Comments on: ‘Arrested development’ at work in the Universe

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:06:07 +0000

Cormac – no I didn’t, but WordPress automatically adds links to similar stories from other blogs. I imagine that’s what happened.

By: cormac

cormac — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:54:02 +0000

Hi Sarah, good post. Did you link with me? It’s showing up on my blog (http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com) but I don’t see the link. Good stuff anyway..

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:40:16 +0000

Yes I know what you mean, it’s hard to get your head round. In its simplest form you could consider dark energy to be a mathematical construct that explains the discrepancy in omega_matter, the matter density parameter, found from measurements of galaxy and cluster dynamics on the one hand, and supernova distance scales on the other. I don’t think you should think of it as “stuff”, certainly not as “matter” in any way that is familiar to us. It’s an energy phenomenon that we can’t explain from our current models of cosmology and particle physics. But much is happening in the realms where these two fields meet, such as the (now slightly delayed) advent of the LHC and recent results from dark matter experiments. I can’t wait

By: freidenker85

freidenker85 — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:49:50 +0000

Amazing! I used to think that Dark Energy is just some excuse for “I don’t know what’s causing the anomaly in the standard model”, and I’m delighted to read (also popped into CV to check some more) about evidence for Dark Energy. What I don’t realize is what exactly Dark Energy IS. The way it’s presented here and on CV makes it as if it’s a black box that has predictable behavior, but what black box? It’s “some mass, somewhere”? It obviously behaves like mass, and the observations confirm this, but do we know where is it? Is there any alternative explanation as to what can originate this amount of energy? Why “Dark Energy”, anyway?