Einstein’s Biggest Blunder That Wasn’t:
“‘The genius of Albert Einstein, who added a ‘cosmological constant’ to his equation for the expansion of the universe but later retracted it, may be vindicated by new research. The enigmatic ‘dark energy’ that drives the acceleration of the Universe behaves just like Einstein’s famed cosmological constant, according to the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). Their observations reveal that the dark energy behaves like Einstein’s cosmological constant to a precision of 10%.'”
We cover this material in both the courses that I teach at Lehigh. It’s a developing field and every couple of months I have to go back and get caught up with the latest ideas. Looks like people are starting to narrow in on just what is happening.
All of this presumes that dark energy and dark matter both exist in massive quantities. There’s a certain Ptolomaic epicycle vibe going on in both ideas – but if the theories predictions are verifying then I guess we’ll just have to get our minds wrapped around the complexity.
So, does this mean that the String Theories that include both Dark Matter and Dark Energy are now to be taken more seriously?
(Via Slashdot: Science.)
