Our universe could be twice as old as current estimates, according to a new study that challenges the dominant cosmological model and sheds new light on the so-called “impossible early galaxy problem.”
Our universe could be twice as old as current estimates, according to a new study that challenges the dominant cosmological model and sheds new light on the so-called “impossible early galaxy problem.”
The “cosmological constant,” Is also known as the Hubble constant, it refers to the rate of expansion in the universe. By knowing the speed of expansion it would be possible to “Rewind” the universe (like a video) to get an estimation of the universes age. I believe the authors are suggesting that dark energy has a bigger effect on the red shift than previously estimated.
As for Dark energy…
That is a topic of much discussion, there is “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy” that we know about, thanks to Einstein. When they refer to either it’s safe to say that the don’t fully understand what they are only that they are. Personally I believe that Dark matter is just a particle that has yet to be discovered, and that Dark energy is a result of that particles interaction with matter.
Well, not really.
First of all, neither were suggested by Einstein. The concept of Dark matter comes from a Swiss physicist Fritz Zwicky from the early 1930s. He noticed that stars on galaxies’ periphery are rotating much faster than they should, so he guessed that there should be extra mass that’s somehow undetectable.
Dark energy concept is much younger, from 1990s. It was proposed by two astronomers trying to measure the rate at which expansion is slowing down, but discovered that it’s actually speeding up. Before that, it was believed that the universe got its initial speed kick from the Big Bang and is gradually slowing down. They won a Nobel prize for that too.
And Dark energy and Dark matter are wildly different and likely totally unrelated concepts. I think it’s unfortunate that they share the same adjective, it’s somewhat confusing. One is the expansion phenomenon, and the other is just another form of matter (most probably formed by a yet undiscovered field, quite similar to ordinary matter in a sense), but one that just doesn’t interact with ordinary matter or via electromagnetic forces. We “see” it through gravitational effects though. But there are currently no links between it and the expansion of the universe, and for now it doesn’t look like there’s going to be one.