--John
Excerpted from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/digest/tech1.htm
Cosmic Force May Act Against Gravity
By Kathy Sawyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 27, 1998; Page A01
The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, according to startling
new evidence suggesting that a mysterious antigravity force permeates
"empty" space and is counteracting the pull of gravity on a cosmic scale.
If the new results hold up, scientists said, they could have enormous
ramifications for theories of cosmic evolution, resolving some conflicts and
creating new dilemmas as they reverberate through studies of the
largest-scale structures in the cosmos, the smallest particles in nature and
the frustrating quest for a "theory of everything" that would unify those
fields.
Scientists have reacted to the findings with a mix of shock, amazement,
horror, excitement and suspended disbelief.
The question of the fate of the universe ö whether it will expand to
infinity, contract in a "cosmic crunch" or flatline somewhere in between, is
one of the oldest and most controversial in cosmology.
Most astronomers agree that the universe began in a Big Bang up to 15
billion years ago, when all of time and space were contained in a single
dense point ö a singularity ö which abruptly expanded outward in a fireball
of particles. The most popular, and the simplest, Big Bang model holds that
the resulting universe should contain exactly the "critical density" of
matter required to keep it geometrically "flat," with just enough gravity to
balance the outward momentum, slowing it down. The result: a cosmos coasting
indefinitely on the verge of collapse.
Instead, the new evidence indicates that stars and galaxies are flying apart
in all directions at an ever-increasing rate ö thanks to an antigravity
boost. This means there must be an unexpected mix of ordinary matter and
some kind of unseen "dark matter" of an exotic nature. It also means,
scientists said, that the far-flung universe of billions of years hence will
seem dramatically more empty, dark and lonely.
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