9 Billion-Year-Old "Dark Energy" Reported 118
loid_void writes to mention a New York Times article about the discovery that dark energy, or antigravity, was present at the formation of the universe. A team of 'dark energy prospectors' at the Space Telescope Science Institute theorizes that this may have directed the evolution of the cosmos. By observing supernova activity almost 8 billion years in the past, the team was able to study whether or not dark energy has changed over the millennia. From the article: "The data suggest that, in fact, dark energy has changed little, if at all, over the course of cosmic history. Though hardly conclusive, that finding lends more support to what has become the conventional theory, that the source of cosmic antigravity is the cosmological constant, a sort of fudge factor that Einstein inserted into his cosmological equations in 1917 to represent a cosmic repulsion embedded in space. Although Einstein later abandoned the cosmological constant, calling it a blunder, it would not go away. It is the one theorized form of dark energy that does not change with time. Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology who was not on the team, said: 'Had they found the evolution was not constant, that would have been an incredibly earthshaking discovery. They looked where no one had been able to look before.'"
Re:Suppose that gravity is conserved (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Anyone here care to try to poke holes in this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Dark energy does not violate the strong equivalence principle.
Matter creates space-time and gravitational effects are due to space being created by a massive body
That's not what the strong equivalence principle says. Read your own link.
making a reference frame at rest with respect to the massive body an accelerated frame
That exists in ordinary general relativity: you have to accelerate to hover at rest above a gravitating body, remaining in accelerated non-geodesic motion. It has nothing to do with the accelerating expansion of the universe.
This obviates the need for "dark energy". If matter creates space then of course the universe will expand.
There is no "of course". I don't even know how you can geometrically define the "creation" of space. What is the metric describing the geometry of a space in which new space is being "created"?
I have read through James Lawler's "photonic theory of matter" several times and I can't find much wrong with it.
Well no offense, but given your claims about gravity, I don't have a lot of faith that you would be capable of detecting something wrong with it; you don't even know what's wrong with your own statements. Glancing at it, I can see that his gravitational "theory" isn't even relativistically invariant; it's a mish-mash trying to wedge a few of Einstein's special relativity concepts into Newtonian gravity.
Re:Does this really mean anything... (Score:3, Insightful)
I totally agree! And while we're at it, what's the deal with these so-called "a-toms"? Have you ever seen an atom? No! No one has. Atoms are just hypothetical constructs invented to maintain the dominance of the currently-funded paradigm, reinforcing the existing pattern of power-exercise by societal gatekeepers. I mean, sure there are patterns in chemistry, and you can make a useful shortcut by arranging elements into a sort of table-like pattern. But that's just a calculational convenience -- it doesn't really represent reality. And there are holes in it anwya, which the so-called "atomic" chemists retroactively explain as elements we haven't discovered yet...
And before you roll your eyes too much, exactly that "criticism" could have been levelled at the atomic theory for, oh, most of its history.
It's indisputable that the current model could be wrong. But it's getting kind of tiresome for all these people to keep banging the drum and saying, "No one follows my pet theory. It must because of a giant academic consipracy, because it certainly can't be because I might be wrong."