The Nobel prize winner who thinks we have the universe all wrong

There was really good article in the Atlantic recently. It was written by Ross Anderson, and it was called The Nobel Prize Winner who thinks we have the universe all wrong. It concerns cosmologist Adam Riess¹, who shared the 2011 Nobel prize in physics with Brian Schmidt and Saul Perlmutter. The prize was awarded for “the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”.

Adam Riess illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic. Sources: Janerik Henriksson / AFP /Getty; Getty.

I remember it well. The original work was done in 1998, see the Wikipedia article on the accelerating expansion of the universe. Observations were made of type 1a supernovae, which are thought to be standard candles. The idea is that for nearby type 1a supernovae, there’s an inverse linear relationship between the brightness and the redshift. However for distant type 1a supernovae, the inverse relationship goes non-linear because the expansion rate of the universe has been changing.

Their results showed that the expansion of the universe was speeding up

Two different teams² did the observing: the Supernova Cosmology Project headed up by Saul Perlmutter, and the High-Z Supernova Search Team headed up by Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess. The Nobel prize background document is worth a read. It refers to “the two breakthrough papers”. One is Measurement of Ω and Λ from 42 high-redshift supernovae by Perlmutter and 31 other authors. The other is Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant by Schmidt, Riess, and 18 other authors.

“Asymmetric Ashes” artist’s impression of a type 1a supernova, CCA4.0I image by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), see wikimedia

Both teams were expecting their results to show that the expansion of the universe was slowing down. They were surprised to find the opposite. It looked like the expansion of the universe was speeding up. After that the term “dark energy” was coined by Michael Turner in a paper co-authored with Dragan Huterer.

Erwin Schrödinger proposed a “cosmic pressure” way back in 1918

I ought to make it clear that whilst the term dark energy is relatively recent, the general idea is not. See my article on a compressed prehistory of dark energy for more. Erwin Schrödinger proposed a “cosmic pressure” way back in 1918. It was a shame Einstein didn’t like the idea, because he could have predicted the Hubble expansion, but such is life. In addition Georges Lemaître spoke of an accelerating expansion in his 1933 paper Evolution of the Expanding Universe. On top of that, see the 2010 paper Is Hubble’s Expansion due to Dark Energy? by Ramesh Gupta and Anirudh Pradhan. They said dark energy is responsible for the expansion of the universe, not just the accelerating expansion. People will tell you the universe is expanding “because of momentum left over from the Big Bang”. But it’s space that’s expanding, not the distribution of moving objects within space. As to why, in 1930 Einstein said “it appears that space will have to be regarded as a primary thing and that matter is derived from it”. Ordinarily we refer to E=mc² and gamma-gamma pair production, and say matter is made of energy. That’s because a photon has an E=hf wave nature, and when you take energy out of a wave, the wave is diminished. Then if you take all the energy out of the wave, it isn’t there any more. Hence the photon is made of energy. Then since electrons and positrons can be made from photons, matter is made of energy too. Then if space is a primary thing, and you ask me what energy is, it would seem that energy is the same thing as space. Not only that, but according to general relativity, space behaves like a gin-clear ghostly elastic solid. Only it seems it’s a compressed gin-clear ghostly elastic solid. It expands like a stress ball when you open your fist.

Something was causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate

But sorry to digress. Anderson starts² by telling us Riess was only 27 when he started the type 1a supernovae work. Then “when all the data came together, in 1998, the results surprised him”. They were “shocking even”. The galaxies were receding more quickly than expected, leading to the  conclusion that something was causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Anderson goes say the theorists proposed the existence of dark energy: “a faint, repulsive force that pervades all of empty space”. Then “as this process puts more space between those galaxies, the repulsive force only strengthens, speeding up the expansion of the universe”. Anderson said Riess had played a significant role in establishing what is now known as the Standard Model of Cosmology. But he also said cosmologists “have begun to worry that this story, and particularly its final act, might be wrong. Some talk of revolution. A growing number now say that the standard model should be replaced”.  

It grew into a serious problem called the Hubble tension

Riess is one of them. After he won his Nobel prize, the world was his oyster. He could have had his pick of prestige positions. However he declined the offers because he wanted to remain “a frontline investigator of capital-n Nature”. Anderson then tells us something major seemed to be missing from the standard model of cosmology, and theorists wanted to know the rate at which the universe expanded at different epochs. He adds that this was Riess’s speciality, and “in 2011, Riess and his team developed an even better technique for measuring cosmic distances with the Hubble Space Telescope”. However as new and better data came in, a problem emerged: “Riess would update his calculation of the current expansion rate of the universe. To his alarm, the answers he was getting differed from those produced another way”. This other way was to start with the expansion rate of the early universe and extrapolate using the standard model of cosmology. Riess expected the discrepancy to fade away, but it became more pronounced. It grew into a serious problem called the Hubble tension. That where the Hubble constant appears to be circa 67 km/s per megaparsec, and circa 73 km/s per megaparsec:

CC BY-SA 4.0 image by Renerpho see Wikipedia and Wikimedia commons. Caption: Estimated values of the Hubble constant, 2001–2020. Estimates in black represent calibrated distance ladder measurements which tend to cluster around 73 (km/s)/Mpc; red represents early universe CMB/BAO measurements with ΛCDM parameters which show good agreement on a figure near 67 (km/s)/Mpc, while blue are other techniques, whose uncertainties are not yet small enough to decide between the two.

Anderson said Riess told him that “It smelled like something might be wrong with the standard model”. Anderson also said if the standard model were to topple, cosmology would be upended, with “weighty matters of career, ego, and the very nature of existence at stake”. He qualified that by saying prominent scientists had told him that Riess might be getting ahead of himself. He quoted David Spergel, the president of the Simons Foundation, saying “Adam speaks very loudly. He argues vociferously with whoever disagrees with him”. Anderson also tells us that “Riess grew visibly exasperated when we discussed these objections”. He said Riess blamed the sociology of the field, wherein a clique of graybeards have been dismissing conflicting data.

The first release had hinted that dark energy was stronger in the early universe than now

Some of the data had come from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak. The first release had hinted that dark energy was stronger in the early universe than now. The second release, which came out in March 2025, seemed to confirm this. Anderson said “dark energy appeared to lose its kick several billion years ago”. He added a caveat to say “this finding is not settled science”, but then said if it holds up, a wholesale revision of the standard model would be required. Anderson quoted Colin Hill, a cosmologist at Columbia, saying “the textbooks that I use in my class would need to be rewritten”. Anderson also said the heat death of the universe could be badly wrong. He said dark energy could go all the way to zero, and then turn negative and result in the Big Crunch. Or maybe not, but either way “the deep future of the universe is wide open”.

Big Crunch image from How Stuff Works, also see The Physics of the Universe The Big Crunch, the Big Freeze and the Big Rip

Anderson wrapped up by saying Riess was pleased to see another tough result for the standard model of cosmology, and compared it to multiple cracks in a breaking egg. He also said Riess believes that the theorists have become complacent, such that when Riess “reaches out to them for help in making sense of his empirical results, their responses disappoint him”. Anderson quoted Riess saying “Sometimes, I feel like I am providing clues and killing time while we wait for the next Einstein to come along”. That raised a flag, because sometimes I feel that cosmologists don’t need another Einstein, they just need to pay attention to the one they’ve got. But never mind, because Anderson said Riess could feel a new buzz, the daggers are out, a fight is brewing, and “the field is hot again”.

The standard model of cosmology is wrong on multiple counts

I’m really pleased to hear all this, because as somebody who has read the Einstein digital papers and knows how gravity works, I know that the standard model of cosmology is wrong on multiple counts. Bear with me, because to explain myself, I have to start with Einstein’s operation definition of time. What does a clock really do? It doesn’t actually measure the flow of time. A clock is not some cosmic gas meter with time flowing through it. It clocks up some kind of regular cyclical motion, and displays a cumulative result that we call “the time”. All clocks do this, be they grandfather clocks, quartz wristwatches, or NIST optical clocks. The moot point is that when a clock goes slower, it’s because the regular cyclical motion goes slower. And for an optical clock, that motion is the motion of light and associated electromagnetic phenomena. To cut to the chase: an optical clock goes slower when it’s lower because light goes slower when it’s lower.

The speed of light varies in the room you’re in, because it varies with gravitational potential

It might look like the speed of light is constant, but that’s because of the wave nature of matter. See The Other Meaning of Special Relativity by Robert Close. When you measure the speed of waves using rods and clocks that are themselves made of waves, you always measure the wave speed to be the same. It’s like measuring the length of your shadow using the shadow of your stick. Some people will tell you that the speed of light is a universal physical constant, but it isn’t. The speed of light varies in the room you’re in, because it varies with gravitational potential. Einstein said this time and time again, year after year, in 1907, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1920: “the curvature of light rays occurs only in spaces where the speed of light is spatially variable”. Irwin Shapiro said the same in 1964, but it’s since been expunged from modern physics. Some have tried to push back. For example in 2007 João Magueijo and John Moffat pointed out that we use the local motion of light to define the second and the metre, which we then use to measure the local motion of light. So the constant speed of light is a tautology. However here we are almost twenty years later, and it’s still not common knowledge.

The map is not the territory

I sometimes feel that I’m living in an idiocracy, where supposedly-clever people don’t understand the simple things. Perhaps it’s because they get lost in maths, and can’t see what’s real. Perhaps that’s why Einstein said this about special relativity in 1908: “since the mathematicians pounced on the relativity theory I no longer understand it myself”. Talking of which, when I take the fast round trip through space and you stay at home, there’s an invariant spacetime interval for both of us. But note that the total light path length in my parallel-mirror light clock is the same as yours: the invariant spacetime interval is just invariant total motion. In similar vein the Lorentz factor is just Pythagoras’s theorem. In similar vein I’m time dilated because my local speed of light is less than yours, because of my macroscopic motion through space. Look up to the clear night sky. Can you point out a world line? No. Because there are no world lines. There are no light cones. A reference frame is little more than a state of motion, which you can gauge from the CMBR dipole anisotropy:

CMBR dipole image courtesy of NASA

Moreover there is no spacetime, because spacetime is merely a mathematical model of space at all times. There is no motion in this so-called block universe, so it is not our universe. We live in a world of space and motion. The map is not the territory.

A gravitational field is a place where space is “neither homogeneous nor isotropic”

It gets worse for general relativity. If you ask why does light curve in a gravitational field, some will tell you it’s because the spacetime it’s travelling through is curved. It isn’t true. Spacetime models space at all times, so there’s no motion through spacetime. On top of that, spacetime curvature relates to the tidal force, it’s the spacetime gradient that relates to gravity. On top of that, as Peter Brown said,  “the interpretation of gravity as a curvature in space-time is an interpretation Einstein did not agree with”. Instead Einstein agreed with Newton. See Opticks query 20 where Newton talked about a refraction. Einstein referred to Huygens, and talked of “the refraction of light rays by the gravitational field”. This is why we have gravitational lensing and Einstein’s rings. Einstein also said a gravitational field is a place where space is “neither homogeneous nor isotropic”. The inhomogeneity is non-linear, decreasing with distance from the gravitating body, so the result is a curved metric. Imagine you could place a 15 x 15 array of NIST optical clocks throughout a horizontal slice of space around the Earth. Plot the clock rates such that lower slower clock rates generate data points lower down in a 3D image, and higher faster clock rates generate data points higher up in the 3D image. When you join the dots, your plot looks like this:

CCASA image by Johnstone, see Wikipedia

The image is from the Wikipedia Riemann curvature tensor page. It’s the rubber-sheet depiction of curved spacetime. But note that spacetime does not really exist, and your plot is derived from optical clock rates. So what it really is, is a plot of the speed of light varying with gravitational potential. Not the coordinate speed of light. The speed of light.

When you know how gravity works, you know that the standard model of cosmology is wrong on multiple counts

Einstein also said “the energy of the gravitational field shall act gravitatively in the same way as any other kind of energy”. There’s an energy density gradient in the space around the Earth. It’s like the space near the earth is denser⁴ than the space further away. Because of this “the speed of light is spatially variable”, and that’s why light curves downwards. It curves downwards like sonar waves curve downwards in the sea. Then matter falls down because of the wave nature of matter. Think of it as light in a closed path. Only the horizonal component curves downwards, so the deflection of matter is half the deflection of light. It’s all very simple really. And like I was saying, when you know how gravity works, you know that the standard model of cosmology is wrong on multiple counts.

There’s no gravity on the largest scale

The first issue is with the FLRW metric, which “starts with the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy of space”. It’s an issue because Einstein said a gravitational field was a place where space is “neither homogeneous nor isotropic”. When cosmologists assume that space is homogeneous on the largest scale, they are assuming that there’s no gravity on the largest scale.

The universe is flat regardless of the density

Another issue is the density parameter omega (Ω). This is said to determine whether the geometry of the universe has a positive curvature (Ω > 1), no curvature (Ω = 1), or negative curvature (Ω < 1). It’s an issue because if space is homogeneous, spacetime is flat regardless of the density. It’s akin to being in a gedanken void at the centre of a planet. It’s a place where gravitational potential is lowest and the energy density is uniform, so your pencil doesn’t fall down. Likewise when the energy density in the universe is uniform, light goes straight, so Ω is not balanced on a pencil point.

A gravitational field is not a place where space is curved

Carrying on from this, see the Wikipedia article on the shape of the universe. Note the line that says this: “General relativity explains how spatial curvature (local geometry) is constrained by gravity”. No it doesn’t. A gravitational field is not a place where space is curved⁵. A gravitational field is a place where the inhomogeneity of space diminishes in a non-linear fashion, this being modelled as curved spacetime. Unfortunately Alexander Friedmann’s 1922 paper on the curvature of space did not make the crucial distinction between curved space and curved spacetime.

Gravity was never going to stop the expansion of space

Some say if Ω is greater than some critical value, the expansion of the universe will eventually be halted by gravity, and the universe will collapse. See for example John Peacocks’s cosmological physics: “This is marvellously simple: the dynamics of the entire universe are the same as those of a cannonball fired vertically against the Earth’s gravity”. Unfortunately the dynamics of the universe are nothing like a cannonball fired vertically. That’s because it’s space that’s expanding, and because homogeneous space means there’s no overall gravitational field. Even if there was, a gravitational field alters the motion of matter and light through space, but it doesn’t make space fall down. Gullstrand–Painlevé coordinates might sound like a nice idea, but the waterfall analogy is cargo-cult claptrap. We do not live in some Chicken Little world where the sky is falling in.

A gravitational field is not negative energy

Peacock also said the Friedmann equation says a universe that is spatially closed has negative total energy. The trouble with that, is that it presumes gravitational field energy is negative. It isn’t, it’s positive. That’s why Einstein said “the energy of the gravitational field shall act gravitatively in the same way as any other kind of energy”. Stephen Hawking didn’t know this. Hence on page 82 of his 2002 book The Theory of Everything he said “in a sense the gravitational field has negative energy”. No it doesn’t. Not in any sense.

Lambda has got to go

The Standard Model of Cosmology is also known as the Lambda-CDM model. The lambda is said to be the cosmological constant, which comes with some excess baggage called the cosmological constant problem. However that’s only a problem because as Gerard ‘t Hooft says, quantum mechanics is nonsense. The real problem is the constant bit. Conservation of energy says it can’t be constant. So lambda has got to go, to be replaced by spatial energy.

Cold dark matter has also got to go

The Lambda-CDM model is the lambda cold dark matter model. Cold dark matter was proposed in 1982 by James Peebles. That’s 43 years ago, and nobody has ever seen any WIMPs or axions or any of the other dark matter candidates. So it’s time cosmologists took a look at The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. That’s where Einstein said “the energy of the gravitational field shall act gravitatively in the same way as any other kind of energy”. This is spatial energy, and it isn’t made up of particles. So cold dark matter has also got to go, to be replaced by inhomogeneous space. That’s because as per the raisin-cake analogy, space expands between the galaxies but not within:

Raisin bread image from Sky at Night magazine. Caption: As bread bakes, the raisins in the bread (like galaxies in our Universe) don’t change size, but the dough (the space between galaxies) keeps getting bigger as it rises. Credit: Paul Wootton

Hence the expanding universe plus conservation of energy is going to give you a spatial energy density variations. Every galaxy will be sitting in a region of space that’s denser than the surrounding space. That’s going to have a gravitational effect. Check out inhomogeneous cosmology. As for David Wiltshire’s Timescape cosmology, I think he’s part right. I’ll write about it sometime.

Inflation has got to go

Inflation has got to go too. It’s a solution to three problems that just don’t exist. The monopole problem misses the point that the electron has an electromagnetic field, not an electric field. The flatness problem misses the point that homogeneous space is space without a gravitational field. The horizon problem misses the point that as Stephen Hawking said, the universe can be likened to a black hole⁶ in reverse. Since a black hole is a place where the speed of light is zero, nothing moves, so there is no temperature, and there are no differences. You just don’t need some magical mysterious “inflaton” field.

We should expect the early dense universe to be subject to intense time dilation

A further issue is an omission. Like I said, Einstein said the speed of light varies in line with gravitational potential in in 1907, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1920. But it just doesn’t feature in Big Bang cosmology. A black hole is a place where the speed of light is zero, the universe can be likened to a black hole in reverse, so we should be talking about an early universe where the speed of light was very slow⁷, or even zero. We should expect the early dense universe to be subject to intense time dilation. Hence the Big Bang might have happened more then 13.8 billion years ago, and may have been a slow drawn out process.

A new universe suddenly seems possible

As to how it happened I don’t know. But what I do know is that cosmologists used to say the universe was once the size of grapefruit, but now say the observable universe was once the size of a grapefruit. That happened after WMAP results confirmed a flat universe in 2012. Newton’s infinite universe cuts both ways, so I dislike the way some cosmologists now say the universe has always been infinite. I also dislike what happened with the James Webb space telescope and the massive early galaxies. I described it as “circling the wagons”. Science is supposed to be all about experiment and observation and progress, not defending an orthodoxy that’s riddled with issues. Anyway, I hope all this helps. I hope that people like Adam Riess can now take out the trash, to leave us with a new improved model of cosmology. Like Anderson said, a new universe suddenly seems possible.

 

_{1  Thank you Gunnur Hess for bringing this to my attention.}

_{2  Fun fact: there’s a Dr Thomas Matheson of the NOAO in both teams.}

_{3  If it’s paywalled for you, I’m sure you will be able to find a copy elsewhere.}

_{4  The word “denser” is maybe not quite right, but Newton used it in query 21, and that’s good enough for me. Even though he had the density increasing as you moved away from a planet, not the other way around.}

_{5  The electromagnetic field is. Sadly Einstein was unable to come up with a theory of everything.}

_{6  If you thought the standard model of cosmology had issues, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Black hole physics is just dripping with pseudoscience. There are people who will tell you that a black hole is a gateway to a parallel antiverse, or that a black hole facilitates time travel. Or that elephants are in two places at once, there’s an information paradox, and everything is a hologram. However they won’t tell you how gamma ray bursts work. There are also issues with singularities and LIGO.}

_{7  Joao Magueijo and Andreas Albrecht got it back to front with their 1998 time varying speed of light as a solution to cosmological puzzles.}