January 11, 2026
No Dark Energy?
Timothy Birdnow
If true this would eliminate the need for Dark Energy, and that would mean that it would eliminate the need for Dark Matter as well. Neither have ever been discovered but both have been used to explain why the current models of cosmic acceleration do not work. Dark Energy was devised to explain the expansion while Dark Matter was a balancer to explain why the Universe isn't expanding even faster.
When the Michaelson-Morley experiment failed to show any changes in speed for a beam of light going in opposite directions (in fact it was stranger than that - two beams going in vastly different directions were merge at exactly the same time) Albert Einstein proposed just trashing the theory of an aether, which was a massless, invisible substance through which light propagated, according to 19th century physics. Einstein argued that there never was any proof of an aether, and we should work on the assumption it does not exist until there IS proof of it. In the process Einstein explained the results of the MM experiment, in the process making the universe a much more complicated and wonderous place.
MM were trying to see which direction the Earth was moving relative to the aether, and they split a single beam of light, then reflected it off mirrors in opposite directions to see which arrived first at a detector. They always arrived at the same time, no matter what. Einstein's explanation of what was happening revolutionized physics.
I've always argued that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are much like the concept of the aether; they seem to make established science work but there has never been any real proof of either. They are both there to simply balance the books so the standard models don't break down.
At any rate, here is the summary of the new theory. Whether it's correct or not is anybody's guess, but at least we have people challenging the ossified "consensus":
Universität BremenSummary:The accelerating expansion of the universe is usually explained by an invisible force known as dark energy. But a new study suggests this mysterious ingredient may not be necessary after all. Using an extended version of Einstein’s gravity, researchers found that cosmic acceleration can arise naturally from a more general geometry of spacetime. The result hints at a radical new way to understand why the universe keeps speeding up.
Einstein's theory of gravity argued that gravity is not a force in the traditional sense but rather a change in the geometric shape of the universe. It is often referred to as the rubber sheet. Drop a bowling ball on a rubber sheet and it stretched and indents. Now try rolling a marble past the bowling ball; it will curve it's path, and perhaps even start revolving around the ball. Einstein was proven right on this too because it explains the divergence of the planet Mercury when it passed near the Sun and the same holds true for other bodies and stars as they get close to the Sun; the Sun's gravity bends the light as it passes close in what is known as gravity lensing.
Anyway Dark Matter and Dark Energy seem to me to be rather Medieval; they are complications added to our understanding of the Universe based not on any sort of real data or observation but merely to make what we believe to be true work. Instead of challenging our assumptions science has created a cheat. Cheats usually don't really tell us anything.
At any rate most scientists still think gravity is a force and is thus driven by an exchange particle which they nave named a graviton. There is no proof of gravitons, I might add, no matter how much they use them in Star Trek. But scientists believe there has to be a reason WHY mass bends spacetime and thus a graviton or something similar seems necessary to them. Einstein just dismissed such things as unprovable and preferred to just work with what he had.
From the article:
Because of this limitation, the team at ZARM and their Romanian collaborators explored an alternative idea. Their results, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, rely on an extension of general relativity (GR) known as Finsler gravity. This approach has been developeded over recent years and uses a broader description of spacetime geometry.
Unlike the standard formulation of GRT, Finsler gravity can describe the gravitational behavior of gases more precisely. This difference turns out to be crucial when modeling the large-scale behavior of the universe.
Accelerated Expansion Without Dark Energy
When the researchers applied Finsler gravity to the Friedmann equations, they uncovered a striking result. The modified equations, known as the Finsler-Friedmann equations, naturally predict an accelerating universe even in empty space. No extra assumptions are required, and no additional "dark energy" term needs to be added by hand.
"This is an exciting indication that we may be able to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe, at least in parts, without dark energy, on the basis of a generalized spacetime geometry," says Christian Pfeifer, ZARM physicist and member of the research team. "This new geometric point of view on the dark energy problem opens up new possibilities for better understanding the laws of nature in the cosmos."
Without Dark Energy the need to balance it with Dark Matter (which is assumed to be keeping the Universe from expanding much faster than it is) certainly subsides, if not downright disappears.
At any rate this will take us no closer to artificial gravity than the original Einsteinian equations, but it may help restore our understanding of the universe, and that is a big thing. I fear physics has gotten lost in it's own navel for some time now.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
10:58 AM
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