Albert Einstein was a very clever physicist and one that the world of physics owes a lot too. But one of his theories has never really been able to be confirmed 100 percent, and that’s a conundrum involving what’s driving the accelerated expansion of the universe. For a long time, researchers have tried to get to the bottom of whether dark energy is needed for the expansion of the universe, as required by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. And now, a team at the University of Edinburgh in the UK may just have found the answers.
As part of Einstein’s theory, he included a Cosmological Constant to try and explain a static universe at first but then decided this mathematical element was flawed as he discovered the universe was in fact expanding. But then a couple of decades ago research was carried out that confirmed the expansion is accelerating, which means that Einstein’s Constant may have been right after all and that dark energy does have a role in the expansion.
If dark energy didn’t exist, Einstein’s theory of gravity simply wouldn’t work across the larger distances of our universe. However, scientists discovered that if we determined the speed of gravity in the cosmos by studying its gravitational waves, the puzzle could be solved. So with this in mind, the researchers carried out calculations to show that if gravitational waves were found to travel at the speed of light, this would support Einstein’s, Cosmological Constant.
But, if their speed is different to that of the speed of light then Einstein’s theory would need some revising. One way to prove or disprove this theory once and for all could be done using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), and experiments have been planned for later this year. Lucas Lombriser, from Edinburgh’s School if Physics and Astronomy said, “Recent direct gravitational wave detection has opened up a new observational window to our universe. Our results give an impression of how this will guide us in solving one of the most fundamental problems in physics.”
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