Cosmology and particle physics face surprisingly similar challenges

Philosophy of science has built an industry around confirmation theory. But unprecedented methodological challenges are forcing philosophers to go back to the drawing-boardTheDark Energy Survey (DES) concluded its biannual Collaboration meeting at University of Chicago in mid-June. DES is one of the largest surveys in cosmology searching for evidence of dark energy, the elusive entity that according to the so-called “concordance model” in cosmology should constitute 73% of the whole mass-energy of the universe. After years of observations at the Blanco Telescope in Chile, spanning the southern sky and mapping 200 million galaxies, DES Year 1 data will soon be publicly released; and there is a lot of anticip ation as to whether the data will prove consistent with the current concordance model or not.DES uses four different probes — baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO), weak gravitational lensing, Supernova of type Ia, and galaxy clusters — to measure both how fast the universe is accelerating in its expansion and how clumpy the universe was at different epochs after the Big Bang. Precise measurements of both quantities a re crucial for establishing whether dark energy is indeed a non-zero vacuum energy responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe; or, whether instead Einstein’s general relativity needs be modified to account for the observed accelerated expansion.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Science Physics Philosophy Large Hadron Collider Astronomy Source Type: news