Einstein - de Sitter model re - examined for the newly discovered SNe

Consistency of Einstein-de Sitter model with the recently observed SNe Ia by the Hubble Space Telescope is examined. The model shows a reasonable fit to the observation, if one takes into account the extinction of SNe light by the intergalactic metallic dust ejected from the SNe explosions. Though the fit to the new data is worsened considerably compared with the earlier data, it can still be regarded acceptable. We should wait for more accurate observations at higher redshifts (as expected from the coming space missions such as SNAP and JWST) in order to rule out a model, which seems to explain all the other existing observations well (some even better than the favoured ΛCDM model), is consistent with beautiful theoretical ideas like inflation and cold dark matter, and is not as speculative as the models of dark energy. 1. INTRODUCTION The high redshift supernovae (SNe) Ia explosions look fainter than they are expected in the Einstein-de Sitter (EdS) model (flat cold dark matter model with Ω total = 1), which used to be the favoured model before these observations were made a few years ago. The most popular explanation of this observed faintness is given by invoking 'dark energy', a homogeneously distributed energy component with negative pressure. This happens because the metric distance of an object, out to any redshift, can be increased by