Mike Helland
Philosopher
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2020
- Messages
- 5,184

Dark energy 'doesn't exist' so can't be pushing 'lumpy' universe apart, physicists say
One of the biggest mysteries in science—dark energy—doesn't actually exist, according to researchers looking to solve the riddle of how the universe is expanding.
Both the Hubble tension and the surprises revealed by DESI are difficult to resolve in models which use a simplified 100-year-old cosmic expansion law—Friedmann's equation.
This assumes that, on average, the universe expands uniformly—as if all cosmic structures could be put through a blender to make a featureless soup, with no complicating structure. However, the present universe actually contains a complex cosmic web of galaxy clusters in sheets and filaments that surround and thread vast empty voids.
When the proposed timescape model was last tested in 2017, the analysis suggested it was only a slightly better fit than the ΛCDM as an explanation for cosmic expansion, so the Christchurch team worked closely with the Pantheon+ collaboration team who had painstakingly produced a catalog of 1,535 distinct supernovae.
They say the new data now provides "very strong evidence" for timescape. It may also point to a compelling resolution of the Hubble tension and other anomalies related to the expansion of the universe.