AM
That's okay. According to my mom and how often I call, my existence has always been called into question.
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/dark-matter/ [nationalgeographic.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(classical_element) [wikipedia.org]
Does seem reviving bad ideas from the past to explain though.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fubari on Thursday October 27 2016, @05:44PM
Does seem reviving bad ideas from the past to explain though.
Actually they were awesome ideas. Just because in idea is wrong doesn't make it bad.
"Luminiferous aether" [wikipedia.org] was a sound, logical theory based on the physics of the day.
It was a great idea that just happened to be wrong, and that was a stepping stone to a new and better view of the universe.
(Excerpt from the wikipedia link, emphasis added.)
The point is, giving birth to relativity and quantum theory doesn't sound to shabby for a "bad idea".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 27 2016, @05:45AM
The observational data seemed to indicate that there is something we don't know about the universe, which causes accelerated expansion. That was observational data, so no hypothesizing. Note that it was called "dark energy" exactly because we had no clue what it was. No trace of hypothesizing in that.
Of course given that fact (and yes, that was a fact, not a theory, hypothesis or conjecture) there were many speculations what this mysterious "dark energy" is. But nobody claimed any of this as fact; indeed, one of the candidates of "dark energy" was the cosmological constant, which isn't even a form of energy, but simply an additional term in Einstein's equation (which itself has no explanation; it was introduced by Einstein because he believed in a static universe, and without that term he couldn't get it; when the expansion of the universe was observed, Einstein called it his biggest blunder).
The only assumption that went in was that the observational data was conclusive. Well, it turns out that it wasn't. If there's a lesson in that, it's to put more distrust in the observations.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @01:09PM
You are claiming the observation of expansion requires no hypothesizing? The actual observations are of redshifted light, not expansion. Also whatever statistical model was used for the uncertainty surely included a number of questionable assumptions (eg each star is independent of the others, etc).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @06:32AM
Dark energy and dark matter don't have much to do with each other except we call them both "dark".
Evidence for dark matter is very solid. We don't know what it is, but it's extremely unlikely that we'll just one day say "whoops, looks like it's not real, sorry about that." Personally, I think it's mostly microscopic primordial black holes.
And this is just one study. If the results are confirmed independently, and ideally backed up by other results obtained by a different method, then it's groundbreaking. Totally changes the cosmology game. But individual studies have a way of evaporating under stricter scrutiny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @09:37AM
Dark energy and dark matter don't have much to do with each other
Except for on the one hand, you have some undetectable mass that is supposedly the majority of the mass in the universe exerting a gravitational field, and on the other hand this field seemingly has no effect on the acceleration of the universe.
That's quantum mechanics level weird. And cosmologist throw up their hands and say "it must be" without bothering to explain how these two ideas interact with each other.
True enough that one study doesn't make a revolution, but even without it, the dark matter, dark energy view of the world didn't make much sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @04:06PM
Did you read GP's statement that dark energy and dark matter have little to do with each other before writing about this "dark matter, dark energy view of the world?"
Also, if expansion is not accelerating, then why should dark matter have any bearing on this acceleration that we just supposed is not happening?
But nope! It's all politically correct garbage! The world is flat! I've never observed anything that would lead me to believe the earth is a ball!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 27 2016, @10:37AM
Last I heard, black holes with an event horizon that small would decay quickly enough that you couldn't measure their lifespan with a stopwatch.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.