The Skeptical Cosmologist

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof

A few prominent astrophysicists and cosmologists have hijacked the process of the scientific method by their skillful use of the media. Technologically illiterate journalists are their accomplices. There is no excuse for the current mad rush to a messy consensus and the cockeyed conclusion that some weird stuff they call dark energy makes up the bulk of the universe. Dark energy is truly miraculous stuff and qualifies as a supernatural explanation of deep space observations!

Bunk!

Those with the ability must recalculate the main assumption that underlies the dark energy conclusion. This conclusion is based on the interpretation of the real distances to Type 1A supernovae. They are interpreted to be farther away than their redshifts would indicate. An estimate of the most serious interference to this interpretation, that there may be much more dust in the early universe than was thought, must be in error.

The currently calculated assumption is that there is not enough extra dust to cause the effect. The effect itself is a result of an interpretation that may itself also be wrong. This apparent "phenomenon" is that since these exceedingly distant supernovae are farther away than the distances indicated by their redshifts, then the universe must have begun expanding at an accelerating rate in recent epochs. The only thing that some prominent astrophysicists can think of that might explain this is this unscientific postulate of dark energy. All subsequent observational interpretations are biased to favor the assumption of dark energy to begin with, so it is not surprising that they tend to prove it.

There has been no effort to go back and recalculate the relative prevalence of "metals" in the earliest phases of the universe's development. If mathematical assumptions are changed sufficiently, the concentration of heavy nuclei could easily rise to the point that more dust formed than was thought. Presto! There is much more dust present to dim the images and the supernovae in question are as close by as their redshifts indicate.

Why there is not more skepticism about the contradiction between luminosity distances and redshift distances in the first place completely escapes me!

These so-called scientists are so gullible that I think they should not be allowed to refer to themselves as having a Ph.D. They have not done their professional homework. They neglect easy solutions in favor of a complex and difficult ad hoc theorem that raises more questions than it solves!

In a future post I will present my most favored model for the inflationary expansion of the universe. It shows how the data should properly be interpreted.

There is no dark energy.