Dark energy alternatives to Einstein are running out of
roomJanuary 9th, 2013 in Physics / General Physics The
accelerating expansion of the galaxies observed in the Hubble
Ultra Deep Field may conform more to Albert Einstein’s
“cosmological constant” than a popular alternative theory of
dark energy. Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P.
Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden
University; and the HUDF09 Team (Phys.org)—Research by
University of Arizona astronomy professor Rodger Thompson finds
that a popular alternative to Albert Einstein's theory for the
acceleration of the expansion of the universe does not fit newly
obtained data on a fundamental constant, the proton to electron
mass ratio. Thompson's findings, reported Jan. 9 at the American
Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif., impact our
understanding of the universe and point to a new direction for
the further study of its accelerating expansion. To explain the
acceleration of the expansion of the uni