Astronomers announced yesterday they had found strong new evidence that a theory Albert Einstein proposed but later discarded may have been right after all, providing crucial new clues to the fundamental nature and eventual fate of the cosmos, some 30 billion years from now.
The results were hailed as pivotal new data that will help answer the most pressing and profound questions about the universe, such as what makes up most of the void and what eventually will happen to it.
John Bahcall of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., said, “that’s the burning question today.”
Martin J. Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge in England, said: “It’s an important step toward getting a consistent picture of how our universe is expanding. It’s corroborating the rather surprising picture that this dark energy pervades all of empty space.”
The two main theories are that dark energy is the same as or similar to the “cosmological constant” that Einstein proposed — but later discarded as his “greatest blunder” — in 1917 to balance the universe against the force of gravity. The leading alternative theory was that it is akin to a weaker version of the rapid expansion that occurred right after the Big Bang, a force field dubbed “quintessence.”
In a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, the researchers concluded that the strength of dark energy was consistent with Einstein’s predicted cosmological constant, and that it appeared fairly consistent over time, also as Einstein had theorized. The researchers said they were now twice as confident as they were before that dark energy is consistent with Einstein’s idea.
“It looks like Einstein may turn out to have been right, after all,” Riess said. (Source: Washington Post)
I know something else that Einstein’s cosmological constant resembles. It resembles the Ether that Michelson and Morley were attempting to find. This is as good a ‘guess’ as to what Dark Energy is, as anyone else’s, since no one knows what it is yet. LINK
30 billion years left, huh? Then no more Universe. Heat death everywhere. Sometimes I think it is much easier, and much more sane to believe in a Creator of Everything, especially one who is known for unconditional love, mercy and compassion. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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