New Scientist: 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense. Summary collection of observable phenomena for which real scientists have no clear explanation. The placebo effect, the horizon problem, Viking’s methane, dark energy:
IT IS one of the most famous, and most embarrassing, problems in physics. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at ever faster speeds. It’s an effect still searching for a cause – until then, everyone thought the universe’s expansion was slowing down after the big bang. “Theorists are still floundering around, looking for a sensible explanation,” says cosmologist Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “We’re all hoping that upcoming observations of supernovae, of clusters of galaxies and so on will give us more clues.”
Not to pat myself on the back but I was a coauthor on one of the papers which suggested that a possible explanation to the large number of high energy cosmic ray events might be Lorentz invariance violation (altering special relativity). Cool to see that get some lip service in this article. I also peripherally work on the horizon and dark energy problems as well.
Sean, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly experts such as yourself come out of the woodwork shortly after an article goes up here. Cool.
Hey, thanks for pointing out this story! Great stuff there.
Incidentally, I noticed New Scientist has a followup story on one of
those mysteries today — it’s about “dark energy” and how its behavior may have changed over time:
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn8566