Scientists are challenging the existence of dark energy with a new model called “timescape,” which suggests the Universe’s expansion might be influenced by its uneven structure rather than an invisible force.
This theory could resolve ongoing cosmological debates, with upcoming satellite data playing a key role in confirming its validity.
Questioning Dark Energy’s Existence
Dark energy, long considered one of science’s greatest mysteries, may not exist after all, according to researchers investigating how the Universe is expanding.
For the past century, physicists have generally believed that the cosmos grows uniformly in all directions. To account for unexplained phenomena, they introduced the concept of dark energy — a theoretical placeholder. However, this idea has faced persistent challenges and inconsistencies.
The Timescape Model: A New Perspective on Cosmic Expansion
Now, a team of physicists and astronomers from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, is rethinking this approach. By analyzing supernovae light curves with greater precision, they suggest the Universe’s expansion is not uniform but instead occurs in a more irregular, “lumpier” manner.
The new evidence supports the “timescape” model of cosmic expansion, which doesn’t have a need for dark energy because the differences in stretching light aren’t the result of an accelerating Universe but instead a consequence of how we calibrate time and distance.
Implications of the Timescape Model
It takes into account that gravity slows time, so an ideal clock in empty space ticks faster than inside a galaxy.
The model suggests that a clock in the Milky Way would be about 35 percent slower than the same one at an average position in large cosmic voids, meaning billions more years would have passed in voids. This would in turn allow more expansion of space, making it seem like the expansion is getting faster when such vast empty voids grow to dominate the Universe.
Professor David Wiltshire, who led the study, said: “Our findings show that we do not need dark energy to explain why the Universe appears to expand at an accelerating rate.
“Dark energy is a misidentification of variations in the kinetic energy of expansion, which is not uniform in a Universe as lumpy as the one we actually live in.”
He added: “The research provides compelling evidence that may resolve some of the key questions around the quirks of our expanding cosmos.
“With new data, the Universe’s biggest mystery could be settled by the end of the decade.”
The new analysis has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.
Conventional Dark Energy Theory Versus Timescape
Dark energy is commonly thought to be a weak anti-gravity force which acts independently of matter and makes up around two thirds of the mass-energy density of the Universe.
The standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) model of the Universe requires dark energy to explain the observed acceleration in the rate at which the cosmos is expanding.
Scientists base this conclusion on measurements of the distances to supernova explosions in distant galaxies, which appear to be farther away than they should be if the Universe’s expansion were not accelerating.
Current Challenges to the Standard Model
However, the present expansion rate of the Universe is increasingly being challenged by new observations.
Firstly, evidence from the afterglow of the Big Bang – known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – shows the expansion of the early Universe is at odds with current expansion, an anomaly known as the “Hubble tension.”
In addition, recent analysis of new high-precision data by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has found that the ΛCDM model does not fit as well as models in which dark energy is “evolving” over time, rather than remaining constant.
Both the Hubble tension and the surprises revealed by DESI are difficult to resolve in models which use a simplified 100-year-old cosmic expansion law – Friedmann’s equation.
This assumes that, on average, the Universe expands uniformly – as if all cosmic structures could be put through a blender to make a featureless soup, with no complicating structure. However, the present Universe actually contains a complex cosmic web of galaxy clusters in sheets and filaments that surround and thread vast empty voids.
Professor Wiltshire added: “We now have so much data that in the 21st century we can finally answer the question – how and why does a simple average expansion law emerge from complexity?
“A simple expansion law consistent with Einstein’s general relativity does not have to obey Friedmann’s equation.”
Future Research Directions and Conclusions
The researchers say that the European Space Agency’s Euclid satellite, which was launched in July 2023, has the power to test and distinguish the Friedmann equation from the timescape alternative. However, this will require at least 1,000 independent high quality supernovae observations.
When the proposed timescape model was last tested in 2017 the analysis suggested it was only a slightly better fit than the ΛCDM as an explanation for cosmic expansion, so the Christchurch team worked closely with the Pantheon+ collaboration team who had painstakingly produced a catalog of 1,535 distinct supernovae.
They say the new data now provides “very strong evidence” for timescape. It may also point to a compelling resolution of the Hubble tension and other anomalies related to the expansion of the Universe.
Further observations from Euclid and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope are needed to bolster support for the timescape model, the researchers say, with the race now on to use this wealth of new data to reveal the true nature of cosmic expansion and dark energy.
Reference: “Cosmological foundations revisited with Pantheon+” by Zachary G Lane, Antonia Seifert, Ryan Ridden-Harper and David L Wiltshire, 19 December 2024, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stae2437
The timescape cosmology was proposed by David Wiltshire in 2007, using the mathematical formalism of Thomas Buchert in general relativity, as a viable alternative to dark energy. In the intervening 17 years, the timescape model has been further developed and tested against a variety of cosmological data by David Wiltshire and his students. Zachary Lane and Antonia Seifert jointly developed the codes used in the new analysis.
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26 Comments
Thank you for this excellent article It was very helpful and informative.
It’s a Octopus, we call him atlas
The patchy structure of the universe indicates that quantum gravity is for real in grand scale, and it is preventing the universe from chaotic expansion.
science will uncover more when the realize the Continuum is a real thing. There is no existence without it’s base fabric. Occultations are the key to understanding it’s affections, as well as modeling the pressure system to better understand what gravity actually is. Where mass is president is a low pressure point in the Continuum, where mass isn’t is a more dense Continuum. To put it simply: a hurricane looks like a galaxy for a reason. The weather is high pressure chasing a low and gathering mass with invisible wind. Our galaxy by all observations behaves the same.
Edit: occultations: oscillations.
President: present
Autocorrect hates me.
We’ve all been there, haven’t we…
Yes.correct👍
Rather than liquid a pure pressure bubble is the Ether and the beginning and the end. The Ether opens up a vacuum around a particle from every angle by keeping things in and out the equation simultaneously causing matter to settle down in compressed lumps or balls of matter similar to electric magnetism. Clumps of radiation could easily create a moving or still Black hole with a internal vacuum warp drive just off of combustions an electric magnetic ignitions compressed by the surrounding pressure bubble the Ether. Now answer this question; why do Black Holes attracts other Black Holes through the Ether?
Felton, are you trolling?
While your post is apparently nonsense, I’ll point out something about attraction of mass. My post is for those with enough physics education to connect the dots, however, I will clarify with observations to aid the less educated: if you release a bunch of gas from the bottom of the ocean, you’ll observe the bubble form they take, watching from below the bubble you’ll notice the ” oscillation” or wiggle of the bubbles are different by size. Bubbles only join when they get close enough that the pressure between the bubbles is less than the pressure of the fluid on opposing sides. As the bubbles rise from the depths they expand as the pressure of the liquid is reduced closer to the surface.
You should have saved that for April 1st.
Me? Does any science explain the engine of gravity? Because I’m serious. Albeit, the idea is unexamined. My argument is for examination.
Most scientists are so caught up in numbers they ignore observations that are not taught. A stick in a river doesn’t necessarily move the speed of the water, nor does a leaf move the same speed as the wind. We understand wind composition now, but we didn’t always. This article points out that science agrees our models are broken but can’t move past the placeholders to pick a new one without data to strengthen a new idea. So I give you a place to look: admit that empty space isn’t empty , but a fluid like body, and the it’s stretched where mass is, which looks suspiciously like weather patterns in our atmosphere, as a pressure system, in which on earth the pressure flows high to low, ALWAYS. So model the galaxy as a pressure system with gravitational data in an inverse form to model the pressure of ” empty” space and see what is found. Science is about asking the right questions, if all the questions being asked are coming up with nothing, then why not examine this question?
A watched pot NEVER boils. Oh and autocorrect Harry’s everyone. People that appear to be on its God side simply check their writing before posting. (Not me though)
I’ve been saying for years Dark Energy doesn’t exist, but mob mentality rules and it’s based on the average. The average IQ is 100. Do you want the opinions of 500 people with 125 IQs or the opinion of 5 people with 165 IQs?
Dark matter is next. It doesn’t exist either.
“For the past century, physicists have generally believed that the cosmos grows uniformly in all directions. To account for unexplained phenomena, they introduced the concept of dark energy…”
Uniform expansion was never addressed by dark energy conjectures. That came much later when the expansion appeared to be 𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜.
Astronomers were acting like gravitational time dilation was negligible if not just a case of time distortion.
I already credited a gravitational redshift component for the local expansion effect many months ago, on this site. I had my own take on it where Timescape is the latest daily homogenous journalistic excuse to pretend frequency domain measures can replace time domain measures.
In mediocre land you can say gravity is not a force, then claim Einstein predicted gravitational waves despite everyone knowing about tides. To top that off, if you are a Harvard prof in mediocre land you can say Einstein also deduced gravitons (force particles) must be present in the waves, as if they weren’t classical waves that spread out over time.
“Einstein also deduced gravitons (force particles) must be present in the waves, as if they weren’t classical waves that spread out over time.”
Mediocre Einstein gets credited by Ivy leaguers for suggesting gravitational waves can reveal a gravity force-wave/force-particle relationship after replacing gravity force particles and gravity force with variable rulers and color-based clocks.
First, it being January 1, 2025, it suddenly appears appropriate for me to finally give my own fifteen year old model of gravity a formal title, how about: the “Charles G. Shaver/Universal Motive Force” (CGS/UMF) theory of gravity? As I’ve been demonstrating in videos online for more than a decade, it can both attract and repel. Most relevant to this conversation, it is separate from space and time and fields of it diminish in density and strength in accordance with the universal law of attraction. And, contrary to Professor Wiltshire’s statements in the article in the “Re:” lines above, and not to demean or diminish him or Einstein in any way, time does not vary in speed; one clock forced to travel faster than an equal one in the same field of gravity will slow down relative to the other.
As to the expansion of the universe, when photons are emitted by their sources they accelerate (blue shift) and when arriving to earth they decelerate in our solar-planetary field (red shift). The age, expansion and size of the universe still need to be determined. The problem first arose in 1801 when Thomas Young initially misinterpreted the scattered dot pattern in double-slit experiments to be due to a duality of particles and waves, not pulsing angular lines of gravity force. Since, that understandable error (given the technology of the day) it has proved to be something of a ‘self-replicating computer glitch’ that continues to wreak havoc (e.g., dark energy and dark matter). I do, however, accept the idea of a ‘clumpy’ universe and hope to perform, record and upload at least one new and more convincing low-budget demonstration later this year.
Looking forward to it. Finger’s crossed.
Thanks, Robert, for some unusual encouragement. Here’s where, hopefully, it will be recorded and uploaded to by early Spring: “1Gravity:” https://odysee.com/@charlesgshaver:d/1Gravity:8
We’ll survive the controversy, I’m sure.
The logical, physical explanation is quite simple, fully consistent with this evidence through a more sensible reinterpretation of Einstein’s equations — gravity is the aether that slows down the speed of light, clocks and everything else:
http://davidthorp.net/universe/gravity
Hello, David. Having now spent about an hour browsing your website, I wonder if you have viewed any of my three gravity videos on the video channel identified above in my reply to Robert? In brief summary, perhaps more alike than not, at least we appear to agree that dark energy and dark matter need not exist to explain some observations.
I hope these “scientists” would work very hard to come with a definitive answer instead of rushing to the media with their new “discoveries”.