This is a quote from an email I got this morning. These are big claims, and sadly the email and website did not follow up on them. The webpage is rich in claims that others, e.g., Einstein, are wrong but poor in graphs, only one,  and very poor in equations, none at all.

One phrase caught my eye: “Erroneous “Dark Energy” Invention Draws Nobel Prize”. I think this illustrates the problem with this sort of crank science. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was not awarded to Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess for inventing dark energy, but “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”. It was awarded for an experimental observation that changed the way we see the universe.

Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess did not invent anything, they used careful observations, of distant exploding stars, to show that the rate at which the universe is expanding is increasing not slowing down. We expect gravity to cause this expansion to slow down, but the experimental evidence is that the effect of gravity is being overwhelmed by something else.

This has caused people to hypothesise, or invent, Dark Energy. But the crucial thing is that, so far, the big achievement here is not to propose the existence of Dark Energy, but to realise that our universe is expanding at a faster and faster rate. Something that does not so much expand my mind as blow it.

If you have credible evidence that Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess are in error, then  let them know. Until you do then their prize is not ‘erroneous’.