Posted 10.04.2011 at 12:00 pm
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Composite Image of the Tycho Supernova Remnant
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO, Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: MPIA, Calar Alto, O.Krause et al.
For today’s Nobel Laureates in Physics, it was pretty much a matter of when, not if. When the three winners and their teams announced back in 1998 that the universe was not only expanding, but accelerating, they shook cosmology to its core: Their findings said the universe would end not with a bang, but a whimper.
And the question of why — the mysterious force of dark energy, which accounts for about three-fourths of the mass-energy of the entire universe — is one of the greatest questions in modern science.
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Science, Rebecca Boyle, acceleration, cosmology, dark energy, nobel prize, nobel prize in physics, physics, universal expansionBut measurements showed that these standard candles were not properly bright; they were fading. Something was going on, and it could easily have been blamed on the technology, or maybe the calculations. But both teams — the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search Team — found the same thing. The data showed that these standard candles were moving away at an accelerating rate.
This was an astounding finding. Everyone knew since Edwin Hubble that the universe was being flung apart as a consequence of the Big Bang, some 13.7 billion years ago. But for it to be speeding up? It meant something else was at work, a force much more mysterious and bizarre than anyone had thought. No one knows what this force is, but after another decade of calculations, physicists know it makes up about 74 percent of the universe. “We call it dark energy to express ignorance,” Perlmutter said in a lecture I attended in 2008.
The work is exciting by itself, but these physicists are also some of the best young science evangelists you'll meet. Perlmutter, 52, is an animated and enthusiastic speaker, the exact type of person you want explaining phrases like “baryonic oscillation” and the Big Fade. He has continued his dark energy research as a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He wants a supernova observatory, the Supernova Acceleration Probe (SNAP), to be built like a Works Progress Administration project: “Everybody talks about dark energy, but nobody does anything about it,” he said back then.
Riess, who is just 41, is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He's also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant and numerous other honors for his cosmology work.
Schmidt, who is 44 and works at the Australian National University, conducted some of the calculations that verified Riess' findings.
I still have Perlmutter's business card on my desk, because that talk is one of the reasons I wanted to write about things like redshift and the cosmological constant. This is fundamental stuff — the everlasting nature and the future of all things, still enigmatic and mysterious but almost, because of Perlmutter, Riess and Schmidt, truly knowable.
“The findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science,” the Nobel Assembly wrote. “And everything is possible again.”
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congratulations, i just hope dark energy will eventually be testable enough to be proven or not, cheers
@drchuck1
I believe based on principles of particle physics concerning strong and weak forces, the alleged behavior of the universe, and the observed behavior of the universe is what constitutes the existence of dark energy.
So we know it exist because it's accelerating the expansion of the universe. What we don't know, is exactly what "dark energy" really is.
Dun dunn DUUUNNNN!!
"The person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew, the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago everybody knew, the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago you knew we were alone in this universe. Imagine what you know, tomorrow."
--Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K, Men In Black, 1997
Pheonix1012 - That is not necessarily true. Something like it has to exist if the standard model as it is set now is correct. However, where there have been results of tests that lead us to this believe that this is how things work we are not for certain.
Currently we're in a "Our tests should validate our calculations" rather than "Our calculations verify our understanding of the observation of our tests" However, there are ambitious projects currently going that will test key parts of this theory. Finding the bosin particals will go a long way to this. However, if it is not found where they think it should be the entire model will be called into question. Including dark matter.
@Llowelme
I think I get what you're saying on about the standard model and how it backs the existence of both dark matter and dark energy.
My question is, how much of the standard model will come into question if the Higgs Boson particle is not found where scientists think it should be?
"The person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew, the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago everybody knew, the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago you k
thank you for your comments, i purposely kept my previous comment simple, i agree with what you are both saying, naming dark energy does not infer we know what it is (“We call it dark energy to express ignorance,”), until we can test it and understand what dark energy is made up of and how it works, it will continue to be a mysterious force that is believed to be causing the expansion of the universe and will remain a mystery and possibly unsolvable, cheers
It’s so much fun to read about the cosmos and it reads like science fiction and the most fun part its reality. This makes it really exciting and fascinating!!!!
Maybe once we understand gravity we will also come to understand anti-gravity.
i hope we find out one day to manipulate dark energy to use as a form of travel. might get us to light speed.
_________________
The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.
- Abu-al-Ala al-Marri
You might be interested in the this website:
Blacklightpower.com
Dr. Randell Mills claims that he has unified the forces of nature and found also a fifth force. He has done this with only: Maxwell's equations, Newton's laws of motion and Einstein's theory of relativity - no quantum mechanics needed. And, it explains everything from the micro to the macro.
By the way, Dr. Mills predicted in 1995 that the expansion of the universe would be accelerating. He also predicts that dark matter is a new form of hydrogen called a hydrino hydride.
He also has 7 licensed power producing plants that run off the heat produced when hydrogen is converted to this new form. This is clean energy and gives off 200 times the energy produced by simply burning the hydrogen.
Our entire universe exists in the event horizon of a blackhole, no matter where we look, we only see the blackhole.
@thumbpick
thanks for the informative link.
_________________
The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.
- Abu-al-Ala al-Marri
@JediMindset
You're welcome!
I've been reading the information on this site for about two years and I must say, it seems to be legit!
As Dr Mills states in one of his videos: "this will be as revolutionary as the discovery of fire." I'm sure this is an understatement.
I would like to hear from some others regarding this site.
@thumbpick
this will change our lives the same way the internet did.
_________________
The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.
- Abu-al-Ala al-Marri
In the heavens above, our dear Lord is busy making
a cosmos rainbow colored Jiffy Popcorn.
How pretty, tasty and yummy! ;)
-
The Sixth Sense - New GROUNDBREAKING Book in 2012! The Sixth Sense leads to Enlightenment
DNA Healing Code - Hardwired in ALL Humans
As an example of what I mean by “Groundbreaking” info that can be found in the 2012 release of my new book on The Sixth Sense (not yet titled )…..
There is a sequence required to communicate with Infinite Intelligence – to gain insight and/or much more complicated yet achievable, HolisticDNA Energy Healing. The sequence required is on multiple simultaneous levels, not just “step by step” like an instruction manual for assembling a piece of furniture.
The “Key” sequence has to do with applying known facts, beliefs, emotions and faith (not religious) – if not applied exactly as detailed, the Sixth Sense will remain dormant, and not be “activated”. As an example:
fact --
fact --
fact --
belief --
fact --
in theory --
belief --
fact --
belief --
Faith --
fact --
fact --
fact --
Faith
you won’t find this in any existing text, which is why The Sixth Sense is so rarely utilized and hard to confirm. This will allow the Scientific Community to experiment and confirm my claims — remember, just a few decades ago, it was impossible to have a Man walk on the moon. Time for the next impossible to be challenged and confirmed — real
Steve Meyer HolisticDNA