Davis, T MMortsell, ESollerman, JesperBecker, Andrew CBlondin, StephanieChallis, Peter MClocchiatti, AlejandroFilippenko, AlexeiFoley, RyanGarnavich, Peter MJha, SKrisciunas, KevinKirshner, Robert PLeibundgut, BrunoLi, WMatheson, ThomasMiknaitis, GajusPignata, GuilianoRest, ArminRiess, AdamSchmidt, BrianSmith, R. ChrisSpyromilio, JasonStubbs, ChristopherSuntzeff, Nicholas BTonry, JohnWood-Vasey, W. MichaelZenteno, Alfredo2015-12-070004-637Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/24940The first cosmological results from the ESSENCE supernova survey (Wood-Vasey and coworkers) are extended to a wider range of cosmological models including dynamical dark energy and nonstandard cosmological models. We fold in a greater number of external data sets such as the recent Higher-z release of high-redshift supernovae (Riess and coworkers), as well as several complementary cosmological probes. Model comparison statistics such as the Bayesian and Akaike information criteria are applied to gauge the worth of models. These statistics favor models that give a good fit with fewer parameters. Based on this analysis, the preferred cosmological model is the flat cosmological constant model, where the expansion history of the universe can be adequately described with only one free parameter describing the energy content of the universe. Among the more exotic models that provide good fits to the data, we note a preference for models whose best-fit parameters reduce them to the cosmological constant model.ESSENCE is a project funded by NSF grants AST 04-43378 and AST 05-07475. The DARK Cosmology Centre is funded by The Danish National Research Foundation. J. S. and E. M. acknowledge support for this study by VR and from the Anna Greta and Holger Crafoord fund. J. S. further acknowledges support from Danmarks Nationalbank. A. C. acknowledges the support of CONICYT, Chile, under grants FONDECYT 1051061 and FONDAP Center for Astrophysics 15010003. B. P. S. acknowledges support of the Australian Research Council. T. M. D. acknowledges the support of the Villum Kann Rasmussen Fonden and appreciates the hospitality of the University of Queensland during the writing of this paper.© 2007. The American Astronomical Society.Keywords: Cosmology: observations; Supernovae: general200710.1086/5199882015-12-07