Just throwing this one out there to see what people think, being a postman, debates such as this are not particularly common at work. No football angle you see.
An old issue of New Scientist described a theory (er... sorry, no link. Truthfully I'm not even sure where to look) which suggested that there's no need for the dark energy explanation of expansion. Instead, it was suggested, different regions of the universe may have aged at different rates owing to the differing concentrations of matter, leading to some parts being tens of millions of years older than others... so the variability of the expansion results from our seeing regions which have had significantly more time during which to expand than others.
So, assuming I didn't just dream this, does this idea sound familiar to anyone, and if so, any thoughts?
For my own part, I like the idea, possibly because I'm not entirely convinced about the existence of anything that might be called dark energy. That said, I'll freely admit that I'm no Jeffrey Archer and I'm not really in much of a position to offer anything other than a vaguely formed opinion on the whole dark energy thing.