Dark Energy Might Nix Einstein at the Edge of the Universe

A young physicist at Cornell says that while gravity tests out on a Solar System scale, when it comes to the distances of the farthest galaxies, which are billions of light years from our own Milky Way, Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity needs to be modified to account for the mysterious effect of dark energy.

“Einstein’s theory of General Relativity tells us how gravity determines the relationship between the matter in the Universe and the Universe’s size,” says Cornell's Rachael Bean. “If matter in the Universe is attracted by gravity, then the Universe’s size should be expanding at an ever slowing rate (decelerating). What observations show, though, is that in the last 6 billion years (out of the Universe’s 13.7 billion year existence), the expansion has been speeding up. So we need new physics, labeled ‘dark energy’, to explain this apparent disparity.”

“There are two broad possibilities for what dark energy is. Either it is a strange, new type of matter that is not attracted by gravity, or Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity needs to be modified on cosmic scales. Part of my research is to try and understand the origins of dark energy and how we can use current and future astrophysical surveys to measure its properties.”

Bean studied and compared the data collected from the recent Cosmic Evolution Survey, or COSMOS, which involved a number of telescopes both on the ground and in Earth orbit, including the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) that examined over two million galaxies, along with distant exploding supernovae and the relic csomic background radiation created just 400,000 years after the formation of our Universe in the Big Bang.

“My paper uses a combination of large scale structure and distance measurements to test gravity on cosmic scales to see whether it is consistent with GR or not,” declares Bean. “What I find is that there is a better fit to one time slice in the weak lensing data from the COSMOS survey using the HST, between 3 and 7 billion years after the Big Bang, if gravity is allowed to deviate from GR.” She suggests that the results could “indicate that dark energy is related to a modification to gravity rather than a new type of matter.”

Casey Kazan

Sources:

Rachael Bean: A weak lensing detection of a deviation from General Relativity on cosmic scales

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/

Comments

[Simon]

If the known universe is expanding; towards where? Shivers...

[GK]

I dont really follow with physics, haven't really studied it that much. But you would think that as matter moves further away from each other, the gravitational effect would become weaker - which would explain the speeding up of the universe growing.

[Dredd]

Beware of the insurrection and hurry with a surge to put them in their places lest we be overrun like the barbarians did Rome once upon a time.

[o-dish-es]

Dark matter? Dark energy? How about just an unrecognized new force?

[Peter Fred]

With this recent failure R. Bean's result to support General Relativity, the failure to detect dark matter in the laboratory after more than 16 years of looking for it and the incomprehensibility of the dark energy concept, maybe its time to stop experimenting and start thinking about a decent viable paradigm shift that can straighten out all this intellectual gobbledygook that is presented to us?

Like:

It can be argued that the idea that mass mediates the gravitational force is as unphysical as the 1000 year-
old idea held by the Scholastics that the earth posses some mysterious property that enables it to make all the objects in the sky revolve around it in a 24 hour period.

The Stephan-Boltzmann law says that if mass has a temperature it has heat leaving it in the form of radiation. Could it be that it is not the mass that mediates the gravitational force but the heat leaving it in the form of radiation that all along has mediated the gravitational force?

In my paper I have five experiments that show the weight of test mass will either increase or decrease by as
much as 2-9% depending on the direction with which the heat transfers itself through the test mass. It is entitled "Is the sun's warmth gravitationally attractive?" and it can be found here: http://vixra.org/abs/0907.0018

[claudio]

The idea that there are some 'universal constants' might appear somewhat obsolescent nowadays.

At the end of the day we do NOT know exactly if the mass- gravity force relation is a constant thru the universe.

I would not have much surprise if one day 'discontinuities' in the space - time laws web will be found somewhere.

Second point is the comment of Peter Fred : I am not a scientist but I alsways understood that IF there is a mediation particle associated to the gravity force , that should be the never found 'GAVITON' and Not the generic mass.

Theories about the heat influencing the gravity appear interesting however.

Regards to the dark anergy- matter basic researches

[o-dish-es]

What about the power of consciousness as it splits from the one male and the one female into the very many? Almost certainly that would require huge forces. I tend to like this theory very much as it could finally legitimize the need to explore whether life itself should or should not be excluded from physics. We really have no good theories for the power of life.