Dark Matter May Be Wrong

Timothy Birdnow

An article at Space.com says a recent paper suggests Dark Energy may be hogpoo.

From the article:

In a new study, published to the pre-print server arXiv and accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, along with collaborators at Lyon University and the Korea and Space Science Institute claim that they have found proof that dark energy might not exist at all. They studied a small sample of galaxies hosting about 30 type Ia supernovas and claim to have disproven the assumption that supernova luminosity evolves.

"Quoting Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but I am not sure we have such extraordinary evidence for dark energy. Our result illustrates that dark energy from SN cosmology, which led to the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, might be an artifact of a fragile and false assumption," professor Young-Wook Lee of Yonsei University, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Taken at face values, our result suggests that ~100% of the evidence for dark energy simply goes away. This will be confirmed by future observations," Lee and co-author Yijung Kang told Space.com in an email.

To come to such a bold conclusion, the researchers observed the spectra — bands of colors that can be produced when matter interacts with or emits electromagnetic radiation — of the stars in nearby galaxies that host these supernovas. Studying the light coming from these galaxies helped them to determine the ages of the stars in those galaxies.

The team found what they reported as a significant correlation between the luminosity of these supernovas and the ages of the stars in these galaxies. They found that supernovas in younger galaxies are fainter than in older galaxies, which would upend the assumption that supernova luminosity doesn't evolve over cosmic time. So, because they found fault with one of the main pieces of evidence for dark energy, they concluded that there is a likelihood that dark energy may not exist at all.

There are certainly problems with this study, but one wonders; Albert Einstein moved science forward by ditching the Ether, a well-established concept of a massless medium required for light to move. Einstein applied Occam's Razor and simply got rid of the ether, which had no evidence in it's favor anyway. Perhaps Dark Energy is a candidate for such treatment?

After all, we have Dark Energy to explain the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the Universe and at the same time have Dark Matter to explain the opposite. It's very Medieval; like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. One starts to think that perhaps we are on the wrong track entirely.

Maybe not. But I'm always willing to keep an open mind on such things.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:30 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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