Hard as Hell to get along wit’
Errors in the way physicists estimate the effects of dark matter and dark energy on the leftover heat from the Big Bang has thrown their existence into doubt, say British scientists.
Physicists’ general model of the universe includes two ‘dark’ concepts.
Dark energy is a force that explains the way that galaxies accelerate away from each other, while dark matter was postulated to explain the observations that galaxies have more mass than can be accounted for by stars and gas.
Evidence for the ‘dark side’ comes primarily from studies of the Cosmic Background Radiation (CMB), the leftover ‘glow’ from the Big Bang, which has been analysed in detail by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), a NASA satellite telescope launched in 2001 that provided the first full-sky map of the CMB.
Now, some scientists say errors in the WMAP data may be larger than expected.
This would mean that there is no need to include dark matter and dark energy in models of the cosmos.
