Scientists say dark energy may not exist after all

Dark energy has one job: explain why the universe is flying apart faster and faster. The idea is so successful that it appears in every cosmology textbook and is thought to make up roughly 70 percent of the cosmos. The evidence for dark energy comes from a Nobel Prize-winning discovery. For almost 30 years, the physics community has treated it as settled. A team of mathematicians now says the model dark energy was invented to rescue was never stable to begin with. In their view, the problem is not a minor flaw but a fundamental one. The model sits in a mathematically unstable state, where even the slightest disturbance pushes it away from the solution. In physics, a solution that cannot survive a nudge is generally not considered physically realistic.

Scientists say dark energy may not exist after all. Dark energy has one job: explain why the universe is flying apart faster and faster. The idea is so successful that it appears in every cosmology textbook and is thought to make up roughly 70 percent of the cosmos. The evidence for dark energy comes from a Nobel Prize-winning discovery. For almost 30 years, the physics community has treated it as settled. A team of mathematicians now says the model dark energy was invented to rescue was never stable to begin with. In their view, the problem is not a minor flaw but a fundamental one. The model sits in a mathematically unstable state, where even the slightest disturbance pushes it away from the solution. In physics, a solution that cannot survive a nudge is generally not considered physically realistic. A flawed foundation Blake Temple, a...