… whatever that means.
While the findings don’t explain the cosmic speed-up, they eliminate one provocative possibility that our planet, solar system and galaxy are at the center of the universe and that there is no dark energy. The findings appear in the journal Physical Review D.
Some of us didn’t realize anyone had considered that. Given that there is said to be a huge black hole at the centre of our galaxy, and at the centre of most galaxies, it’s fair to wonder what the centre of the universe would even be like.
The 2011 Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. One leading idea to explain the acceleration is a new, mysterious substance called dark energy, which is thought to make up nearly three-fourths of the energy of the universe. But another alternative is that Earth, our solar system and Milky Way galaxy are at the center of the universe. That theory violates the standard assumption that the universe has no center, but if true, then cosmic acceleration could be explained without dark energy or any new laws of physics.
But Dartmouth researchers found that this model can’t hold up to other observational tests. The sky glows with light left over from the Big Bang, also known as the Cosmic Microwave Background, so they calculated how that glow would be affected. Their findings show that the model’s prediction is completely contrary to the glow that has been measured.
Well, if there isn’t a centre to the universe, how did the theory that Earth would be at the centre even get started?
But why ask? We are talking about a universe that, some physicists believe, could be a giant computer sim. Presumably, it would only need a couple of script rewrites to create a centre and drop Earth into it. But it seems they didn’t survive the most recent drafts.