Mathematicians are challenging the idea that dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, mathematicians from the University of California, Davis, provide mathematical proof that instabilities inherent in the Einstein-Euler equations imply that the current model of the expanding universe is not viable.

In a new study, UC Davis researchers and their colleagues in the South Pole Telescope (SPT) collaboration used observational data of this first light — collected from the SPT located at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica — to explore the theoretical underpinnings of the Lambda-cold dark matter model, the standard cosmological model of the Big Bang.