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Dark Energy

Entry 386, on 2006-08-28 at 14:53:42 (Rating 1, Science)

About two weeks ago I blogged about New Scientist's 13 things that don't make sense. The one that probably intrigues me the most as an amateur astronomer is number 9: dark energy. Dark energy isn't really energy in the normal sense: its a mysterious force or property of space which is causing the rate of expansion of the Universe to increase, when previously everyone thought it should be decreasing.

If we are honest we would have to say that scientists really have no clue what is going on here. Along with other strange phenomena (for example number 8 in the list of things that don't make sense: the Pioneer anomaly) and the strange conclusion of inflation in the early Universe (related to number 2 in the list: the horizon problem) we are getting hints that we need a major revolution in physics to make things start to make sense again.

Its been about 100 years since the last great changes in physics when relativity and quantum theory were introduced. Now we need another revolution which can only occur through a totally new theory which we have been waiting for for many years. Some people find the conclusions of relativity and quantum theory hard to cope with. In fact if you don't find quantum theory hard to accept, you probably don;t really understand its full implications. But I have a feeling that the new theory, when it arrives, will be another order of magnitude above even this in strangeness. the idea of 10 or 11 dimensional space and multiple independent Universes for example, should give us something to think about!

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