Accelerating Expansion of the Universe: Yes or No?

From Natural Philosophy Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Scientific Paper
Title Accelerating Expansion of the Universe: Yes or No?
Read in full Link to paper
Author(s) Bob Day
Keywords Expanding Universe, Acceleration, Dynamic Universe, Cosmological constant
Published 2007
Journal None
No. of pages 12

Read the full paper here

Abstract

Over the past decade most cosmologists have come to believe that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Seeming evidence for this acceleration has been provided by brightness measurements of many newly discovered type Ia Supernovae. These supernovae were discovered to be unexpectedly faint for the distance at which they were according to standard cosmology. If their distances were indeed correct, the unexpected faintness of the supernovae would indicate that the universe is larger than thought. This could be explained by postulating an accelerating expansion, which is the way standard cosmology explains it. Another theory, the Dynamic Universe (DU) theory explains the same measurements just as well as standard cosmology, but without the need for the expansion of the universe to be accelerating. In this essay I will describe both approaches.