At first sight, this media release re a new paper sounds like the usual plaint along the lines that dark energy must exist but we haven’t found any. Curiously though, we learn,
Professor Sarkar explains: “The cosmological standard model rests on the assumption that the Universe is isotropic around all observers. This cosmological principle is an extension of the Copernican principle—namely that we are not privileged observers. It affords a vast simplification in the mathematical construction of the cosmological model using Einstein’s theory of general relativity. However when observational data are interpreted within this framework we are led to the astonishing conclusion that about 70% of the universe is constituted of Einstein’s Cosmological Constant or more generally “dark energy.” This has been interpreted as due to quantum zero-point fluctuations of the vacuum but the associated energy scale is set by H0, the present rate of expansion of the universe. This is however a factor of 1044 below the energy scale of the standard model of particle physics—the well-established quantum field theory that precisely describes all subatomic phenomena. Its zero-point fluctuations have therefore a huge energy density which would have prevented the universe from reaching its present age and size if they indeed influence the expansion rate via gravity. To this cosmological constant problem must be added the “why now?” problem, namely why has dark energy come to dominate the universe only recently? It was negligible at earlier times, in particular at an age of ~400,000 years when the primordial plasma cooled sufficiently to form atoms and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation was released (hence the CMB is not directly sensitive to dark energy).”
“Our analysis is data-driven but supports the theoretical proposal due to Christos Tsagas (University of Thessaloniki) that acceleration may be inferred when we are not Copernican observers, as is usually assumed, but are embedded in a local bulk flow shared by nearby galaxies, as is, indeed, observed. This is unexpected in the standard cosmological model, and the reason for such a flow remains unexplained. But independently of that, it appears that the acceleration is an artifact of our local flow, so dark energy cannot be invoked as its cause.
University of Oxford, “Evidence for anisotropy of cosmic acceleration” at Phys.org
If we are not privileged observers, maybe the universe is playing a trick on us. Put it down to the high costs of Copernicanism (= we are not special)
See also: Rob Sheldon: Are “multiple measurements ”closing in on dark energy? Nope.
Researchers: Either dark energy or string theory is wrong. Or both are. But dark energy is so glitzy! Isn’t it a line of cosmetics already?
Researchers: The symmetrons needed to explain dark energy were not found
Rob Sheldon: Has dark energy finally been found? In pop science mags?
Are recent dark energy findings a blow for multiverse theory?
and
Science at sunset: Dark energy might make a multiverse hospitable to life… if it exists
see SPIRAL’s ‘MVP’ hypothesis how/why we should know we have The vastly preferred vantage point in/of the entire universe.
in volume II ‘SPIRAL cosmological redshift hypothesis and mode ‘ of the YeC Moshe Emes series
The Copernican Principal is after all an assumption.
If, in fact, making instead the assumption that we are in the center of the universe (or very close to the center) better fits the data or makes sense of inconvenient observations….well then why not?
Oh, that’s right, it’s inconvenient for the atheist/materialists. What was I thinking?
As to:
To which Latemarch @2 notes that the Copernican Principal is itself just an assumption.
The Copernican principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, was derived from Copernican heliocentrism and is the assumption that there is nothing very unusual or very special about the earth in general or about humanity in particular:
And the Copernican principle, (and/or the principle of mediocrity), is one of the two main ‘supposed’ scientific evidences, (the false narrative of human evolution being the other ‘supposed’ scientific evidence), that atheists have appealed to try to claim that man has no reason to believe his life may have any higher purpose, meaning, value, or significance, in this universe.
For one instance out of many instances, in 1995 the late Stephen Hawking, who was an atheist, bluntly stated “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.,,,”
And yet, despite the fact that virtually everyone, including the vast majority of Christians, hold that the Copernican Principle is unquestionably true, the fact of the matter is that the Copernican Principal is now shown to be a false assumption.
The reason why virtually everyone, including the vast majority of Christians, hold that the Copernican Principle is unquestionably true, is, of course, because everyone firmly believes that it is an undeniable and proven fact that the Earth revolves around the sun. Yet, Copernicus never did prove that the geocentric model was wrong:
As Stephen Hawking himself explained, ‘our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.,,, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.’
And as George Ellis stated, “I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds…”
And as Fred Hoyle stated, “Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.”
And even as Einstein himself stated, The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”
There simply is no empirical reason to prefer the heliocentric model over the earth centered model. As Einstein himself noted,,,
Here are a few more notes to that effect,
In fact, as far as empirical science itself is concerned, in the 4 dimensional spacetime of Einstein’s General Relativity, we find that each 3-Dimensional point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe,,,
,,, and since any 3-Dimensional point can be considered central in the expanding 4-Dimensional space time of General Relativity, then, as the following articles make clear, it is now left completely open to whomever is making a model of the universe to decide for themselves what is to be considered central in the universe,,,
Even individual people, as the following article makes clear, can be considered to be central in the universe according to the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity,,,
,,, In fact, when Einstein first formulated both Special and General relativity, he gave a hypothetical observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe.
We will get back to observers being central in the universe, but before we do that, and to more firmly establish that the earth, (and solar system itself) should be given a ‘privileged’ position in the universe, it is first necessary to point out that anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR), (anomalies that were recently discovered by the WMAP and Planck telescopes), ‘strangely’ line up with the earth and solar system,
At the 13:55 minute mark of this following video, Max Tegmark, an atheist who specializes in this area of study, finally admits, post Planck 2013, that the CMBR anomalies do indeed line up with the earth and solar system
Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” that explains these ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR that line up with the earth and solar system in an easy to understand manner.
Moreover, due to the ‘insane coincidence’ of the flatness of the universe being fine-tuned to within one part to the 10^57, we find that “These tiny temperature variations correspond to the largest scale structures of the observable universe.”
And we find that Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe:
Thus, contrary to the presumptions of atheists, far from the temperature variations in the CMBR being a product of randomness as they presuppose, the temperature variations in the CMBR correspond to the ‘largest scale structures of the observable universe’ and that these ‘largest scale structures of the observable universe’ reveal “a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth”. Moreover, we were only able to discover this correlation between the tiny temperature variation in the CMB and the largest scale structures in the universe via the ‘insane coincidence’ of the universe being fine-tuned to at least 1 in 10^57 as measured for its flatness.
In other words, the “tiny temperature variations” in the CMBR, (from the large scale structures in the universe, to the earth and solar system themselves), reveal teleology, (i.e. a goal directed purpose, a plan), that specifically included the earth from the start. ,,, The earth, from what our best science can now tell us, is not some random cosmic fluke as atheists had presupposed.
On top of all that, in the following paper, Robin Collins found that photons coming from the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) are ‘such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers.’
To further empirically establish humanity’s centrality in the universe in particular, in the following video physicist Neil Turok states that ““So we can go from 10 to the plus 25 to 10 to the minus 35. Now where are we? Well the size of a living cell is about 10 to the minus 5. Which is halfway between the two. In mathematical terms, we say it is the geometric mean. We live in the middle between the largest scale in physics,,, and the tiniest scale [in physics].”
The following interactive graph, gives very similar ‘rough ballpark’ figures, of 10 ^27 and 10-35, to Dr. Turok’s figures.
Whereas Dr. William Demski, in the following graph, gives a more precise figure of 8.8 x 10^26 M for the observable universe’s diameter, and 1.6 x 10^-35 for the Planck length which is the smallest length possible.
Dr. Dembski’s more precise interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as the size of a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center, and/or geometric mean, of all possible sizes of our physical reality. This is very interesting for the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions rather than directly in the exponential middle and/or the geometric mean. Needless to say, this empirical finding directly challenges, if not directly refutes, the assumption of the Copernican Principle.
Now let’s get back to observers themselves being central in the universe. In Quantum Mechanics we find that it is the measurement itself that gives each observer a privileged frame of reference in the universe. As the following article states, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”,,,
Likewise, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.
Moreover, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Because of such experiments like the preceding from quantum mechanics, Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, stated “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.”
On top of all that, and completely contrary to the Copernican Principle, in quantum mechanics humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.
As Steven Weinberg, who is an atheist himself, stated in the following article, In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
As leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
As well, with contextuality we find that, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation”
As well, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
As well, as should be needless to say, this is yet another VERY powerful line of empirical evidence that directly falsifies the Copernican Principle and/or the principle of mediocrity since humans themselves are shown to have far, far, more significance, and dignity, in this universe than atheists tried to imply that we had via the Copernican Principle, (i.e. Hawking; humans are “chemical scum”)
Of final note, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verse:
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