From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Jan 06 2002 - 13:55:16 MST
It ain't over till the fat lady sings!
On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, Extropian Agro Forestry Ventures Inc. wrote:
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/01/science/01END.html?
I explicitly didn't post this URL (I ran across it a couple of days ago)
*because*
> > Now, however, even Dr. Dyson admits that all bets are off. If recent
Note the big "If".
> > astronomical observations are correct, the future of life and the
> > universe will be far bleaker.
> >
> > In the last four years astronomers have reported evidence that the
> > expansion of the universe is not just continuing but is speeding up,
> > under the influence of a mysterious "dark energy," an antigravity that
> > seems to be embedded in space itself. If that is true and the universe
> > goes on accelerating, [snip]
Note the second big "If".
Now go look at this:
http://arXiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0111311
which *was* posted to the list a couple of days ago, by cryofan.
Its a paper discussing the fact that reports of the expansion accelerating
may be explained by photons oscillating into axions (like nutrino
oscillations as I understand it, though perhaps for different reasons).
So the experimentalists create a problem and the theoretical physicists
bail us out.
Now I'm *really* not very fond of this explanation (I'm uncomfortable
using particles which only have theoretical reasons for existence
with no experimental confirmation yet). But at the same time I
dislike the experimental results that created the "problem" even
more. I suppose beggars can't be choosers.
Does anyone on the list have enough physics knowledge to comment
on *why* we need "axions" in the standard models? (Other than as
explanations for cold dark matter -- which *we* know could be
JBrains and MBrains in traveling in "silent running" mode :-) )
Robert
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