WFIRST and Dark Energy
' Exploring the nature of dark energy is one of the primary reasons NASA is building the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a space telescope whose measurements will help illuminate the dark energy puzzle. With a better understanding of dark energy, we will have a better sense of the past and future evolution of the universe. '
There is a very revealing statement near the start.
' However, as the 1920s were coming to a close, astronomer Georges Lemaitre, and then Edwin Hubble, made the startling discovery that with very few exceptions, galaxies are racing away from each other. The universe was far from static - it was ballooning outward. ' Those 'very few exceptions' are a number of galaxies in the direction of M31 and M33. They have a blue shifted calcium absorption line while all the others have a red shifted hydrogen absorption line.
This inconsistency was noted from the very start but the small subset of conflicting data was easily ignored. Hubble 'solved' the anomaly by proposing our Local Group is on an island separate from the Hubble Flow. This 'island' is a clear admission of a problem with this theory.
Rather than recognizing the immediately apparent problem with interpreting red or blue shifts of absorption lines as always being a relative velocity, cosmologists made the wrong decision and proceeded down the wrong path leading to the expanding universe. That expansion needed a force that could stretch the fabric of space at a tremendous velocity (faster than c) so dark energy was proposed. Dark energy is proposed to be part of this expansion process so this continuous creation of energy is 'allowed' though clearly a violation of thermodynamics.
The SWIFT will provide new data about the universe with its 'wide field infrared' observations.
Unfortunately its stated goal is to search for something nonexistent.
However: ' This study will test Einstein's theory of gravity over the age of the universe. ' The possibility remains when the discordance will be realized cosmology could be fixed.
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