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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Dark Energy's Demise? New Theory Doesn't Use the Force


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Encompassing hundreds of galaxies all the way to the visible horizon of the universe, this Hubble Space Telescope picture is one of the deepest views of the cosmos.

Dark energy is a force proposed more than a decade ago to explain why galaxies seem to be flying apart from each other at an increasingly faster clip. But it's possible that this accelerated expansion of the universe is just an illusion—and that dark energy is no longer needed, an August 2009 study says.

Picture courtesy NASA/JPL/STScI Hubble Deep Field Team