Universe Expansion Is Accelerating But How Fast?

There's been a wide guess works going on since past few years regarding the expansion of the universe at an increasing speed. Will this search finally get the answer it has long been looking for?

According to Phys.org, "It follows the publication of this month of a new look at the supernovae in our universe." Researchers ask to give only a 'marginal detection' of the acceleration in the universe. The leaders of the two teams who used supernovae to find out that the expansion of the universe is speeding up was awarded the Nobel Prize of 2011, thus, it seems to be a great deal.

The new analysis which has been published in 'Scientific Reports' hardly changes the original result but ends up putting a different spin on it. Amidst all these, one question gains the limelight - Why does this new publication claim that the discovery of acceleration is marginal? It is marginal if we use only a single set of data. It is considered that most of the biggest discoveries are marginal initially. If they were more obvious, they would have been discovered sooner.

The supernovae data can be reliable with a universe which can neither speed up nor speed down. This has been known among all the researchers since the original discovery. If the universe did not accelerate or decelerate at all, the new physics would still be required. For example, In Australia, a project was carried out named WiggleZ for a period of five years. The project made a survey of the positions of almost a quarter of a million galaxies. The pattern of galaxies is not random and thus, this pattern was used to lay the grid papers over the universe and measure the changes. Using this data, it can be shown that the expanding universe is accelerating.

Another example can be that of the Cosmic Microwave Background. It shows that the earth is very close flat to the earth. According to International Business Times, most of the observations state that nearly 70% of the universe is made up of dark energy and thus, it can solve the issue of the discrepancy. One of the drawbacks of the new paper is that the accelerating universe is model dependent. 'Dark Energy' is used to cover many possibilities such as vacuum energy that creates acceleration or that we require a new theory of gravity.

With the dark energy survey being carried out, three researchers are constantly testing and improving the statistical analysis. One of the final conclusion of the new paper was a non-accelerating universe is worth considering. The supernovae data reveals that something genuinely unusual is going on and the solution might be acceleration or a new theory of gravity.