James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam Image of the .Cosmic Cliffs. in Carina Nebula
(Image by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team) Details DMCA
If you've been starved for good news lately, here's some.
The apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe suggested that it will definitely die heat death. That means that at some point, there would be nothing left but frozen "particles" at absolute zero.
The "discovery" of dark energy seemed to explain why this seemed to be happening. The existence of dark matter would mean that there would no longer be any change in the universe (other than random fluctuations of energy patterns at a subatomic level).
If you're like me, that is a profoundly depressing prospect. After all, what is the purpose of all the senseless suffering that has been endured by humans, mostly at the hands of other humans? Some people seem to be fine with the idea that random suffering is just the luck of the draw in a universe that arose by chance and where sentient life defines for itself its purpose for being, but I am not one of them. I have a strong preference for believing that life has an inherent purpose and that suffering makes sense in the bigger picture, even if I don't know how.
It's bad enough to think that all life on earth may be snuffed out by global warming. At least we could hope that more intelligent life could go on if the universe were cyclical (expanding and collapsing). What is the incentive to fight against the dying of the light if the universe itself is destined to be snuffed out?
The reason some scientists now challenge the dark matter model is that the acceleration in the observed expansion of the universe may not actually be happening. There is a critical assumption of the model predicting dark energy is that the distribution of stars in the universe is uniform.
Fortunately, a group of astrophysicists has found evidence that the apparent acceleration of the universe may not actually be occurring. They take the data used to argue for acceleration and propose an alternate interpretation. According to their calculations, their model produces a closer fit with the data than the one that predicts dark-matter.
That means that dark energy, which is postulated to be equivalent to a, well, astronomical amount of mass, may not be a factor in deciding the fate of the universe after all. That matters because it is the total mass of the universe that will determine its ultimate fate.
Don't you feel better now?
Carry on..,...
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(Article changed on Jan 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM EST)
