It's the same placeholder terms for "we do not have an effing clue".
Long, long ago, when the universe was only about 100,000 years old — a buzzing, expanding mass of particles and radiation — a strange new energy field switched on. That energy suffused space with a kind of cosmic antigravity, delivering a not-so-gentle boost to the expansion of the universe.
Then, after another 100,000 years or so, the new field simply winked off, leaving no trace other than a speeded-up universe.
Based on what, exactly? the usual Redhift = recessional velocity nonsense I suspect.
The cosmos is expanding only about 9 percent more quickly than theory prescribes. But this slight-sounding discrepancy has intrigued astronomers, who think it might be revealing something new about the universe.
So now 9% is only a "slight sounding discrepancy" then. Good job these idiots are not engineers if they think errors of 9% is only "slight".
And so, for the last couple of years, they have been gathering in workshops and conferences to search for a mistake or loophole in their previous measurements and calculations, so far to no avail.
In short, it is reality that is wrong, not their maths, so the observations they interpret are obviously (from their standpoint) in error. Oh good grief.
Adding to the confusion, there already is a force field — called dark energy — making the universe expand faster. And a new, controversial report suggests that this dark energy might be getting stronger and denser, leading to a future in which atoms are ripped apart and time ends.
Yet more speculative nonsense dressed up as research - they literally make this stuff up almost ad hoc, it seems
Thus far, there is no evidence for most of these ideas.
Now we get to the crux of the matter. Finally!
Or it could all be a mistake. Astronomers have rigorous methods to estimate the effects of statistical noise and other random errors on their results; not so for the unexamined biases called systematic errors.
Ah. Again it seems it is reality that is in error again. I
knew the previous quote was too good to be true.
As Wendy L. Freedman, of the University of Chicago, said at the Chicago meeting, “The unknown systematic is what gets you in the end.”
??? I think they might be trying to describe Systems Theory here, and then applying it to a closed system paradigm (LCDM is one of these) yet it only works in open systems......bad case of mixing incompatible things and wondering why the milk then curdles perhaps. Pure supposition on my part though, as I am not 100% sure what they are trying to say here.
Generations of great astronomers have come to grief trying to measure the universe. At issue is a number called the Hubble constant, named after Edwin Hubble, the Mount Wilson astronomer who in 1929 discovered that the universe is expanding.
As space expands, it carries galaxies away from each other like the raisins in a rising cake. The farther apart two galaxies are, the faster they will fly away from each other. The Hubble constant simply says by how much.
But to calibrate the Hubble constant, astronomers depend on so-called standard candles: objects, such as supernova explosions and certain variable stars, whose distances can be estimated by luminosity or some other feature. This is where the arguing begins.
Ah. Here we go again. As Michael has pointed out over and again, not only did Hubble never claim to have discovered the Universe is expanding but he also never bought into the idea that Redshift was recessional either. Yet still we read this over and again.
This is then compounded onto another error - standard candles. The idea that you know how big & how far away something is by how bright it appears to our limited vision. Insanity. This fails, and fails in a spectacular manner. I will not go into details as Michael has done this countless times.
String theory suggests that space could be laced with exotic energy fields associated with lightweight particles or forces yet undiscovered. Those fields, collectively called quintessence, could act in opposition to gravity, and could change over time — popping up, decaying or altering their effect, switching from repulsive to attractive.
The team focused in particular on the effects of fields associated with hypothetical particles called axions. Had one such field arisen when the universe was about 100,000 years old, it could have produced just the right amount of energy to fix the Hubble discrepancy, the team reported in a paper late last year. They refer to this theoretical force as “early dark energy.”
There are an awful lot of "Coulds" in there - in short, fiddle with the numbers, plug the new guess into the model & tweak until it says what you want it to then force reality into this.
I am not going to quote anything further as it descends into stupidity at this point, with magical events happening that violate all principles we know and mentioned above - strange forces switching on and off at just the right time, mystical Dark Energy somehow increasing in total defiance of a closed system conservation of energy principle. Metaphysical nonsense - and I will close by saying just one more thing for anagram fans:
Metamagical Themas = Mathematical Games.
I think that says it all really. The Universe is an Open System, not a closed one.