The Telegraph’s James Delingpole with a helpful anecdote on how science normally works:
So Dark Energy might not exist after all? Good. I’m delighted to hear it. Not that I have anything personal against this mysterious substance which until very recently scientists believed made up three quarters of the universe. (In fact if it does exist, I want some in a jar in my office. It sounds pretty cool).
No, the reason I’m pleased is because it shows the healthy, normal process of science in action.
Dark Energy was invented by cosmologists “to fit Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity into reality after modern space telescopes discovered that the Universe was not behaving as it should.”
“According to Einstein’s work, the speed at which the Universe is expanding following the Big Bang should be slower than it actually is and this unexplained anomaly threatened to turn the whole theory upside down. In order to reconcile this problem the concept of dark energy was invented”.
“But now Blake Temple and Joel Smoller, mathematicians at the University of California and the University of Michigan, believe they have come up with a whole new set of calculations that allow for all the sums to add up without the need for this controversial substance.”
“The research could change the way astronomers view the composition of our Universe.”
Or then again, it might not. Let’s just be grateful, shall we, that Temple and Smoller have been free to publish their research, without being vilified by the rest of the scientific community, risking their funding being withdrawn and being described as “dark matter deniers.”