Accelertion of expansion of the universe in doubt

So, a team analysed a much bigger sample of supernova, and found that the evidence for dark energy is much flimsier that initially thought.. in the order of 3 sigma, rather than the 5 sigma of the earlier sampleshttps://www.sciencedaily.com/...ses/2016/10/161021123238.htm

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Five years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astronomers for their discovery, in the late 1990s, that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace.

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Their conclusions were based on analysis of Type Ia supernovae -- the spectacular thermonuclear explosion of dying stars -- picked up by the Hubble space telescope and large ground-based telescopes. It led to the widespread acceptance of the idea that the universe is dominated by a mysterious substance named 'dark energy' that drives this accelerating expansion.

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Now, a team of scientists led by Professor Subir Sarkar of Oxford University's Department of Physics has cast doubt on this standard cosmological concept. Making use of a vastly increased data set -- a catalogue of 740 Type Ia supernovae, more than ten times the original sample size -- the researchers have found that the evidence for acceleration may be flimsier than previously thought, with the data being consistent with a constant rate of expansion.

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