Dark Energy May Be Changing

SpaceAdmiral writes "Nature is reporting that Dark energy, the hypothetical energy driving the universe's expansion, may not be as constant as previously thought. According to new research the strength of dark energy may be very different now than it was when the universe was young."

Comments

An extraordinary Claim requires...

[helioquake]

...extraordinary evidence to support it. I'm not an expert on this
topic (will hear more about it from local experts for sure), but
it doesn't sound a statistically significant claim to me.

For the life of me I can't recall a false study about something...
I think it's about pulsars / neutron star. Astronomers found the
first few pulsars and found them to be aligned in a similar
orientation. This provoked a few new thoughs and fresh ideas
among the community...but later only to realize that the first few
detections happened to be a freak series of coincidence; further
observations revealed that other pulsars orient in many different ways.

Choosing random samples is important here. I'm not sure how carefully
that thought process has been applied here by this author (i.g., that
is what Adam Rees alludes to, I think).

We have to be careful since some people tend to see what they want
to believe in.

String Theory Fallout

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

There's already a few comments openly questioning and in some cases deriding the concept of dark energy. I think this could well be fallout from String Theory's current fall from grace.

It's looking more and more like String Theorists are on the wrong track. I think this may have bred a new skeptisism in people with regard to the more "out there" physics theories.

The whole debate about Intelligent Design may also be playing a part. There's been a very public question about "what is science". String Theory has already come under fire from this, and it's understandable that some other theories such as Dark Energy might also be brought under the spotlight of a new skeptisism.

This might be stifling for scientists, paticularly those with more outlandish sounding, but still reasonable hypotheses. But ultimately I think it will be good for science. No one should blindly accept any scientific theory without sufficient evidence. And supplying that evidence can only further validate the theory. In this sense, skeptics are good for science.