| Scientists
battle 'dark energy' theory
The Australian, 23rd March 2005
I thought that
this article was interesting because I am interested in
the topic of dark matter. The nature of dark energy is
one of the things that remain a mystery to astronomers
and so I think that any new revelation concerning it is
very interesting. I also found it amusing how in the first
sentence they refer to dark energy as the cosmological
equivalent of the bogeyman (obviously meant to draw the
reader in).
This article
is about a new theory that is proposed to explain the
cause of the expansion of the universe. However when I
read it I was quite disappointed to find that although
the article is quite long only two sentences are devoted
to actually describing what the new theory is about. It
doesn’t give a very clear explanation of the theory but
this is expected considering the source of the article.
I suppose that most people that read the newspaper are
not so much interested in the details but the significance,
and this article does that. It explains the significance
that the theory would have if it were true – the fate
of the universe could be confirmed to be a slow steady
drifting apart. The article also gives a general explanation
of dark matter and the possible fates of the universe,
which I found interesting.
I also found
this article very useful, especially the part about Einstein’s
theory, because I am planning on doing ‘Changing views
in our perspective of the universe’ as my topic for the
presentation. I think that it would be interesting to
include how Einstein thought that the universe was static
and how he introduced a fudge factor into his general
theory of relativity to make it so. I also found it very
amusing that scientists will sometimes alter their results
to fit their beliefs rather than change what they believe
to fit the results.
Although I
liked the content of the article I did not like the way
it was structured. I felt that it was a bit haphazard
and contained too many quotes from supposed authority
figures. Instead of having proper paragraphs that explain
things clearly and in a logical fashion it seems as though
they have chopped it up into single sentences, shuffled
it around and thrown in a few random quotes to give what
they are saying some credibility. Some of the quotes,
such as the second last one, don’t seem to make much sense
or are not really relevant.
However I will
be interested to know how the next lot experiments go
and to see if their theory is correct.
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