http://digg.com/space/Dark_Perhaps_Forever
Well, according to the New York Times, it seems astronomers may have finally, officially put their credibility on the line.
Well, they seem to have gambled on a roll of the cosmological dice. They better hope it doesn't come up "snake eyes," or their credibility will be close to nil.A decade ago, astronomers discovered that what is true for your car keys is not true for the galaxies ... the galaxies, in defiance of cosmic gravity, are picking up speed on a dash toward eternity. If they were keys, they would be shooting for the ceiling.
“That is how shocking this was,” Dr. Livio said.
It is still shocking. Although cosmologists have adopted a cute name, dark energy, for whatever is driving this apparently antigravitational behavior on the part of the universe, nobody claims to understand why it is happening, or its implications for the future of the universe and of the life within it, despite thousands of learned papers, scores of conferences and millions of dollars’ worth of telescope time. It has led some cosmologists to the verge of abandoning their fondest dream: a theory that can account for the universe and everything about it in a single breath.
“The discovery of dark energy has greatly changed how we think about the laws of nature,” said Edward Witten, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
[...]
“We are placing a large bet,” Dr. Mountain said, “using our credibility as collateral, that we as a community know what we are doing.”
Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin
