Astronomy Professor Challenges Study Suggesting Dark Energy Might Not Exist (phys.org) 81
Long-time Slashdot reader thomst quotes Phys.org:
The most direct and strongest evidence for the accelerating universe with dark energy is provided by the distance measurements using type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) for the galaxies at high redshift. This result is based on the assumption that the corrected luminosity of SN Ia through the empirical standardization would not evolve with redshift.
New observations and analysis made by a team of astronomers at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), together with their collaborators at Lyon University and KASI, show, however, that this key assumption is most likely in error.
The team has performed very high-quality (signal-to-noise ratio ~175) spectroscopic observations to cover most of the reported nearby early-type host galaxies of SN Ia, from which they obtained the most direct and reliable measurements of population ages for these host galaxies. They find a significant correlation between SN luminosity and stellar population age at a 99.5 percent confidence level. As such, this is the most direct and stringent test ever made for the luminosity evolution of SN Ia. Since SN progenitors in host galaxies are getting younger with redshift (look-back time), this result inevitably indicates a serious systematic bias with redshift in SN cosmology.
Taken at face values, the luminosity evolution of SN is significant enough to question the very existence of dark energy. When the luminosity evolution of SN is properly taken into account, the team found that the evidence for the existence of dark energy simply goes away.
LiveScience reports that this new claim is already being disputed, citing Adam Riess, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.
He points out inconsistencies with the figures from the new team -- and that fact that their findings are "at odds with what's been seen with larger samples of supernovae."
New observations and analysis made by a team of astronomers at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), together with their collaborators at Lyon University and KASI, show, however, that this key assumption is most likely in error.
The team has performed very high-quality (signal-to-noise ratio ~175) spectroscopic observations to cover most of the reported nearby early-type host galaxies of SN Ia, from which they obtained the most direct and reliable measurements of population ages for these host galaxies. They find a significant correlation between SN luminosity and stellar population age at a 99.5 percent confidence level. As such, this is the most direct and stringent test ever made for the luminosity evolution of SN Ia. Since SN progenitors in host galaxies are getting younger with redshift (look-back time), this result inevitably indicates a serious systematic bias with redshift in SN cosmology.
Taken at face values, the luminosity evolution of SN is significant enough to question the very existence of dark energy. When the luminosity evolution of SN is properly taken into account, the team found that the evidence for the existence of dark energy simply goes away.
LiveScience reports that this new claim is already being disputed, citing Adam Riess, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.
He points out inconsistencies with the figures from the new team -- and that fact that their findings are "at odds with what's been seen with larger samples of supernovae."
Perhaps... (Score:1)
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I propose we call it Schrodingenergy.
More data needs explaining (Score:2)
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Re:Scientific Consensus (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scientific Consensus (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod the above up!
Having said that, it seems humans are investing a lot on Dark Matter and Dark Energy research.
https://www.popsci.com/article... [popsci.com]
You insensitive clod! (Score:2)
I have one Bitcoin riding on the outcome of this.
Nice rose-colored glasses you got there. (Score:3)
Unfortunately, in real life, scientists are humans, and just as prone to put their egos above science, have a pet theory, and attach their egos to it.
How Feynman and his diagrams were treated at first, by other (even big name) scientists, should leave no doubt about this.
In any case, you are engaging in an "argument from authority" fallacy. An opposite of science.
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I had another comment written for someone else here but I never hit submit. It's better suited for you since you think I worship science or something:
Scientists have to be bold enough to make a claim, and humble... or stubborn... enough to survive being proven wrong by other scientists. I'm sure the first two are a rare combination. For the stubborn ones... at least they're mortal. They make their contribution then they die, and with them dies that "spooky action" mockery directed at those taking their plac
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You are confusing argumentum ad magisterium with argumentum ad verecundium
To rely on the experts in a field when there is no reliable contrary evidence is not a fallacy.
When you rely on a paid Kochsucker you are involved in fallacy.
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God's not involved
In what religion are gods *not* involved in cosmology? Surely not in the major ones.
Scientific Consensus (Score:2)
It's hard to find a better example than Cosmology of a field where the scientific consensus has such little value. Perhaps Climate Science?
\ducks for cover, runs and hides under a rock
Economics.
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It's hard to find a better example than Cosmology of a field where the scientific consensus has such little value. Perhaps Climate Science?
\ducks for cover, runs and hides under a rock
Economics.
Scientific consensus.
I'd hope I never say 'does has'. (Score:2)
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Scientific consensus.
Exactly, that has no value at all in economics!
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Transgender psychology?
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Re:Scientific Consensus (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the big problem with psychology is that the researchers are so desperate to be viewed as legitimate scientists that they have an obsession with quantification even when trying to investigate things that aren't quantifiable. In psychological studies you will often find a disconnect between an experiment and its conclusion and you'll also see a lot of researchers who fish for statistical significance (and they often don't have a firm understanding of statistics while trying to employ some pretty complicated statistical models). It's not that psychology is an "invalid" branch of science—it's just plagued by bad researchers. Similarly, it's not like biology was an invalid science pre-Darwin, but there were a lot of speculative crackpots.
When it comes to economics, the big problem is dogmatism. People tend to enter the field with the goal being to justify their political beliefs. The other problem is that the economy is not exactly something we want to experiment with. It wasn't until the 2008 recession that we could definitively say that the supply-side people were definitely wrong, and even with the overwhelming empirical evidence demonstrating the Keynesian system there are still people who argue against it. Finally, another big problem in economics are the equations. There are so many assumptions built into the equations and they have to be implemented before we can find out whether those assumptions are correct. It's not that it's an "invalid" science, it's just that because we can't just set up a bunch of experiments, we have to wait for real world conditions to observe.
To sum it up: Both are valid sciences and neither is bad—but both fields are plagued by bad researchers and are pretty challenging.
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> the Keynesian system there are still people who argue against it
Agreed.
> It wasn't until the 2008 recession that we could definitively say that the supply-side people were definitely wrong
Your argument seems to be this -
Because:
we discovered in 2008 that having the government artificially inflate demand (and supply) for mortgages, in order to make it profitable to loan money to people who couldn't pay it back didn't turn out well
Therefore:
We should have the artificially inflate demand (Keynesian ec
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or if the government printed up some money and sent it to everyone.
That's exactly what the government did in Australia. And they avoided a recession because of it.
You sure you're one of the reasonable and intelligent people you're talking about?
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Well, not quite. The Rudd administration started by cutting the budget to the lowest government spending in the history of Australia, as % GDP. In 2008, they *cut taxes*. Lower government spending followed by reduced taxes is what Australia did.
If you don't know the difference between cutting taxes vs taxing savings by inflating it away by printing money, you REALLY don't want to be part of this conversation, and be saying somebody else eoesn't understand basic economics. Seriously, you're only going
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You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
Look up 'stimulus package' and go from there.
Let me know if you have finished trolling and want a serious discussion.
To stay you off (Score:2)
Btw, to stay you off, if you want to know what happens when a government tries to get out of a jam by printing money and handing it out willy-nilly, Google "inflationary spiral". Several governments have tried it. It always turns out the same.
* see PURPLE and argue if it's red vs blue (Score:2)
Friggin autocorrect. That was supposed to be:
People see purple and argue whether it's more red or more blue.
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I think a key part of Keynesian economics that is overlooked—especially by politicians—is to pump the breaks when the economy starts to get overheated. When a Keynesian would have increased interest rates, Greenspan kept them low. I think we're playing with fire with that same thing now and have been since the last couple years of the Obama administration, but doing things like raising interest rates and taxes are the parts of Keynesian economics that politicians always want someone else to do.
I
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So in summary:
In your view, the housing bubble brought on by trying to stimulate consumer demand for houses by subsidized financing is a was a *supply* side intervention? That's not entirely unreasonable. I see house prices went nuts when the government tried to increase the DEMAND for houses.
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Btw Greenspan himself agrees with you on what you said about his error. He has said he missed predicting how big the housing bubble would get, how fast, and he wishes he had acted much sooner.
What he didn't say, but I suspect, is he missed the fact that after the government required lending to unqualified buyers and provided some incentives, the banks found a way to make it PROFITABLE with those government incentives. Once they had a way to make it profitable, they did a LOT of it. He suspect he missed pr
Americans and their old view of psychology. (Score:2)
You're probably still thinking psychology is Freud.
Psychology hasn't been Freud and such since the 90s. Maybe In the US, I don't know.
But psychology has been put on a hard scientific basis of neurology in the last 20-30 years.
Funnily, every single one of Freud's views has been disproven in the process. You are more likely to do good psychology by doing the opposite. (A running joke around here. ^^)
I only know psychology in the US from TV shows, and it looks like all you know is therapists that seem to have
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Neurology is akin to psychiatry, not psychology (and if you think psychology is crap and that we should focus on neurology instead then that seems consistent with what the guy you were replying to was saying).
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Really? I guess we are all a'twitter with the controversy over whether gravity exists, or star evolution, or the Universe expanding. Picking some arcane issue and painting the entire science of it is worthy of Creationism. And throwing in the blurb on Climate Science, maybe you'd do better to link it to abortion and Darwin's evolution.
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Re:Dark Energy does not exist. (Score:5, Informative)
If Dark Energy existed everywhere, then it would exist here on earth. It does not. Therefore it exists nowhere.
If the estimated mass of dark energy was uniformly distributed in space, there would be about 0.3 yoctograms per cubic meter.
A yoctogram is about half the mass of a proton.
This is far below the sensitivity of current technology. Whether or not dark energy exists "here on earth" is an open question.
Re:Dark Energy does not exist. (Score:5, Interesting)
How many yoctograms in a telegram?
If the telegram was printed on a standard sheet of paper, it would have a mass of roughly 4e24 yoctograms.
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If Dark Energy existed everywhere, then it would exist here on earth.
Yes.
It does not.
How did you measure that?
Therefore it exists nowhere.
About that you have no idea whatsoever.
Re: Dark Energy does not exist. (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps, but dark matter makes up the bulk of the matter in the universe, and there is basically not a drop in the solar system or its vicinity.
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Whether or not dark energy exists "here on earth" is an open question.
Nope, it was discovered back before 1994, in The Best of the Journal of Irreproducable Results [amazon.co.uk]
Excerpt: See how to plunge a room into darkness with a 'dark bulb', instantly removing all light and enabling a person to sleep at any time of the day at the flip of a switch. DANGER: Don't turn on outside during the day!
What do you THINK powers a Dark Bulb?
Really? Unlike the theologians honestly debating how many angles can dance on the head of a pin, or scientists debating in public about extremely com
Re:Dark Energy does not exist. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's when "The Science Is All Settled" that I begin to worry. Remember: Bumblebees can't fly, humans can't live thru the extreme acceleration of over 10 miles per hour on a train, and objects all fall at different speeds due to their weight. It's all proven and settled so it's got to be right -- Expose, Deny, and Cancel all unbelievers for their heresy since they'll never, ever change.
The easiest arguments to win is the ones where you make up your opposition's position from whole cloth, and then refute it.
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If Dark Energy existed everywhere, then it would exist here on earth. It does not. Therefore it exists nowhere.
If if if if... Except it doesn't, and that is the very evidence proving you are so wrong.
Dark matter is only supposed to collect under certain conditions. This is exactly why it isn't an error in the math.
Where it should be, we need to adjust the math to account for it so the calculations turn out right.
Where it should NOT be, the math is already correct.
If we do as you suggest and "change the math", you can manually adjust things so the calculations are correct where there should be dark matter, but you
You do not exist in my room. (Score:2)
Therefore, you don't exist.
Genius!
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Who watches the experts? (Score:1)
They do know about "argument from authority"! (Score:2)
The fallacy.
You, on the other hand, a
seem to have the education in basic logic, of a voter at the cracker barrel.
Aether (Score:4, Interesting)
Dark energy sounds like what Isaac Newton called aether.
Re: Aether (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, please name those similarities. (Score:2)
You obviously haven't thought beyond just stating that.
And for the record: Yes, Dark energy is like aether. In that is is hogwash.
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Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma.
you're welcome.
Re: Aether (Score:2)
Sure, hey I have some homeopathic crystal energy magnets for sale, interested?
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And don't mention that the idea of the Four Elements is suspiciously similar to States of Matter.
lolwut.
We can't have people thinking that the Ancients weren't complete fools.
One in general doesnt have to be a complete fool to be wrong about something.
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Dark energy sounds like what Isaac Newton called aether.
Yes, insofar as it was defined by the shape of what it was NOT, and what it explained. And it might just turn out to be an error in our equations, just like aether. But that doesn't mean it's the same thing.
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Earth --> Solid
Water --> Liquid
Air --> Gas
Fire --> Plasma
Nothing to see here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pun intended. This is how science works, folks. People propose theorems, gather data. Data might suggest theorems are wrong, inspiring some to defend the theorems, others to question them. More data is gathered, theorems are upheld, modfiied or changed. Rinse, repeat.
Of course, throughout this drawn-out process, hungry science journalists are eager to proclaim "victory" or "defeat" for one "side" or another at every pronouncement. Why must we make everything into a football game?
Re:Nothing to see here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why must we make everything into a football game?
Because football is the only thing that gets full funding at US Universities?
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Ouch. True though! I recall years ago visiting a state university's physics department. A Beowulf cluster of very old computers with AC units in the windows to cool the room was their computational power. The wood floors bubbled up so much you could trip. They lamented about lack of funds for various promising experiments. On my way out I noticed an observatory just outside the building and asked about it. They said it works perfectly fine but they can't use it as the university insists the next-door multi-
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Why must we make everything into a football game?
For the clicks.
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I don't get why there is supposedly so much drama around dark matter. Yes, it is a hypothesis that fits a lot of data, and in science that's considered promising, but the name itself is telling us that it's still tentative. Maybe we will be adding to an existing hypothesis, making minor changes, or starting over from scratch. More information means we're getting closer to the answer.
Every real scientist is happy when that happens.
Football game? WAR! (Score:2)
I noticed that Americans always think in war and in money. Their sayings have a very high rate of those two. Any more, and they'd be Klingons and Ferengi, packed into Overlooker bodies.
Two teams observed Supernova type 1a (Score:5, Informative)
There were two separate teams that observed Supernovae type 1a during the 1990s, and both found the same results: the universe is expanding and that expansion is accelerating.
They are the Supernova Cosmology Project [lbl.gov] and High Z Supernova Search [harvard.edu], and they were competing for the same thing: finding out if the universe expansion is constant or slowing down. To their surprise, both teams found that the expansion is accelerating.
Both teams got the Nobel Prize. Adam Reiss, who is quoted in the summary is one of the laureates, and he is challenges their conclusions.
So, proving that this is wrong is the extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
We have to wait and see if their results/analysis holds up. So far, it is not.
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I hope they didn't base their calculations on the assumption that some universal constant turns out to be not so constant. Light emitted by distant (older) supernovas doesn't adhere to exactly the same laws of physics that the newer ones do, for example.
Re:Two teams observed Supernova type 1a (Score:4, Insightful)
kbahey argues:
There were two separate teams that observed Supernovae type 1a during the 1990s, and both found the same results: the universe is expanding and that expansion is accelerating.
They are the Supernova Cosmology Project [lbl.gov] and High Z Supernova Search [harvard.edu], and they were competing for the same thing: finding out if the universe expansion is constant or slowing down. To their surprise, both teams found that the expansion is accelerating.
Both teams got the Nobel Prize. Adam Reiss, who is quoted in the summary is one of the laureates, and he is challenges their conclusions.
So, proving that this is wrong is the extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
We have to wait and see if their results/analysis holds up. So far, it is not.
I'm sorry, but you have the scientific method exactly backwards.
Before I get into that subject, let me state for the record that, despite the fact that I submitted the story, I have no dog in this fight. I'm not an astronomer or cosmologist, and I don't have the qualifications to judge the evidence for and against either this study or those you cited. I simply found the press release on phys.org, followed it back to the original PR, then followed the link in that original to the pre-press copy of the full study (which is in TFS, and available to anyone who cares to read it, and examine the evidence and arguments it presents). I submitted TFS to /. because I thought it represented actual "news for nerds," rather than the clickbait BS that so often gets upvoted to the front page, and not because I wanted to argue the case for either model.
Having said that, the basis of the scientific method is informed skepticism. It is nigh impossible ever to "prove" a hypothesis. That's why the seemingly most solid of them eventually achieve promotion (via professional consensus) to the status of formal "theories." That term alone ought to tell you that research scientists realize that newly-discovered evidence can invalidate any theory at any time, no matter how useful (in "we can base things like engineering projects on this" terms) or widely-accepted it might have been. That's why experiments are designed to disprove hypotheses: if they fail to do so, that's evidence that the hypothesis being tested may be correct. The more that different kinds of (reliably reproductible!) experiments fail to disprove it, the more the accumulated weight of evidence makes it likely that the hypothesis in question is solid, and deserves to be promoted to the status of a theory.
That the rate of expansion of our Universe is increasing is itself an extraordinary claim, because the dark energy hypothesis is . Therefore, it's absolutely in keeping with the scientific method that its validity continue to be subjected to rigorous testing. That there is an existing body of seemingly-solid evidence that it is valid does not, however, make it in any way sacrosanct or exempt it from new evidence that tends to disprove it. That's how science works.
The reputation of the Nobel laureate who's questioning the validity of this study is on the line, here. If it turns out to be solid, the whole basis of his award disappears. That inevitably means that, as distinguished, widely-admired, and scrupulously-professional as he unquestionably is, he is not a disinterested party on this subject. I wouldn't begin to suggest that he's in any way unqualified to argue against its validity - and I would strongly criticize anyone else who did so - but I am saying that formally attempting to debunk it is most appropriately a task that should be performed by third parties with the necessary professional qualifications, who have no ownership stake in the outcome. And the more of 'em there are, the less doubt about its validity is likely to exist afterward.
As I understand Dr
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Here is what I am saying, in case it was not clear:
a) You have two teams doing multi-year research and finding the same thing.
b) Then another team says they got it wrong.
c) One member of the first two teams claims he found holes in the third team's work.
As a result:
d) More research is needed to gather evidence to confirm (or refute) the third team's findings. ...
e) Until then, the original research stands
One doesn't invalidate gravity, heliocentrism or germ theory by what is claimed in one paper.
See ... tha
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I submitted TFS to /. because I thought it represented actual "news for nerds," rather than the clickbait BS that so often gets upvoted to the front page,
Thankyou for that. It's good to have interesting nerdy stuff here.
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Absolutely agree.
I was just rebuking the sensationalist claim that the article claiming that the original research is outlandish and requires additional evidence before it is accepted, while the new research is, a
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So, proving that this is wrong is the extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
Why was proving their assumptions about red shift and luminosity not an extraordinary claim. Perhaps that was the extraordinary claim and nobody noticed since it was just an assumption at the start, an not a point in general. Once you go back and extraordinarily prove the red shift assumptions you may find out they don't hold.
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Because the work of the two supernova teams at several separate research institutions was
Don't worry. It'll be ok. (Score:1)
and whatever you do, do NOT consider Halton Arp's evidence, read his book "Seeing Red" or research about "tired light" and the many, many theories that say redshift can have meanings other than velocity/expansion. Such ideas
INB4 "somethigsomething tin foil hat" (Score:2)
No worse conspiracy theorists than those who see conspiracy theorists everywhere.
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:eyeroll:
and whatever you do, do NOT consider Halton Arp's evidence, read his book "Seeing Red" or research about "tired light" and the many, many theories that say redshift can have meanings other than velocity/expansion.
Yeah but all you're saying is "maybe there's another explanation woooo wooooo". Actual models make predictions. Tired light is a possible explanation which could match the predicted redshift. However to make it work it also predicts scattering which isn't observed, thereby the hypothesis i
The Church Of Dark scoffs at its exposure. (Score:2)
Us? Wrong? Unpossible! We always open to the possibility of being wrong! We'd never put ego above science!
Richard Feynman: I used to be a joke to you. Remember?
(Einstein and all the greats of science laughed at his diagrams, at that famous meeting, back then.)
Missing item (Score:2)
The cosmologists are looking at the data as if the universe is all o
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