In a
meeting in California two weeks ago, unpublished
results were presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space itself. In the language of cosmologists, a large
cosmological constant is directly implied by new distant supernovae observations. Suggestions of a cosmological constant (lambda) are
not new -- they have existed since the advent of
modern relativistic cosmology. Such claims are
not usually popular with astronomers, though, because lambda is so unlike known universe components, because
lambda's value appears limited by observations, and because less-strange cosmologies without lambda have historically done well in explaining the data. Therefore most lamdba claims do not make the News Summary in a prestigious journal like
Science. What is noteworthy here is the seemingly direct and reliable method of the observations, and the good reputations of the
scientists conducting the investigation. The
above picture of a supernova at redshift 0.5 in a spiral galaxy, was taken by this collaboration. However,
two teams of scientists are independently studying distant supernovae, and the last official word from the
other team was a
result consistent with no cosmological constant, reported just two months ago.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so cosmologists the world over eagerly await peer-reviewed results, further details, and more data.