The Great Cosmic Challenge (Gravitational Lensing)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2008) — Today cosmologists are challenging the world to solve a compelling statistical problem, to bring us closer to understanding the nature of dark matter and energy which makes up 95 per cent of the ‘missing’ universe.

The GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2008 (GREAT08) PASCAL Challenge is being set by 38 scientists across 19 international institutions, with the aim of enticing other researchers to crack it by 30 April 2009. "We realised that solving our image processing problem doesn’t require knowledge of astronomy, so we’re reaching out to attract novel approaches from other disciplines”.Source

Twenty per cent of our universe seems to be made of dark matter, an unknown substance that is fundamentally different to the material making up our known world. Seventy-five per cent of the universe appears to be made of a completely mysterious substance dubbed dark energy. One possible explanation for these surprising observations is that Einstein’s law of gravity is wrong.Source

I couldnt see this posted anywhere and thought it might be of interest to some of you. This should be very interesting and I cant wait to see what transpires, especially if Einstein’s law of gravity is shown to be wrong, sorry Albert

In order to analyze the influx of computer data from telescopes around the world and out in space, the GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2008 (GREAT08) PASCAL Challenge, a group of 38 scientists from 19 international institutions, hopes to solve the riddle of dark acceleration in the Hubble Constant by 30 April 2009. Because the data is primarily images of supernovae and their spectrographs, the computational requirements could be distributed across a wide assortment of disciplines—some not necessarily in the astronomical realm. By making use of distributed processing, astronomers can unburden their own computer resources and use any number of voluntary subscribers for assistance. Who knows, in the near future your computer may be helping to remove image artifacts from Hubble Space Telescope data.

But is all this effort necessary? Even some NASA scientists are questioning the existence of dark energy. What is the more likely explanation for the supernovae anomalies that led to the dark energy theory? Cosmologists made their first mistake when they ignored electricity as a significant force in the cosmos. For example, Supernova 1987a, the closest supernova to Earth ever studied, exhibits unmistakable signs of electrical discharge.

Source


Isn't it time to revise our views of the universe when 95% of it is imagination, just to keep the model working?

reply to post by enduser


There have been plenty of opportunities (experiments) to prove Albert wrong and it hasn't happened yet. But this is what science is all about, if you find data that conflicts with your theory, you change the theory to account for it.

Diddling with general relativity would be very messy though.

reply to post by Phage


Yeah i am aware of that im not saying it will change anything we currently 'know' of the universe, however it would be quite something if for example, the law of gravity were shown to be inaccurate

reply to post by enduser


Depends which "law of gravity" you're talking about. Newton's law of universal gravitation was displaced by general relativity but it works perfectly well for all practical purposes. If you want to know how fast something will fall, use Newton. If you want to fly to the moon, use Newton. But if you want to know what happens close to a neutron star you're going to have to ask Albert.

No matter what this effort may discover, even if it shows Einstein goofed, it won't affect our everyday lives. F will still be pretty darn close to G*M1*M2/d^2.

[edit on 30-10-2008 by Phage]

reply to post by Phage


I was just referring to the one mentioned in the article
I know that Newtonian gravitation was superseded by Einstein's theory of general relativity, but this goes to show our understanding and paradigm can change. I doubt anyone can argue that as our technology advances, so to will our understanding, and with that comes an inevitable change in view of the world around us, no? How boring would things become if everything became static?

Out of interest, do you feel that man has now reach a point where we know more than what we dont know? I know its difficult to gauge just how much we do know, but i would venture a guess and say we know very little, in the grand scheme of things, imaho

[edit for clarification]

[edit on 30-10-2008 by enduser]

reply to post by enduser


General relativity superseded Newtonian gravitation but it did not invalidate it, it refined it.

Hell, no. There is no limit to what there is to know. OK, there must be some limit but we are not even close to half way to it.