Dark Energy? There Ain't None!
I will explain why this hoo-hah about Dark Energy is all a bunch of boo-bah!
As you know, much has been written about the existence of "Dark Energy"... yet nothing has been written. About as close to the truth as you can get are comments like: "We have no idea what it is". Of course. That IS true.
Let me tell you the brief story how this came to be.
All this dark energy stuff started a few years, in 1998 to be precise, when a few astronomers started taking measurements of Type 1a supernovae. Actually, it was the High-Z Supernova Search Team that did this. Their measures of this special class of supernova indicated to them that perhaps the expansion of the universe was actually going faster with time (accelerating).
The whole dark energy idea comes from an attempt to reconcile the measurements of the type 1a explosions with the amount of matter that was thought to be in the universe. Pretty hefty stuff, if you know what I mean. Anyway, to make this simple, let me simply say that measurements of the luminosity and the measurements of the redshift of the far away supernova are integral to this "discovery". There is one thing assumed to be at the core of all of this - type 1a supernova explode with the same absolute magnitude (light given off) everywhere in the universe. In other words, it will always be a certain brightness - no matter what. They use this "brightness" as a "standard candle". And of course, if you know exactly how bright something is, you can then determine how far away it is by it's apparent dimness to us. Simply put, if it's brighter, then it's closer. They can measure this very accurately. They then look at the redshift of the star (measured spectroscopically) and can then link it's redshift with it's distance.
OK, so they did all that. And they stood back and said "Uh-Oh"! The measurements seemed to indicate, remarkably, that our universe was not behaving as we thought it should. The results indicated that stars very far away from us seemed to be expanding away at a far faster rate than was expected. I won't go into the Big Bang or the expansion of the universe thing here, you can do that yourself if you read the Wikipedia. Suffice to say though that these observed results and the conclusions reached by the High-Z team indicated something "strange" was at work. So, without much more than that, everyone jumped into the pool and decided they had something called Dark Energy at work here. And of course, since no one knows anything about it, we must study it and create new hypothesis, et al. Grant money - here we come.
Well, you know, sometimes we're so dumb when we work in groups. Here's how widely this Type 1a "standard candle" has been accepted: "The similarity in the absolute luminosity profiles of nearly all known Type Ia supernovae has led to their use as a secondary standard candle in extragalactic astronomy." [source: click here].
So now, here comes the Dark Energy killer. You see, it turns out that Type 1a supernova CAN HAVE different luminosities after all. Uh-Oh!! Meaning, obviously, that all these speculations about the universe accelerating wildly (Watch out, here comes the Big Rip) are wrong. They're based on conclusions from a premature assumption. Oh man... that's bad news for this exciting new field of study.
What did this? Here's the quote: "A new discovery is casting doubt on the idea that a type of star explosion shines with equal brightness wherever it occurs in the universe. The finding could have implications for estimates of the size of the cosmos. Type-1a supernovae are typically used as standard indicators of distance in the vast expanse of the universe. But the discovery of a Type-1a supernova more massive than was thought possible could force astronomers to rethink their ideas about the luminous objects, scientists reported today." [Source: click here].
So, of course we're going to find that Type 1a supernovae do NOT all have a standard luminosity when they explode. Heck, we ALREADY know that now. And of course, we will find that there are various factors at work that we have either not yet discovered or do not yet understand. That simple.
No BIG RIP. No unexplainable accelerating expansion. No dark energy to have to come to grips with.
Oh... there WILL be bigger mysteries in store for us. But for now, we can put Dark Energy to rest. Hopefully we DO, before our "science by consensus" methodologies make us even dumber.
As you know, much has been written about the existence of "Dark Energy"... yet nothing has been written. About as close to the truth as you can get are comments like: "We have no idea what it is". Of course. That IS true.
Let me tell you the brief story how this came to be.
All this dark energy stuff started a few years, in 1998 to be precise, when a few astronomers started taking measurements of Type 1a supernovae. Actually, it was the High-Z Supernova Search Team that did this. Their measures of this special class of supernova indicated to them that perhaps the expansion of the universe was actually going faster with time (accelerating).
The whole dark energy idea comes from an attempt to reconcile the measurements of the type 1a explosions with the amount of matter that was thought to be in the universe. Pretty hefty stuff, if you know what I mean. Anyway, to make this simple, let me simply say that measurements of the luminosity and the measurements of the redshift of the far away supernova are integral to this "discovery". There is one thing assumed to be at the core of all of this - type 1a supernova explode with the same absolute magnitude (light given off) everywhere in the universe. In other words, it will always be a certain brightness - no matter what. They use this "brightness" as a "standard candle". And of course, if you know exactly how bright something is, you can then determine how far away it is by it's apparent dimness to us. Simply put, if it's brighter, then it's closer. They can measure this very accurately. They then look at the redshift of the star (measured spectroscopically) and can then link it's redshift with it's distance.
OK, so they did all that. And they stood back and said "Uh-Oh"! The measurements seemed to indicate, remarkably, that our universe was not behaving as we thought it should. The results indicated that stars very far away from us seemed to be expanding away at a far faster rate than was expected. I won't go into the Big Bang or the expansion of the universe thing here, you can do that yourself if you read the Wikipedia. Suffice to say though that these observed results and the conclusions reached by the High-Z team indicated something "strange" was at work. So, without much more than that, everyone jumped into the pool and decided they had something called Dark Energy at work here. And of course, since no one knows anything about it, we must study it and create new hypothesis, et al. Grant money - here we come.
Well, you know, sometimes we're so dumb when we work in groups. Here's how widely this Type 1a "standard candle" has been accepted: "The similarity in the absolute luminosity profiles of nearly all known Type Ia supernovae has led to their use as a secondary standard candle in extragalactic astronomy." [source: click here].
So now, here comes the Dark Energy killer. You see, it turns out that Type 1a supernova CAN HAVE different luminosities after all. Uh-Oh!! Meaning, obviously, that all these speculations about the universe accelerating wildly (Watch out, here comes the Big Rip) are wrong. They're based on conclusions from a premature assumption. Oh man... that's bad news for this exciting new field of study.
What did this? Here's the quote: "A new discovery is casting doubt on the idea that a type of star explosion shines with equal brightness wherever it occurs in the universe. The finding could have implications for estimates of the size of the cosmos. Type-1a supernovae are typically used as standard indicators of distance in the vast expanse of the universe. But the discovery of a Type-1a supernova more massive than was thought possible could force astronomers to rethink their ideas about the luminous objects, scientists reported today." [Source: click here].
So, of course we're going to find that Type 1a supernovae do NOT all have a standard luminosity when they explode. Heck, we ALREADY know that now. And of course, we will find that there are various factors at work that we have either not yet discovered or do not yet understand. That simple.
No BIG RIP. No unexplainable accelerating expansion. No dark energy to have to come to grips with.
Oh... there WILL be bigger mysteries in store for us. But for now, we can put Dark Energy to rest. Hopefully we DO, before our "science by consensus" methodologies make us even dumber.
posted by G at 1:30 PM
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