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From the article, > discovering that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. They came to this conclusion by observing faraway exploding stars. These d

From the article, > discovering that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. They came to this conclusion by observing faraway exploding stars. These distant supernovae showed that the cosmos was getting bigger faster because the farther away the supernovae, the faster it appeared to be moving away from us. This explanation always bothers me. After a long time, things that move faster WILL be farther away than things that move slower. Thats just the definition of speed. It does not, by itself, demonstrate acceleration.

mr_mitm 2y ago
Oh please. Do you really think the people who won the nobel prize for this discovery have a grade school level understanding of speed? You seem to be talking about peculiar velocities, which are absolutely negligible on cosmological scales and only the velocity caused by the expansion of spacetime is relevant. What they really did was measure the distances and redshifts of dozens of supernovae and looked which energy contents of the universe could explain the observed relationship assuming that the Friedman-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric accurately describes the universe. Turns out you need 70% of something whose density does not change with the expansion. This is the original paper if Hossenfelder's summary of the explanation compressed in one sentence does not convince you: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9812133 https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9812133 For a derivation of the relationship between redshift and distance see any introdctory text on cosmology, e.g. chapter 8 of https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9712019 https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9712019 (he arrives at the equation on the last page). Edit: This goes into more detail of matter species in sec. 1.5 and touches on the SN observations in sec. 1.7: https://www.thphys.uni-heidelberg.de/~amendola/teaching/adv-cosm.pdf https://www.thphys.uni-heidelberg.de/~amendola/teaching/adv-... (on an unrelated note: he was my PhD advisor)
- arcastroe 2y ago
  > Oh please. Do you really think the people who won the nobel prize for this discovery have a grade school level understanding of speed? Of course not. My comment is a quibble on the one sentence explanation. You seem to agree with me it's insufficient. Thank you for the additional resource.

mr_mitm 2y ago

Oh please. Do you really think the people who won the nobel prize for this discovery have a grade school level understanding of speed? You seem to be talking about peculiar velocities, which are absolutely negligible on cosmological scales and only the velocity caused by the expansion of spacetime is relevant. What they really did was measure the distances and redshifts of dozens of supernovae and looked which energy contents of the universe could explain the observed relationship assuming that the Friedman-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric accurately describes the universe. Turns out you need 70% of something whose density does not change with the expansion. This is the original paper if Hossenfelder's summary of the explanation compressed in one sentence does not convince you: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9812133 https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9812133 For a derivation of the relationship between redshift and distance see any introdctory text on cosmology, e.g. chapter 8 of https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9712019 https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9712019 (he arrives at the equation on the last page). Edit: This goes into more detail of matter species in sec. 1.5 and touches on the SN observations in sec. 1.7: https://www.thphys.uni-heidelberg.de/~amendola/teaching/adv-cosm.pdf https://www.thphys.uni-heidelberg.de/~amendola/teaching/adv-... (on an unrelated note: he was my PhD advisor)

arcastroe 2y ago
> Oh please. Do you really think the people who won the nobel prize for this discovery have a grade school level understanding of speed? Of course not. My comment is a quibble on the one sentence explanation. You seem to agree with me it's insufficient. Thank you for the additional resource.