"nature" Article: Dark Energy Not Real, Universal Expansion A Constant?

[Thurisaz]

BAA, paging BAA...

 

Linky

 

Now, if true, that's quite a remarkable thing. The question of whether it is true is another thing I guess...

[pantheory]

BAA, paging BAA...

 

Linky

 

Now, if true, that's quite a remarkable thing. The question of whether it is true is another thing I guess...

 

Yes, here is my 2014 research paper concerning dark energy, generally explaining/ proposing that it does not exist and why it is probably imaginary.

 

http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/view/32603/19463

 

Here is the press release on the same paper.

 

https://www.send2press.com/newswire/A-New-Research-Study-Has-Concluded-that-Dark-Energy-Probably-Does-Not-Exist_2014-03-0307-001.shtml

 

This is an earlier paper by another group:

 

http://www.rense.com/general72/exis.htm

 

Of course the subject link says "marginal evidence." The other side of the coin is that there have been a great many more papers claiming the validity of dark energy.

 

P.S. Forgot to mention, for those that don't know, that the Nobel Prize in Physics was granted in 2011 for the asserted discovery of Dark Energy.

[bornagainathiest]

Thanks Thuriasz.

 

Will look into this and get back to this thread after due reflection.

 

(Why would I look into a mirror?)

 

[Thurisaz]

Off topic - "evil" Spock is quite relative no? In that sick universe he was pretty much the sanest and most pacifist character if memory serves...

[RogueScholar]

Unlike some folks, I want to come out and state in the spirit of full disclosure that cosmology/astronomy/astrophysics are not my fields of study.

 

With that said, I would like to make a few comments and would welcome commentary from actual experts in the field who understand the methodologies of data collection and interpretation better than anybody who has stated anything on this thread.

 

Prior to said comments, I want to make sure everybody is on the same page regarding how consensus generally works when using the scientific method to make claims about "reality" and how to accept or reject models that predict "reality." Critical to this is the fact that multiple lines of independent results from multiple teams are generally required to change said consensus. Rarely are well established ideas taken down by isolated studies that use a single line of reasoning and do not consider the many other lines of evidence that point to said conclusions. This is also true when making the

 

After taking a look at the study, my impression is the following:

 

1. The authors have new results using larger and presumably more robust contemporary data sets:

     1a. The authors have gone on to analyse data from several hundred type Ia supernovae. This is actually a good thing, because we now have more data from these supernovae and are much better able to detect and analyse said supernovae.    This was not the case back in the 1990's when only around 100 or so supernovae were examined.

     1b. From this new analysis, the authors basically conclude that we can only be around 99.7% sure that data from these supernovae support accelerated expansion. The older and more limited data set was over 99.99% sure, so there is certainly a difference in our certainty. This new result has been called approximately a 3 Sigma result (3 standard deviations). In particle physics and certain other areas of physics, a 3 Sigma result is not strong enough to be considered a fundamental discovery in some fields.

     1c. I am unsure if this standard is commonly used in astronomy and cosmology as certain standards are more common in certain areas of science. For example, in my fields of study, we often use confidence intervals at 95% and p values of less than 0.05 combined with other factors.

 

2. The paper apparently seems to neglect the fact that multiple other lines of evidence point toward accelerated expansion:

     2a.  Cosmic microwave background oscillations point toward accelerated expansion.

     2b.  Baryon acoustic oscillations point toward accelerated expansion.

     2c.  I believe there are other independent lines of evidence as well.

 

3. The authors are a bit bombastic and hyperbolic

     3a.  The authors claim "scant" evidence but 99.7% is not exactly what I would consider "scant."

     3b.  The authors fail to discuss the many other lines of evidence that support accelerated expansion.

     3c.  Additional studies looking at the same data and perhaps other observations are now required to substantiate the claims of this new paper.

 

In conclusion, new data regarding one line of evidence does appear to be less robust but the authors fail to discuss the many other lines that point toward accelerated expansion in any detail.

[Thurisaz]

Well I do have my doubts about that claim too. Frankly, if that link I saw (and then posted here) hadn't really pointed to Nature just like it got said, I wouldn't have bothered to give it a thought.

[bornagainathiest]

Off topic - "evil" Spock is quite relative no? In that sick universe he was pretty much the sanest and most pacifist character if memory serves...

 

Agree, Thuriasz.

 

But despite whatever moral differences there were between the two Spocks, one factor that was common to both was the power of their logic.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[bornagainathiest]

Unlike some folks, I want to come out and state in the spirit of full disclosure that cosmology/astronomy/astrophysics are not my fields of study.

 

With that said, I would like to make a few comments and would welcome commentary from actual experts in the field who understand the methodologies of data collection and interpretation better than anybody who has stated anything on this thread.

 

Prior to said comments, I want to make sure everybody is on the same page regarding how consensus generally works when using the scientific method to make claims about "reality" and how to accept or reject models that predict "reality." Critical to this is the fact that multiple lines of independent results from multiple teams are generally required to change said consensus. Rarely are well established ideas taken down by isolated studies that use a single line of reasoning and do not consider the many other lines of evidence that point to said conclusions. This is also true when making the

 

After taking a look at the study, my impression is the following:

 

1. The authors have new results using larger and presumably more robust contemporary data sets:

     1a. The authors have gone on to analyse data from several hundred type Ia supernovae. This is actually a good thing, because we now have more data from these supernovae and are much better able to detect and analyse said supernovae.    This was not the case back in the 1990's when only around 100 or so supernovae were examined.

     1b. From this new analysis, the authors basically conclude that we can only be around 99.7% sure that data from these supernovae support accelerated expansion. The older and more limited data set was over 99.99% sure, so there is certainly a difference in our certainty. This new result has been called approximately a 3 Sigma result (3 standard deviations). In particle physics and certain other areas of physics, a 3 Sigma result is not strong enough to be considered a fundamental discovery in some fields.

     1c. I am unsure if this standard is commonly used in astronomy and cosmology as certain standards are more common in certain areas of science. For example, in my fields of study, we often use confidence intervals at 95% and p values of less than 0.05 combined with other factors.

 

2. The paper apparently seems to neglect the fact that multiple other lines of evidence point toward accelerated expansion:

     2a.  Cosmic microwave background oscillations point toward accelerated expansion.

     2b.  Baryon acoustic oscillations point toward accelerated expansion.

     2c.  I believe there are other independent lines of evidence as well.

 

3. The authors are a bit bombastic and hyperbolic

     3a.  The authors claim "scant" evidence but 99.7% is not exactly what I would consider "scant."

     3b.  The authors fail to discuss the many other lines of evidence that support accelerated expansion.

     3c.  Additional studies looking at the same data and perhaps other observations are now required to substantiate the claims of this new paper.

 

In conclusion, new data regarding one line of evidence does appear to be less robust but the authors fail to discuss the many other lines that point toward accelerated expansion in any detail.

 

Thanks for this, RS.

 

I'd quite forgotten about BAO's as an independent line of evidence for accelerated expansion.  

As I'm sure you know, when the full Gaia results are available in 2022, http://sci.esa.int/gaia/...we'll then have a much more accurate check on the first rungs of the cosmic distance ladder.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder Which should help test the assumptions made about the distances of the supernova 'standard candles'.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[pantheory]

The latest issue of the New Scientist magazine is entitled OUR IMPLAUSIBLE UNIVERSE. It features the following:

Cosmic dark matter and energy balance – for now. Coincidence?

The universe lines up along the ‘axis of evil’. Coincidence?

The universe is flat as a pancake. Coincidence?

Space is all the same temperature. Coincidence?

The Higgs boson makes the universe stable – just. Coincidence?

 

 

This issue of the magazine I expect to be buying. Some of the features are related to this thread as well as other off-topic features concerning some standard model theories and hypotheses in general.

[bornagainathiest]

This item is also related to the subject of the expansion of the universe.

 

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0916/220916-directionless-universe/

 

Cosmology safe as universe has no sense of direction

[pantheory]

New Scientist magazine is at it again. 10/26/16 issue

 

By New Scientist writers:

 

Cosmic dark matter and energy balance – for now. Coincidence?

 

"Dark matter dominated the early universe and dark energy will reign billions of years from now. We seem to be living in a strangely special era

 

The more we look at the universe, the stranger it appears. From the geometry of space-time to the masses of the elementary particles, its properties are finely tuned to allow life to exist. More bizarrely, though, it seems to be teetering on the brink of not existing at all. Here we look at five of its seemingly most implausible traits – and ask what might lie behind them."

 

By Gilead Amit

 

'INVISIBLE dark matter and dark energy make up around 95 per cent of the universe between them. What’s more, their densities are roughly equal – a state of affairs so unlikely that cosmologists have taken to calling it the cosmic coincidence problem (underline added).

 

Is this a genuine conundrum? At first blush, it seems contrived. Dark matter, which gravitates like normal matter, accounts for about 27 per cent of the universe. Meanwhile some 68 per cent is dark energy, the stuff that is causing the expansion of the cosmos to speed up. Not quite so equal after all, then.

 

But the values are still close enough to be perplexing – and according to our standard cosmological model, the similarity is relatively new. The very early universe was dominated by dark matter. “At that time, dark matter density was 95 orders of magnitude larger than the density of dark energy,” says Nacolao Fornengo at the University of Turin, Italy.

 

But dark matter’s density has been dropping as the universe expands, while the density of dark energy is widely assumed to remain constant over time, making it steadily more dominant. A few billion years ago, dark energy became denser than dark matter – causing the universe’s expansion to begin racing away (see “The universe is flat as a pancake. Coincidence?“).

 

Still, it seems we live in a special time where neither entity is able to dominate the other. According to Andrew Pontzen at University College London, this golden age started around 3 billion years ago and will last for perhaps .......... '

 

https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/cosmic-coincidences/?cmpid=ILC|NSNS|2016-GLOBAL-inlinelink&utm_medium=ILC&utm_source=NSNS&utm_campaign=inlinelink

 

Oct. 29, 2016 issue (added to the original posting on this date)

 

By Stuart Clark, New Scientist writer

 

"NEXT time you fancy doing something really frustrating, try balancing a pencil on its sharpened tip. Your efforts will succeed for a second at most. Yet the universe has been succeeding at a similar gravitational trick for the last 13.8 billion years.

 

The feat is embodied in its geometry. According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, matter and energy bend space and time, and the amount of stuff the universe contains will determine its ultimate fate. If the universe is dense enough to curve space-time in on itself, all that gravity will eventually collapse it back down to nothing. If the universe’s density is low, it curves outwards – and the weakness of the gravitational pull will mean it expands forever.

 

But our universe seems to fit in neither camp. The most powerful test of its geometry is the variation in the cosmic microwave background, the radiation emitted shortly after the big bang. According to measurements of this radiation, the density of matter and energy is such that the universe does not curve either way: it is perfectly flat. After an eternity, its expansion should grind to a halt with no subsequent collapse.

 

Our implausible universe

 

(analogy representing the balance between dark matter and dark energy) statement within parenthesis added

 

"Our cosmos’s five most startling coincidences – and what lies behind them;The plot thickened considerably in the late 1990s, when very distant exploding stars were inexplicably seen to be dimmer than expected. This suggested that the universe’s expansion was accelerating rather than slowing down. The proposed fix was to say that a large proportion of the universe exists as dark energy, a new ingredient allowing it to remain flat yet expand ever .........."

 

New Scientist mag. link