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Einstein's Biggest Blunder That Wasn't

Posted by samzenpus on from the he-told-you-so dept.

jose parinas writes "The genius of Albert Einstein, who added a "cosmological constant" to his equation for the expansion of the universe but later retracted it, may be vindicated by new research. The enigmatic "dark energy" that drives the acceleration of the Universe behaves just like Einstein's famed cosmological constant, according to the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). Their observations reveal that the dark energy behaves like Einstein's cosmological constant to a precision of 10%."

4 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. What is the cosmological constant ? by $exyNerdie · · Score: 5, Informative

    The cosmological constant is an extra term in Einstein's equations of general relativity which physically represents the possibility that there is a density and pressure associated with "empty" space. The inclusion of this vacuum energy term can greatly effect cosmological theories.
    http://super.colorado.edu/~michaele/Lambda/lambda. html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant

  2. Re:what dark matter? by Tickle+Cricket · · Score: 5, Informative

    Scientists did not prove anything. Some merely published a theory. It is not in anyway proven. Science is not like engingeering where it either works or doesn't. The scientific process takes a while, and dark matter and dark energy are still a vital theory in explaining expansion of the universe. So please don't tell me Dark Energy doesn't matter, because if that's true, I'm wasting a lot of my time.

  3. I can't take it... (grammar nazi alert) by ChadN · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Affect"... "Can greatly affect"... 'effect' is a different word, with a different usage.

    An informative post, and I'll accept moderator punishment for grammar nazi-ism.

    --
    "It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
  4. Einstein was still wrong about the constant though by gilzreid · · Score: 5, Informative

    These stories always say it was Einstein's great blunder and it has been vindicated, but it really hasn't. The reason Einstein put it in was that he couldn't find any solutions to his equations that resulted in a static universe. (At the time, Hubble's revolutionary results on the recession of distant galaxies had not been completed, so it was thought the universe must be static) All of his model universes were expanding or contracting. So he added the constant to balance out the contraction in his favoured model (which was also closed, another historical assumption in cosmology that has been disposed of).

    OK, but the cosmological constant we see now is being used to explain the _acceleration_ of the universe, nothing like what Einstein put the constant in for. His blunder wasn't really the constant, it was the assumption that the universe was static, which turned out to be totally wrong.

    But you have to admire Einstein - out of pure thought and mathematics he produced a theory which is still held up as a foundation of modern physics, even though practically every cosmological observation was made years after he published it (and all the observations have supported the theory to great accuracy). Compare this to, say, quantum mechanics, where many theorists struggled for decades to explain observations that had already been made, and Einstein's one-man theory is truly impressive.