From Michael Byrne at Motherboard:
According to a paper published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, we might just be wrong about all of this. The accelerating expansion may just be a sort of illusion driven by an incorrect assumption about the nature of the distribution of mass across the universe. As cosmological assumptions go, it’s a big one: The universe will remain, on average, smooth and uniform in all locations and from all perspectives.
Maybe not?
…
“While the remarkable isotropy of the CMB points to an initial state with a very high degree of smoothness, the late epoch Universe encompasses a complex cosmic web of structures,” the paper notes. “It is dominated in volume by voids that are threaded and surrounded by clusters of galaxies distributed in sheets, knots and filaments.” In other words, space doesn’t really look all that smooth and uniform after all. More.
We need always to keep in mind that assumptions are not demonstrated facts, they are baskets into which we fit facts for organization. Now and then the basket gets overturned…
See also: Take back Nobel prizes for accelerating expansion of universe? Dark energy might be an illusion say some researchers. But we thought only a denialist was allowed to doubt the accelerating expansion of the universe. Rules change?
Cosmic inflation theory loses hangups about the scientific methodWhat if naturalism changes the role of a science program? Perhaps stubbornly contrary evidence merely shows the need for more drive and zeal in generating new naturalist theories, not more reflection and evaluation of that direction.
Expanding space bubbles could doom dark energy? Is it possible that the sheer ability to make up theories without consequence is adding to the confusion?
Dark energy made by black holes? But do we know that dark energy actually exists? Finding some would help us decide whether to cheer on or deprecate the revolution.
String theorists losing bets? Resorting to “denialism”?
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