Adios Dark Energy?
New analysis of supernova data indicates that the observed cosmological acceleration is actually a more local phenomenon. Provides new motivation for a long-needed rethink of cosmology’s standard model. See key take-away below.
“When we then employed the standard maximum likelihood estimator statistic to extract parameter values, we made an astonishing finding. The supernova data indicate, with a statistical significance of 3.9σ, a dipole anisotropy in the inferred acceleration (see figure) in the same direction as we are moving locally, which is indicated by a similar, well-known, dipole in the CMB. By contrast, any isotropic (monopole) acceleration that can be ascribed to dark energy is 50 times smaller and consistent with being zero at 1.4σ. By the Bayesian information criterion, the best fit to the data has, in fact, no isotropic component. We showed that allowing for evolution with redshift of the parameters used to fit the supernova light curves does not change the conclusion — thus refuting previous criticism of our method.”