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

well no kidding

[User 956]

According to new research the strength of dark energy may be very different now than it was when the universe was young.

Indeed. Begun, this clone war has.

Re:well no kidding

[gbobeck]

Jedi! Their Order is a fading light in the dark. Corrupt and arrogant, they must be punished. The Jedi shall fall.

Lets hope..

[Anonymous Coward]

..that someone shreds some light on the matter.

"I too, sense a disturbance in the Force"

And in Related News...

[SkuzBuket]

Significant amounts of this so-called, "Dark Energy" have been measured around a certain Redmond, WA campus.

It is changing, but we don't know which way

[tod_miller]

It doesn't say if it gets stronger or weaker..

wtf

Re:It is changing, but we don't know which way

[grimJester]

Since dark energy acts opposite to gravity, I'd assume more would mean brighter visible GRBs. Also, we have no good explanation for inflation. Could this be it? Speculating even further, if dark energy is weakening the universe might not expand forever.

Re:It is changing, but we don't know which way

[FhnuZoag]

It seems to be getting stronger.

An analysis: http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/01/11/evolving-dark -energy/

That's a pretty bold statement...

[numLocked]

...considering no one even knows if dark energy EXISTS.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[dogbreathcanada]

The science (and theories) don't necessarily change ... they evolve. Dark Matter and Dark Energy are "necessary" because there's not enough visible matter in the universe to account for the size and expansion of the universe.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[rodac]

Look, dark matter does exist. There is no question about it.
How else would the other theories be consistent without dark matter to accoount for any discreptancies?

Ergo: dark matter exists, since without it the theories would fail.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[schwanerhill]

Dark matter is required by looking at galaxy rotation curves. Essentially, the rotation speed of galaxies is too fast given the mass that can be seen, so there must be some mass that doesn't emit light as conventional, baryonic matter does. Dark matter was first hypothesized by Zwicky in 1933 and has been well accepted throughout the astronomical community for decades.

Dark energy is required by looking at Type 1a supernovae from the early universe. Astronomers and cosmologists use Type 1a supernovae, which have a well known intrinsic brightness (they are called a "standard candle"), to establish a cosmological distance scale and measure the expansion rate of the universe. If the universe is composed of ordinary matter and dark matter, the self-gravity of all the matter in the universe would cause the expansion rate to slow over time. A goal of these observations was to determine whether there is enough matter in the universe to stop it from expanding forever and ultimately cause it to collapse back on itself in a "big crunch."

In about 1998, the supernova observations were pinned down well enough to show that the expansion rate is actually increasing with time. Therefore, there must be some "antigravity" force that causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate. This is dubbed "dark energy."

The "cosmic energy budget" says that about 4% of the mass/energy in the universe is ordinary matter, 23% is dark matter, and 73% is dark energy. The matter and dark matter total mass is measured from observations of the cosmic microwave background.

All of this is pretty well supported by the best current observational evidence, although the physical nature of dark matter and dark energy are both poorly understood (and new observations can always change things, of course).

The new claim in the current article is that the effect of dark energy has changed over time. The fundamental problem is that the new evidence relies on gamma-ray bursts, which are not nearly as well established a standard candle as the Type 1a supernovae, so it's much harder to say with certainty what distance they are at. Note that the new claim was presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in DC last week; it has not yet appeared in a refereed journal. (Nature news is merely reporting on the AAS presentation.) The author himself has an appropriate degree of skepticism of his claim.

(Yes, I am an astronomy grad student, although I don't do any work on cosmology.)

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[rodac]

Sigh. Ok, lets try it like this :

Physics is a science. Physics is not really a hard science in the same way as Math is a hard science. Physics is way harder science than Biology and Chemistry but still a lot softer than Math, which is the Queen of Science.

Since Physics is a "soft" science, they have "theories". Some of these theories are either incomplete, not fully understood or maybe incorrect. These theories are still very useful for Physicists, too useful too just discard just because they are not completely correct, complete or provable.
This is different from real hard science such as Math where there are no real "theories" per se and where statements that are not formally provable are worthless.

Anyway, some of these theories in Physics are to physicists too useful to just ignore just because they today are provably incorrect, or not currently provable correct which means :

There are certain theories that stipulate x + y = z.

The problem here is that there are legions of observations that can not be explained using that theory and that according to the theory leads to 1 + 1 = 3.

This is obviously not good since the observations show that the theory is provably incorrect (or lets say incomplete), sso instead of discarding this still useful theory one has "invented" an extra term that explains why the calculations come to the "wrong" number and which covers the errors in the theory : DARK ENERGY/MATTER so then the theory becomes :

1 + 1 + "unobservable dark xxx" = 3

and everyone is happy.


We hard scientists, i.e. mathematicians, find this very funny. You might not understand the joke unless you are a mathematician.

We mathematicians also find the "heat distribution equation in one dimension" hilarious as well since an obvious consequence of it is instant communications faster than light as long as you can construct a thermometer accurate enough.


(of course we have our share of "issues" as well as Mr Goedel was so very kind to show us)

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[rodac]

I personally always saw "ether" more as an engineering theory to provide a useful engineering tool instead of a scientific theory but that is more an academical point.

I find it disturbing that the Physics community allow these sub fields to still call themself "science" when they have nothing at all to do with real science and only results in dilluting the value of real/hard science. I say this as a mathematician, the only remaining hard science.
I mean where is the scientific methods, where are the scientific proofs? All i see are more or less accurate theories, hypothesis and models that when proven wrong are mended by another non-provable bandaid theories.

The problem is that using theories, that are just theories and not provably correct means that people will build a framework of other theories ontop of it and when/if the original theory is proven wrong you can not just discard the theory since the cost of doing so (invalidating another huge number of other theories built ontop of it) is just too great.
This is a trap that several fields in physics have fallen into and they are paying the price for now by having to invent more and more unprovable theories and explanations in order to keep it all together and semi-consistent.
I.e they have little option than to try to mend the breakage since discarding the theory would bee too expensive.
This IS a tragedy for physics!

In hard science/math we do not yet have that problem since we still try to be stringent and keep the science in good health by completely discarding and disallowing anything that can not be formally proven true.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[AndersOSU]

Wow you seem to have a fundemental misunderstanding of the nature of science.

For starters mathematics isn't a science - it tells us nothing about the physical world, mathematics is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. I have the highest esteem for mathematics, but it's not science.

Secondly science has never proved anything. The requirement of the scientific method is that hypothesis be falsifiable. If its predicted results turn out to be reproducably observed you have the makings of a good theory.

I don't know what your gripe about "stub fields" is, but unfortunately kinematics and Newtonian ballistics have been pretty well explained, so physicists have been compelled to move into more arcane fields. Too bad they've never produced anything of value like the computer chip or GPS.

Anyhow this rant reminds me of a joke I heard once whose punchline was something like "When I went to college I learned that all sociologists are really psycologists, who are really biologists, who are really chemists, who are really physicist, who use mathematics - The mathematicians just think they're god."

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[Metasquares]

Just like the "luminiferous ether" was "necessary" 100 years ago because it was assumed that light couldn't possibly travel in a vacuum?

I always cringe when I hear physicists talk about dark {matter|energy}. Finding new data on dark matter is like claiming that the invisible pink unicorn is actually purple.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[Tim C]

You do not understand the scientific method, nor what a science is.

The problem is that using theories, that are just theories and not provably correct

No theory is provably correct. All you can do is fail to disprove them. All you can ever say is that a theory explains the observable results as we can measure them, and that we have been unable to make any observations that run contrary to the theory.

In time, it may be that we improve our measurement-making capacity and find that the theory is *not* correct - this is essentially what happened to Newtonian mechanics. At very small scales and/or very high velocities Newtonian mechanics is wrong, and we need quantum mechanics (for the small) and relativistic mechanics (for the fast).

At no point, however, do we get to sit back, relax, and say "that's that - this one is proven to be correct". Science just doesn't work like that. The closest we get is "this one has survived many attempts to disprove it, so we can be pretty confident in it, but who knows what the future may bring?"

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[thesandtiger]

They are only "required" if one insists that current theories are correct and complete.

Kind of like aether was "required." And phlogistion. And igneous fluid.

I'm not saying that dark matter and dark energy don't exist - I don't know, and neither does anyone else - but I am saying that they're not necessarily "required."

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[gutnor]

I guess it is obvious that there are some flaw at some level in our understanding of the universe.
It is even so obvious that in order to make the measures stick to the theory, we need to introduce 'patches' that have well known properties, but unknown 'physical' representation like the dark matter and dark energy.

That the way science works. Before having an absolute correct theory we still need any theory to start with, demontrates and experiment and maybe change it or even replace it later. It is easier to start with a theory we are more or less confident with ( by experimentation ) and patch it to make some progress than throw everything away and start from scratch.

Maybe in x years some guy(s) will find that 3 stars in a line of 100 lightyears produce the same effect as if there was an amount y of dark matter. And this guy will be able to demonstrate his theory because thanks to a patched theory during the previous x years, scientists have been able to measure very precisely the characteristic of this dark matter and are able to validate his results!

Now of course, I said 'start with a theory we are more or less confident with' and that's where people starts disagreeing...

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[selfsealingstembolt]

Sigh. Ok, let's try this.

Mathematics is not science. It is a very complex formal system. You could desribe it as the science of understanding that system, I guess. But I wouldn't. Although you are right, mathematics is somewhat purer, that does not invalidate physics. For example: Let assume we have a theory of space, time and gravity, that seems to be tremendously correct for all observations we made as of now (note that this is just an example, we do not have such a theory, but please bear with me). Now we observe some new event or something that was out of reach previously, which cannot be described with current theory, and seems to need not a small fix, but a complete rework of current theory. So, does this observation suddenly invalidate the usefulness of the existing body of theory? Does an apple on earth suddenly not fall with the same speed as before and does it not release the same amount of kinetic energy in impact?

What physics is about is one belief: That the world can be described in terms of a formal system (mathematics). That is the only 'faith' physicists have. We don't know (and probably never will) if that is true or not. All we know is that everything in nature that follows rules can be described with a formal system and if there is something that does not follow a set of rules, it cannot be predicted anyways.
Besides that, physics is just trying to find new insights and new systems to describe rule-abiding reality as accurate as possible, using mathematics as a tool. Physics does acknowledge, that it may never be complete. But the knowlege we have gained so far is correct and works, albeit only for the cases in which it has been tested. And no new insight will invalidate that. No machines will stop working, no buildings collapse, because of a new observation that cannot be described within the current body of theory. We may find a better, simpler or more complex theory, which gives for tested known and understood cases the same results as the old one AND describes previously unexplainable observations.

And if you want to start with "formally proveable", may I give you Gödel? Any system complex enough to reference itself (like mathematics) is by definition incomplete AND contains provably unprovable sentences which are nonetheless valid within this system.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[endoplasmicMessenger]

All of this is pretty well supported by the best current observational evidence, although the physical nature of dark matter and dark energy are both poorly understood

Physicists were once certain that "ether" existed. It was a construct that was necessary in order to make sense of many observations that were being made.

It turns out they were wrong. Ether does not exist. Ether was a construct that had nothing to do with reality even though it had some explanitory power.

That the construct of Dark Energy explains some observations does imply that it has anything to do with reality.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[jackbird]

Actually, the ancient Greeks knew the world was round, and made a pretty good stab at measuring it based on simultaneous observations around the mediterranean basin.

Later on, pretty much anybody dealing with sailing ships noticed that the mast came over the horizon before the rest of the ship did. It was the church, with its insistence on the literal veracity of biblical statements about the world, and its stranglehold on political power throughout Europe, that made the Earth's shape a dangerous topic to shout from the rooftops.

For a modern analogue, biology, rather than cosmology, would seem to be the place to look.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, the whole beauty behind Dark Matter is it is supposed to be some constant that solves the problems we have with understanding how the universe operates. If that constant is not constant, then doesn't that sort of ruin the value?

You're confusing dark matter and dark energy, and no, a non-constant dark energy doesn't ruin anything. The point of dark energy, like any theory, is to explain our observations. If our observations indicate that the universe is expanding in a weird way, we may need a weird explanation to account for it.

I'm just reminded of the tendency of science. We make an observation and derive a theory. The theory does not fit subsequent observations, so we try to force the observation to fit the theory.

No, we modify the theory to fit the observations. That's why we replaced a theory with no dark energy by a theory with dark energy, and may need to replace that with a theory involving time-varying dark energy. These modifications are driven by new observations.

Now, it is becoming scientific heresy to say there is no Dark Matter.

Nonsense. What is true is that more and more observations have proven to be consistent with dark matter, and so it is becoming harder and harder to come up with an alternative that is also consistent with all that evidence. That is exactly the process by which new theories become accepted.

Well, I for one do not put any salt in DM because it's unobservable.

You're joking, right? Dark matter is postulated precisely because it has a great many observable consequences. We observe it through gravity.

Sort of like a Devine creator--we can't observe him so we assume he does not exist. So, why do we assume there is DM?

Actually, we can attribute any of our observations to the actions of a divine creator, and thus "support" his existence. The reason why that's not considered scientific is because the divine creator hypothesis makes little in the way of specific, testable, and falsifiable predictions regarding independent phenomena. But dark matter, like all other good scientific theories, does.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[qeveren]

While black holes themselves don't noticibly emit energy, they tend to have strong effects on their surroundings, due to their ridiculous density. It's not too likely that the number of black holes of sufficient size required to produce the observed galactic rotation would remain unnoticed. There'd be accretion disks and lensing effects all over the sky...

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[cagle_.25]

Yeah, except for a couple of things.

1. Mathematics does have hypotheses. Some eventually get proven (Fermat's Last Theorem), while others accumulate statstical support (Riemann Hypothesis). If mathematics were simply a matter of proving things, without doing numerical experiments, then mathematical hypotheses would not exist.
2. Mathematicians don't actually work in the manner you describe. Proof is the last, not first, step in mathematical research. Mathematicians look instead for patterns and connections -- the same kind of inductive reasoning that scientists use, in fact. The major difference between math and science is the degree of confidence at the end of the process.
3. The axioms in math aren't proven. In fact, it's unclear exactly what their status is. Some, like the axioms of set theory, seem to be fundamental features of our thought. Others, like the parallel postulate are just a matter of convention. In principle, an axiom could be "falsified" either by constructing a consistent math system that denies it, or else by showing that the axiom leads to inconsistencies.

Re:That's a pretty bold statement...

[ceoyoyo]

Something is required. We use "dark matter" and "dark energy" as placeholders for that something. The names themselves are vague and describe the properties of the thing. Eventually, hopefully, we'll discover what these actually are (whether physical reality or modifications in a theory) and we can give them better names.

Aether was a perfectly reasonable hypothesis that made certain predictions that turned out not to be true and so was replaced when something better came along. This story is showing the same kind of work. From the article, one hypothesis is that the thing we call "dark energy" is the effect of quantum foam. Apparently that implies that the dark energy effect would be constant over time. These preliminary observations indicate that might not be the case. If they prove to be true, the quantum foam hypothesis will be disproved.

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.

article wasn't very clear, but...

[heatdeath]

So...brighter means closer. Since that was the result that prompted us to think that the universe is expanding in the first place, I guess this means that the rate at which the universe is accelerating is accelerating.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_RipBig Rip.

Not THAT again...

[mcrbids]

Didn't we recently conclude that dark matter didn't really need to exist at all?

Re:Not THAT again...

[helioquake]

matter != energy.

Well, in this particular term that is.

I'm sure some nerds will bring in on Einstein reference that is E = mc^2.

We Prefer That You Call It...

[SkuzBuket]

Ebony Energy, you Insensitive Clod!

He does not really believe in Dark Energy

[anandsr]

He is merely collecting data to disprove the current gravitational model.
He actually believes in Dr. Mannheims Conformal Gravity. An attempt to define
gravity in terms of Conformal Symmetry, which the other three forces observe.

In the theory Dark Energy is just a manifestation of the repulsive component of
gravity. And this force changes with the evolution of the universe. He has just
found proof of this. This would mean that they have discovered something that has
not yet been predicted by the standard model. They have been hard at work to come
up with something that they can predict something that can be proved based on the
observation. The only other significant difference from the standard model is that
in the theory universe is always expanding, and there was no contraction phase.
The observations are not yet conclusive enough on this point.

IANAP but...

[Goalie_Ca]

According to new research the strength of dark energy may be very different now than it was when the universe was young.

Maybe its just the engineer in me, but isn't it possible that we're just observing some other unknown effect. Something so complicated and exotic doesn't feel right. When it comes down to the math we juggle equations around, fit curves, and re-evaluate until the math yields a good approximation. Math juggling is one thing but I don't think there's a strong case for creating a physical entity for it.

Re:IANAP but...

[heatdeath]

Maybe its just the engineer in me, but isn't it possible that we're just observing some other unknown effect.

MOND

Re:IANAP but...

[anandsr]

MOND cannot explain anything like this. It was designed to fit the galactic curves. It cannot do anything more. I wouldn't even place much faith in the theory designed around MOND, to come up with these results. Actually the result is alluding to Conformal Gravity by Dr. Mannheim. In this theory gravity has three components one like Newton, second that increases with distance and is felt at galactic distances, third that increases with the square of distance but is repulsive and is felt only at cosmological scales but does manifest itself as an extra attractive constant component at galactic scales.

In the theory repulsive component decays with the evolution of Gravity, and hence the Dark Energy which is what the repulsive component amounts to.

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.

Re:String Theory Fallout

[crotherm]

Face it, we dont't what makes the universe expand/contract. We really don't know shite. All we can do is attempt to observe, and propose theories on those observations and try to falsify them. As we learn more, invent/discover better methods and devices for measurements, our understanding will evolve. I know this is basic stuff, but it seems many folks are forgetting this. We are mear children in our understanding of our universe.

more information

[anandsr]

This is the actual press release from Dr. Schaefer.
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/GRBHD/pressrelease/
It seems that the results are very damning to cosmological
constants.

Unfortunately there are no good web sites talking about
Mannheim's theory the only paper that explains a lot of
it is "Alternatives to Dark Matter and Dark Energy" which
can be accessed at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0505266

Re: more information

[Black Parrot]

> This is the actual press release from Dr. Schaefer.
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/GRBHD/pressrelease/ It seems that the results are very damning to cosmological constants.

It seems that even if he's right it would only require one cosmological constant to be non-constant.

Or maybe not even that. Maybe the effect he's observing is dependent on something that changes with times, such as the temperature or density of the universe. Most cosmologists already believe the universe underwent a sort of "phase change" during the inflationary period, and it hasn't exactly destroyed the idea of cosmological constants.

Been there, seen that

[Omega Blue]

It wasn't that long ago - probably a year or two - that some researchers were claiming that c (speed of light) decreased since the Bang. I was quite skeptical at the time, because changing c is going to change the among of energy and matter in our universe.

Up till today I haven't seen another team confirming this.

Ob blackadder quote

[zmollusc]

So, what you're telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen.

OMFG, COSMIC WARMING

[Rogerborg]

Now do you see the folly of driving huge SUVs?

if you'd care to understand....

[Anonymous Coward]

...what the discussion is really about then for only a moment, pulleaze, ignore the "I hate this whole dark energy thing" or "dark matter didnt even EXIST right?" yadda... and, certainly, this all has little to do with string theory. remember this is observational cosmology, not physics.

it has been reasonably established from several independent observations (cosmic microwave background, supernovae 1a, large scale structure) that the expansion of the universe is accelerating; the universe today is expanding faster than it was in the past.

now, guess what? we *see* it, but dont understand how or why. we only know that all "matter" (baryonic and non-baryonic) attracts, therefore there must be some *repelling* force; out of ignorance, astronomers call this repellant "dark energy". *theorists go wild*

but this is not the point. the real criticism of this study is on the interpretation of the observations. in fact, understanding that requires little esoteric theory, it's quite simple. the essence is that Gamma Ray Bursts, observations of extremely powerful stellar explosions, are used to derive the geometry of the universe. this *can* be done, empirically, if one knows 1) how bright the explosions were intrinsically, and 2) if one knows their distances independently (i.e. through spectroscopy).

BUT... GRB physics is quite messy, so at this point nobody can claim *yet* to know what their intrinsic brightnesses are (such that they can be used as "standard candles"). second, measuring distances requires accurate spectroscopy which is *really* hard, and close to impossible for the most distant and faintest GRBs. third, the current sample of GRB observations with spectroscopy is small.

the main reason why the conclusions/interpretations as published in Nature are disputed is because of these difficulties.

astrosociology: claim what you can as early as you can. if you're right, you're the first and eternal glory is your part, if you're wrong, ppl will forget you anyway.

if you ask me, Nature's standards are slipping...

dark energy linked to hubble constant

[clockwork_orange]

it was already suspected that dark matter and dark energy were different when the universe was young, they are both linked to the hubble constant H, which is different the further back in time you go. it might be new evidence i haven't read the paper in nature yet, but its not a new idea

Dark Matter/Dark Energy is a kludge

[kcbrown]

I don't know about you, but this whole dark matter/dark energy thing looks, sounds, and feels like a kludge to me.

It's almost as if the people who are proposing these explanations aren't willing to toss out the current explanations they have for things and essentially start from scratch. But when you start to kludge explanations together as they have with dark matter/energy, that's exactly what you should do: go back to the drawing board. Having to kludge something is a huge hint that you got something badly wrong somewhere way back towards the beginning.

Obviously whatever you come up with has to explain current observations to at least the degree that current conventional theories do, and current theories then have to become a "special case" of the more general theory, just as newtonian mechanics is a special case of relativity.

Math != Science

[brunes69]

Mathematics is not a science. It is a tool (an important tool, but a tool nonetheless) that is used in science. Science (from Latin scientia - knowledge) refers to a system of acquiring knowledge - based on empiricism, experimentation, and methodological naturalism. Mathematics is not based on experimentation or empiricism, it is based on deduction and logic.

Also, I don't know how you could argue that physics is not a "hard" science. As the sciences go, one can argue that physics is the "hardest" science of them all, because at a fundamental level, all the other "hard" sciences (chemistry, biology, geology, etc) derrive from physics in one form or another.

Cant resist...

[David Munch]

In Soviet Russia dark matter changes YOU!

Warlock Science.

[Mulletproof]

"Dark Energy May Be Changing"

Speak for yourself. I'm keeping my talent points at 31/00/21 for nightfall and shadow burn.

...Eh, nevermind. You would have had to have been there.

Some astronomers doubt this result

[Wormholio]

A longer article on this in the NY Times says that other astronomers doubt this result.

Obligatory Douglas Adams quote

[ozbird]

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

Science Slashdot slogan.

[CCFreak2K]

Slashdot: Science for nerds, like dark energy and matter.

the fundamental flaw

[nido]

it's the old materialism vs. vitalism "holy war".

Scientists in the persuasion of Materialism believe that the universe is fundamentally composed of matter.

Vitalists maintain that the physical universe is just a very tiny subset of "all that is". Conciousness is primary, the physical universe is the playground that we all are currently occupying.

Matrix terminology: Conciousness is "the real world", whereas the physical universe is "the matrix". The movie was based on buddhist philosophy, so it is an apt analogy.

See Ingo Swann's Psychic Sexuality for more on the age-old Materialism vs. Vitalism debate, from a decidedly pro-vitalist perspective. (Sexuality being, of course, where most of us encounter vitalism-related phenomena).