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Articles: Devotion | Quest for Infinity - 08
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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Dark Energy
That is where dark energy entered the picture, and to get ahead of the story, let me mention at this point that the COBE studies [and some earlier less precise ones] give strong support to the idea of dark energy. So you see, why COBE results are so important – they give support to the idea of inflation, and they also strongly suggest that indeed there is a thing called dark energy.
At this point, you might be wondering: “Who on earth got this idea of dark energy? Why does the Universe need dark energy? How does it help?” and so on. Let me now try and give some answers to the above questions. Astrophysicists have in recent years been carefully studying data from ancient supernova [see SFI part four in the April edition for some information about supernovas], and they have come to the conclusion that quite possibly, the Universe is not only expanding, but that the rate of expansion strongly suggests the value of Ω ought to be close to unity. The COBE results not only say the same thing but even more emphatically.
Thus, many things started pointing to the same thing: 1) the value of Ω has no choice but to be close to unity. Even as people were wondering about the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe, there was the question about something missing in the Cosmic census, something that had to be put in to make the value of Ω come very close to unity. 2) At the same time, the Cosmic census shows that even if we add up all the mass in the Universe, including the mass associated with dark matter, the value of Ω comes nowhere near 1. So something is missing; what is that? That something, said experts, is dark energy!
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