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Dark energy darker still

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NASA’s Hubble Rules out One Alternative to Dark Energy
ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2011) — Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have ruled out an alternate theory on the nature of dark energy after recalculating the expansion rate of the universe to unprecedented accuracy.Some believe that is because the universe is filled with a dark energy that works in the opposite way of gravity. One alternative to that hypothesis is that an enormous bubble of relatively empty space eight billion light-years across surrounds our galactic neighborhood. If we lived near the center of this void, observations of galaxies being pushed away from each other at accelerating speeds would be an illusion.

This hypothesis has been invalidated because astronomers have refined their understanding of the universe’s present expansion rate.

“By falsifying the bubble hypothesis of the accelerating expansion, NASA missions like Hubble bring us closer to the ultimate goal of understanding this remarkable property of our universe.”

Anyone know the implications of this find, and whose ox is gored thereby?

Comments
of note: "Seeing" Elusive Dark Matter - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4133618/bornagain77
March 16, 2011
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Gravity behaves differently on the quantum scale = SCIENCE!!!! Gravity behaves differently on the galactic scale = We can't even consider this! If it is already accepted that gravity behaves differently on the quantum scale why can't it behave differently on the galactic scale, as observations suggest? Why invent something called dark energy that has whatever magic properties necessary to explain away the observations? If we assume variable gravity on the galactic scale as we already do on the quantum scale we can explain why the stars at the edge of galaxies orbit around the galaxy at the same speed as those at the center, as well as other things, without having to invent a magic dark energy that makes up nearly all of the universe yet we can't study it because it doesn't interact with any of our apparatus. Instead of trying to change the universe to fit the standard model let's change the standard model to fit the universe. Let's try to figure out WHY gravity behaves differently on quantum and galactic scales instead of inventing invisible forces to fill in gaping holes in a theory to keep it afloat. It's just like parallel universes. We can't study them so why pretend like it's science? We should try to figure out how reality works based on our observations instead of trying to make reality conform to abstract unverifiable speculations.UrbanMysticDee
March 16, 2011
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Willard Thiessen interviews Dr. Hugh Ross about "Dark Energy". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw9zKxkQfZobornagain77
March 16, 2011
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Denyse, Nobody's ox was gored, on the contrary, the scary gnomes with oxgoads were all banished from the kingdom. The reigning paradigm is that Einstein's cosmological constant, (which I call antigravity, but everyone calls dark energy) is just big enough to blow all the galaxies apart despite the pull of gravity. The way antigravity works, the farther apart the galaxies are, the stronger the antigravity. So as the Big Bang expands, it accelerates. Now NASA is spending billions on satellite experiments to pin down the source of "dark energy". All this antigravity magic got started by accident when Einstein couldn't figure out why gravity didn't cause a Big Crunch. So he added antigravity to balance it out. When Hubble discovered that galaxies were flying apart, and hence there must have been a Big Bang some 15 billion years ago, Einstein thumped his head and said "of course!" and called his constant the biggest mistake of his life. Some 10 or 15 years ago, some bright Harvard dude decided to use supernovae Ia (white dwarf accreting matter from companion goes critical at exactly 1.1 solar masses) as "standard candles". That is, they are the same brightness anywhere in the universe, so we can use their apparent brightness to calculate how far away a galaxy really is. Well when he did this, he found they were dimmer than they "should" be based on constant rate of expansion, so he attributed it to an accelerating universe with antigravity. Of course, it could be that there's dust in the way, that type Ia's are not all the same brightness due to "metals" in the white dwarf, that the speed of light isn't constant, or the fine structure constant varies with location, or the vacuum fluctuations dim ancient starlight...but no, he said, it has to be antigravity. Well along comes some gnome not on the bandwagon payroll, who suggests that if the universe is not homogeneous, but our bunch of galaxies is surrounded by a big void, then there is less gravity pulling the edges (of the observable universe) in, so it would appear to accelerate. In other words, by sacrificing a smooth homogeneous universe, we get back normal gravity without weird antigravity. This latest Hubble observation was supposed to demonstrate that there is no inhomogeneity, no void, and therefore the billions allocated for dark energy discovery are still on track. What else did you expect?Robert Sheldon
March 15, 2011
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Ms. O'Leary, this is of related note: Novel Technique Affirms Presence of Dark Energy Excerpt: More recently, a third voice corroborates the dark energy story. When he proposed the theory of general relativity, Einstein boldly asserted that the type of mass/energy in the universe determines its geometry. Conversely, measuring the shape of the universe tells astronomers what types of mass/energy comprise the universe. Using observations of distant binary galaxies, a pair of astronomers measured the geometry of the universe. Their results affirm previous measurements indicating a flat universe.1 Given a flat geometry, the composition of the universe must include roughly 4 percent normal matter, 23 percent dark matter, and 73 percent dark energy. http://www.reasons.org/novel-technique-affirms-presence-dark-energybornagain77
March 15, 2011
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