Necessity of Dark Energy Questioned

ttnuagmada points us to an article about scientist David Wiltshire's suggestion that theorized dark energy is not needed to describe the expansion of the universe. His work challenges assumptions made about the distribution of matter in the universe. Early solutions to general relativity were based on a "smooth distribution" of matter. Wiltshire's approach focuses on a "lumpy" dispersal, which more accurately fits data from modern studies. We have discussed other theories about dark energy in the past. Quoting: "Through observational projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the 2 Degree Field survey, we now have a much better picture of the large-scale structure of the universe and we know that galaxies are not uniformly distributed. 'Rather, they are in clusters sprinkled thinly in filaments and "bubble walls" surrounding huge voids hundreds of millions of light-years across,' Wiltshire says.

Comments

Re:Dark matter balloney

[arminw]

..... It's a set of procedures that have a great success rate for developing working models of how the world works........

These procedures are based in experiments and observations, not arcane, complicated math. Physics is NOT equal to math, but math is only a useful tool to describe discoveries and experimental results.

  Much of cosmology and astrophysics is pure mathematical fiction, having no basis in the increasing flood of data coming from sophisticated space probes which severely contradicts so much of the current mathematical conjecture in vogue today. In making these newer observations fit this mathematical fictional framework, it is necessary to invent the existence of dark matter/energy, strings, multiple dimensions and other unobserved and unmeasured constructs.

Example: Science has long ago experimentally determined that heat moves from the hotter area to the colder. Yet that relationship seems to be reversed in the sun, at least if the currently accepted thermonuclear fusion theory is what makes the sun produce its energy. Since the corona of the sun has been MEASURED to be thousands of times hotter than the surface, either the experimentally verified principle of heat flowing from hotter to cooler doesn't apply to the sun for some reason or the energy source of the sun is outside of the sun itself. The number and kinds of neutrinos we measure, coming from the sun, don't come close to how many there should be, if the fusion theory of the sun were correct. The upshot of such measurements are that we simply don't know what makes the Universe run.

All we know for sure, is that the sun does shine, like a giant light bulb, of which we cannot see the wires nor the power station that makes it light.

Scrapping long held foundational theories is just as hard for science, as revising religious dogma is for religions.