Re: Question for Cosmologists

Rich Blinne wrote:

> Note the following story in New Scientist
> <http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8566&feedId=online-news_rss20>:
>
> Dark energy – the mysterious force that drives the acceleration of the
> universe – changes over time, controversial new calculations suggest.
> If true, the work rules out Einstein's notion of a "cosmological
> constant" and suggests dark energy, which now repels space, once drew
> it together. [emphasis mine]
>
> My question for the cosmologists on this group is as follows: Does
> this not imply that inflation is incorrect and by extension so is the
> multiverse explanation of fine-tuning?

My answer (as an amateur cosmologist) is Rich's question is "no". There
is no such implication. The report in the New Scientist is concerned
with changes over a few billion years, disjunct from the very short
interval over which inflation is postulated to have occured.
Don
Received on Thu Jan 12 23:49:43 2006