The acceleration of the expansion of the universe confirmed

By Michael on January 31, 2008 at 2:57 am | In Blog Posts, cosmology | 4 Comments

Large-scale structures

Via Cosmic Log:

Ten years after supernovae provided the first evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, a survey of more than 10,000 galaxies has provided independent confirmation that the cosmic speed-up factor known as dark energy is for real.

Cosmic Log provides a very nice analysis of this press release from the European Organisation for Astronomical Research (ESO).

So it seems that the expansion of the universe is indeed accelerating. This means that cosmological constant is non-zero and dark energy, or some alternate explanation, is necessary to explain the observations. Our cosmology seems to be consistent and correct in terms of what is happening, we just don’t know why it is happening.

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  1. [...] of the most significant scientific findings in the last decade was that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The acceleration is caused by a previously unknown dark energy that makes up approximately 70 [...]

    Pingback by NASA and DOE Developing the First Space-Based Dark Energy Observatory : Red, Green, and Blue — November 22, 2008 #

  2. [...] of the most significant scientific findings in the last decade was that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The acceleration is caused by a previously unknown dark energy that makes up approximately 70 [...]

    Pingback by Environment News Feed » NASA and DOE Developing the First Space-Based Dark Energy Observatory — November 22, 2008 #

  3. From any given perspective in the universe, the cosmos appears to expand at a higher rate the farther away one looks (inflationary model). This means that at some distance in equal directions from any given observation point, the universe will be expanding at near-light speed. According to relativity theory, mass approaches infinity as the speed of light is approached, as occurs at the event horizon around a singularity. Therefore, each point in the universe is surrounded by a ’singularity sphere’ that approaches infinite mass. The observed acceleration of expansion is due to the fact that all objects are ‘falling outward’ and accelerating toward this sphere.

    Comment by elgenubi2003 — September 1, 2009 #

  4. It’s fun to speculate, isn’t it, elgenubi2003? Empty spacetime has no mass, though. Also, we know the universe is not expanding at or near the speed of light, we measure the expansion rate, called the Hubble Constant, and it is 65 +/- 10 km/sec/Mpc.

    If you are interested in cosmology I highly suggest you read Barbara Ryden’s “Introduction to Cosmology”.

    Comment by michael — September 5, 2009 #

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