I generally understand what the problem is, but I’m not good at science and would like to see a simpler and clearer explanation, preferably with some analogies.
In: Physics
I’m only aware of one “cosmological constant” issue in physics.
When Albert Einstein formulated his new understanding of gravity and acceleration, he found that his description wouldn’t let the universe as a whole be static and stable. So he invented an *ad hoc* principle that permitted the universe to be balanced without collapsing into itself.
When the universal red shift was discovered, suggesting that the universe was expanding, he realized that he could have predicted this was the case, in the same way that the movement of the planets’ not quite matching our predictions were used to justify hypothesizing the existence of undiscovered planets whose gravity perturbed the orbits of the known ones.
Einstein considered his introduction of a ‘fudge factor’ to eliminate the mismatch between his model and observation to be the greatest failure of his career.
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