Explanation:
Eight years ago
results were
first presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in
stars or galaxies but is tied to space itself.
In the language of cosmologists, a large
cosmological constant is directly implied by new distant
supernovae observations.
Suggestions of a
cosmological constant (lambda) are
not new -- they have existed since the advent of
modern relativistic cosmology.
Such claims were not usually popular with astronomers,
though, because lambda is so unlike known universe components, because
lambda's value appeared limited by other observations,
and because less-strange cosmologies without lambda had
previously done well in explaining the data.
What is noteworthy here is the seemingly direct and reliable method of the observations and the good reputations of the
scientists conductingthe investigations.
Over the past eight years, independent
teams of astronomers have continued to accumulate data
that appears to confirm the unsettling result.
The
above picture of a supernova that occurred in
1994
on the outskirts of a
spiral galaxy
was taken by one of these collaborations.
APOD Editor to Discuss "Best of APOD 2006" Pictures in NYC on January 5
