2025/04/04 by Charles L. Steinhardt, Steinhardt, Charles L., Radosław Wojtak +2 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.03829
openalex publication_date 2025/04/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recent results regarding dark energy are mutually inconsistent under the ΛCDM cosmological model, hinting at the possibility of undiscovered physics. However, the currently accepted cosmological parameters come from a joint inference between observational data sets, a process that is formally invalid for inconsistent observations. We will show that many problems can arise when using joint inference on disagreeing observations such as significantly overestimated margins of error, high dependencies on priors, and sensitivities to boundary constraints. Because we do not know if these inconsistencies arise due to errors in observation, poor statistical techniques, or an improper model, it is difficult to fix these problems. We will discuss each scenario in which the analysis method breaks and explore an alternative resampling technique, developing methods that may make determining the sources of tensions in cosmological parameters easier.