Dark energy, one of the most misunderstood concepts in astronomy, has baffled the minds of the world’s greatest minds for decades.
Dark energy is a catchall term scientists use to describe anything that causes the universe to expand rapidly over time.
But we don’t know exactly what dark energy is – and no one has ever directly observed or measured it.
But now, scientists from the University of Canterbury, new Zealandhe has said that he will finally solve the problem with a powerful new theory.
In a surprising new paper, they claim that dark energy is not real.
Instead, the new evidence supports the ‘timescape’ model of the universe’s growth, which does not require dark energy.
This ‘timescape model’ also takes into account the fact that time itself moves slower when there is gravity, such as around the Earth.
Lead author Professor David Wiltshire said: ‘Our findings show that we do not need dark energy to explain why the Universe appears to be expanding rapidly.’
Scientists say they have solved the mystery of dark energy by showing why we don’t need this strange force to explain the universe. This discovery was based on observations of supernovae in galaxies such as NGC 5643 (pictured).
This research has reached the moment of uncertainty is growing around the ‘standard model’ of the universe.
Most scientists think that the universe is made up of ordinary matter, as well as ‘dark matter’ (a type of matter that cannot be seen or detected) and an external constant called darkness.
Dark energy is thought to be a weak anti-gravity force that acts in a vacuum and makes up two-thirds of the total energy of the universe.
This theory works well to explain the microwave background left by the Big Bang and the distribution of galaxies in the universe.
However, in 1998, the Hubble Space Telescope measured the distance between distant galaxies and found that the universe was. it is growing much faster than the theory should predict.
This issue has come to the fore as new measurements made by a The James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed that the gaps between galaxies are expanding 8 to 12 percent faster than expected.
In their new paper, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society LettersProfessor Wiltshire and his colleagues have also observed light from distant ‘supernovae’ – stars that have exploded at the end of their lives.
In the cosmological model, the universe consists of matter, dark matter, and a weak anti-gravity force called dark matter. These together explain how the universe evolved from the Big Bang to what we see today
Although darkness is a type of thing that cannot be seen or seen, dark energy is a type of energy that does not interact well with matter. Scientists say that these two elements can make up about 96 percent of the universe. Drawing, NASA’s map of dark matter in the universe
The facts of the Hubble Space Telescope (photo) show that the universe is expanding faster than people say. This is not consistent with the idea that dark energy leads to constant growth. In the image, the galaxy cluster as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope
They chose to look at a type of supernovae called ‘type Ia’ supernovae which are caused by white death (in which stars have run out of their nuclear fuel).
Because the light we see comes from the distance between the light and the observer, scientists can measure the brightness of a Type Ia supernova to determine its height.
By comparing that data with the speed of the object moving away from Earth, scientists can determine how much the universe has evolved since the supernova occurred.
By looking at this data, the researchers tried to see which of the environmental models would best explain their findings.
What they found was that the periodic theory not only matched the data but also gave good predictions of how supernovae should appear.
Professor Wiltshire said: ‘This research provides strong evidence that will solve some of the most important questions about the properties of our growing universe.
‘With new data, a major environmental mystery could be solved by the end of the decade.’
This theory eliminates the importance of dark matter by challenging one of the traditional theories of nature.
Scientists argue that time moves faster in interstellar space. Even if they expand slowly, these scrolls will expand faster than the populated areas of the universe, which would make people think that the universe is moving faster. Imaging, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s map of the universe
The researchers found that their ‘timescape’ model was good at predicting the type of supernova in galaxies like NGC 1015 (pictured). This suggests that we do not need dark energy to explain why the universe is expanding so rapidly
It may be interesting to us humans, but the difference in gravity changes the way time flows in the universe.
The timescape model shows that a clock placed on Earth can move 35 percent slower than one thrown in the cosmic voids between the great clusters of galaxies.
When the clock here on Earth completes a 24-hour cycle from midnight to midnight, the clock in space would already show 08:00 am the next day.
In terms of cosmic time, this means that billions of years have already passed between galaxies than in the center of the Milky Way.
So, even if the universe continues to expand as it did after the Big Bang, the gaps between the galaxies would be much larger than expected – creating the illusion of speed.
Professor Wiltshire adds: ‘We now have so much knowledge that in the 21st century we can answer the question – how and why does the simple law of growth evolve from complexity?’
The authors say that soon science will have the opportunity to prove that this model is correct.
The European Space Agency’s Euclid satellite, which was launched in July 203, has the ability to distinguish between the uniform growth of the Friedman equation and the other time method.
Although this will require more than 1,000 high-resolution observations, it puts scientists a long way from solving one of the greatest mysteries of the universe.
WHAT IS DARK POWER?
Dark energy is a term that physicists use to describe the mysterious ‘thing’ that is causing strange things to happen in the universe.
The universe is made up of many things and gravity pulls all things together.
Then came 1998 with the Hubble Space Telescope’s observation of the most distant stars which showed that, long ago, the universe was expanding more slowly than it is today.
The universe is still expanding, but it’s expanding faster and faster as time goes on,’ Dr Kathy Romer, a scientist at the Dark Energy Survey told MailOnline, as this NASA image shows.
So the expansion of the universe has not been slowed down by gravity, as everyone thought, it has been accelerating.
No one expected this, no one knew how to explain it. But something was causing it.
‘The universe isn’t just expanding, it’s expanding faster and faster as time goes on,’ Dr Kathy Romer, scientist at the Dark Energy Survey told MailOnline.
‘What we can expect is that the increase will be slower and slower as time goes on, because it’s been about 14 billion years since the Big Bang.’
