Dark Energy, it would seem, Has Been Confirmed

From the IO9 blog comes information that researchers have been able to confirm the existence of Dark Energy. This proof is in the form of a study called the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, or BOSS. This "survey" examined 300+ thousand galaxies with an average age/distance of six billion years. This time in the age of the universe is a telling time. The universe reach a point where matter density/gravity could no longer slow, let alone reverse, the outward expansion. At this point the repulsive forces of dark energy came into play and began speeding up the expansion.

But there is still a problem. We can see the effects, but not what is causing said effect. It is hoped that by studying the 300 plus thousand galaxies, it is hoped that scientists will be able to determine more and hopefully what this mysterious force really is.

One of the effects that the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey has been able to
observe some of the effects of and there by hinting that they are indeed on the right track is the Baryon Oscillation for which the study is named for. The Baryon Oscillation were massive oscillations, sound waves if you like, that took place very shortly after the big bang (30 thousand years or so) These sound waves ultimately could have been responsible for the overall make up of the Universe billions of years ago.

Check out the IO9 article here
BBC News online
Wiki on Baryon Oscillation Survey

Dark Energy is Fiction - Time Itself is Leaking Away!

Talk about a subject that is going to polarize discussion! Dark energy has been the darling child of astronomical physics for the better part of the last decade and now some researchers are calling it little more than junk science? This can not be going well for proponents.

But the question still has to be, if there isn't any such thing as Dark Energy, then what is pushing the universe apart at an ever increasing rate. Well me hearties tiz something right out of science fiction. Time is Running Down.

From the Daily Galaxy article:

• The idea that time itself could cease to be in billions of years - and everything will grind to a halt - has been proposed by Professor José Senovilla, Marc Mars and Raül Vera of the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, and University of Salamanca, Spain.
• They propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we’re looking at things backwards. Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down.

Wow, what a way to get the skull jello wigglin huh? But think about it - distance, speed and age all have time constituents and for the most part, C is constant because of T(time) if you have to start factoring in a delta v for time things get really squirreley! (oh and don't call me out on delta v for time, you know what I mean...sheeeeeeeesh!)

Anyone remember Exhalation by Ted Chiang. It was originally played on Star Ship Sofa and I replayed it (I loved the reading that they had done so I asked to use that!) anyway Ted's story was about beings that powered themselves with compressed air, but found that their vacuum environment was being normalized and since there was less power potential the people were slowing down ever so slowly. Chiang nailed the present theory several years ago!

Ok, well I drifted off track some. As the present expansion theory explains, since light is redshifting from distant galaxies and the more pronounced the red shift the faster they are receding, hence the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. However as the article points out:

• the accuracy of these measurements depends on time remaining invariable throughout the universe.
• If time is slowing down, ... our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension. Therefore the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating.......

Wild huh?

Read the rest of the Daily Galaxy article here

Hubble Confirms Accelerated Expansion of the Universe

A recent Hubble project requiring 600 Earth orbits and 1000 observational man hours has confirmed that the Universe is indeed expanding and expanding at an accelerated rate.

European scientists from the Leiden Observatory and the University of British Columbia studied over 400,000 galaxies in the hopes to better understand cosmic expansion. The model that had been in use until recently was constructed using only 2d information. With the new Hubble observations and additional ground based telescopic data has allowed for an extremely accurate model to be constructed.

The scale of this study enables an independent confirmation that the expansion of the Universe is accelerated by an additional component that researchers have labeled dark energy, which up to this point has been all but impossible to study let alone quantify.

The results of the study will be published in an upcoming issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

For a more detailed explanation of the study, check out the article at Spacetelescope.org

The Day the Universe Froze

About 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was a quarter of the size it is today, it did freeze. Solid as a stone. Image at right  shows such a cosmic ice cream bar as visualized by Chandra/NASA.

This according to researchers exploring a new model for dark energy. The model, published online May 6 in the journal Physical Review D, was developed by Research Associate Sourish Dutta and Professor of Physics Robert Scherrer at Vanderbilt University, working with Professor of Physics Stephen Hsu and graduate student David Reeb at the University of Oregon.

“One of the things that is very unsatisfying about many of the existing explanations for dark energy is that they are difficult to test,” says Scherrer, “We designed a model that can interact with normal matter and so has observable consequences."

The model proposes that space itself is the source of the repulsive energy that is pushing the universe apart, and attributes dark energy to an entirely new field dubbed quintessence.

Quintessence is comparable to other basic fields like gravity and electromagnetism, but has some unique properties. For one thing, it is the same strength throughout the universe. Another important feature is that it acts like an antigravity agent, causing objects to move away from each other instead of pulling them together like gravity.

Image: Chandra/NASA

What is the Difference Between Dark Matter & Dark Energy?

Now there is the 10 thousand dollar question of the day... ain't it. I will admit to being confused by the difference myself. That is what made this article in The Daily Galaxy so very interesting.

As it sits right now, Only 4% of the stuff that makes up the universe is stuff we understand. So what is the other 96%? Well two names keep coming up and what confuses me is the fact that even learnered people use the two labels interchangeably - dark matter and dark energy.

From the article:

• ...astronomers at the University of St Andrews are attempting to “simplify the dark side of the universe”. They say the two most mysterious constituents in the universe are actually the same thing.

Hummm somehow that doesn't seem to clear anything up - but it would seem dark matter and its counterpart dark energy are so closely intertwined that it’s not clear that they’re even two different materials, but instead, two sides so to speak of the same coin.

What really makes the whole argument strange is the 4% we see might in fact be all the matter that there is in the universe. Some scientists say that many of the new findings may instead point to a reinterpretation of the dark component as a modification of the law of gravity rather than particles or energy.

That clear things up for you? No?

Read the complete Daily Galaxy article. It really is indepth and has a wealth of solid information.

Dark Energy Is Ripping the Universe Apart

An article in IO9 throws fuel on the 'dark energy' fire. At a recent press conference NASA announced new measurements from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory confirm the existence of "dark energy" that is causing the universe to expand.

Ten years ago, it was discovered that the universe was expanding at an ever increasing rate. To explain this phenomenon astrophysicists proposed the action of a here to fore unknown and undiscovered force they called 'dark energy'. This force was so powerful that not only was it pulling the universe apart but eventually galaxies and eventually every molecule.

Remember Shaun's story 'Curtain Call' well this would be the effect many billions of years in the future when galaxies and eventually stars themselves are so far apart that for all intents there would be nothing to see in the night sky. Sobering thought that.

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