[rpbertp13]

Wolfram and you both make the mistake of thinking that there is any value in saying that an established natural fact 'feels like a hack' or 'disagrees with your intuition'. One of the most important lessons of modern physics is that intuition is a terrible guide when it comes to understanding the physical world at its most fundamental level.

[nu23]

To me, 'hack' and 'unintuitive' carry different meanings. 'Hack' indicates some kind of ad-hoc patch to fix the model. Even if it fits the data, there could be a theoretical irregularity. I suspect that programmers experience this quite often when making a change that keeps the program working. Sure, it is possible that ultimately the hack is indeed how nature works, but its still worth exploring and making precise the nature of the irregularity.

[Keyframe]

Ha! I remember reading somewhere that Einstein refused to acknowledge Big bang theory and accelerating universe, because eventual heat death of universe was too depressing or something. I'm sure we'd all like a subspace communication channel, a warp drive, etc. but things are the way they are, we can just observe them, for now.

[taliesinb]

Einstein introduced the cosmological constant lambda Λ in an attempt to produce a steady state model of the universe -- in his view the most elegant solution to the problem of our existence was a universe infinite in age.

Later on when the Big Bang was firmly established it came to be seen as an unnecessary mistake.

In a twist of fate, when we discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe in the 90s -- also known as dark energy -- Einstein's cosmological constant Λ was the perfect place to 'absorb' it.

[gauravk92]

Can you provide further reading on that? I'd love to find out more about how exactly dark energy "absorbed" Einstein's ideas, and I'm sure I'm not alone here.

[taliesinb]

The other way around; the cosmological constant "absorbs" dark energy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy#Cosmological_consta...