Earth has ‘no special place’ in the Universe

Physicists rule out controversial theory

A group of researchers at Dartmouth College have published a study that disproves the controversial theory there is no dark energy and the accelerating expansion of the Universe is an illusion.

The discovery that the Universe’s expansion is getting faster won the Nobel Prize in 2011, but a leading counter-theory suggests that the Earth, our solar system and the Milky Way are actually slap-bang in the centre of the Universe, and therefore dark energy does not need to exist.

The team, comprised of physics professor Robert Caldwell and undergraduate researcher Nina Maksimova, disproved this theory by calculating how the background glow of the Universe, left over from the Big Bang, would be affected if this was the case. They found that a model universe where this is the case has a glow completely unlike the one we’ve measured in our universe, and published their results in Physical Review D.

“Essentially, we held a mirror up to the universe and asked if the reflection was special,” said Caldwell. “The reflection shows that we do not appear to live in a special location, and decisively excludes this explanation for the universe’s accelerating expansion. It would be a great relief to be able to understand a basic problem of cosmology within the known laws of physics, but our research is an important step in explaining the physics responsible for the cosmic acceleration.”

Unfortunately, the results merely disprove one theory — they don’t explain why the Universe is expanding. That’s a topic which is still under much debate.