I Dark energy is intrinsic to the space itself

AI Thread Summary
Dark energy is characterized as an intrinsic energy of space itself, remaining constant in density as the universe expands. This constancy leads to dark energy dominating the universe's energy budget over time, resulting in accelerated expansion. The discussion explores the nature of space, suggesting it is not a material entity that requires creation, but rather a conceptual distance between objects. It challenges the intuition that objects need a force to move apart, proposing that acceleration may be a natural state on cosmic scales. The conversation also touches on the possibility of alternative models of dark energy that do not assume constant density, while emphasizing that speculation about discrete space is not within the scope of scientific discussion.
PainterGuy
Messages
938
Reaction score
72
Hi,

I was reading the following article.

Dark energy is thought to be different, though. Rather than being a type of particle, it appears to behave as though it were a type of energy intrinsic to space itself. As space expands, the dark energy density remains constant, rather than decreasing or increasing. As a result, after the Universe has expanded for long enough, dark energy comes to dominate the energy budget of the Universe. As time goes on, it becomes progressively more dominant over the other components, leading to the accelerated expansion we observe today.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/starts...t-which-would-lead-to-a-revolution-in-physics

How come the density of dark energy remains constant? Yes, if it's intrinsic to the space itself and more space is created when the expansion takes place then it's understandable that its density should remain constant. But then the question is where does the extra new space come from? What creates it? Could you please help me with it? Thanks, in advance?
 
Space news on Phys.org
PainterGuy said:
But then the question is where does the extra new space come from? What creates it?
The whole universe is expanding. That means that its volume increases. But there is nothing outside the universe, so the volume doesn't "come from" anything.
 
PainterGuy said:
But then the question is where does the extra new space come from? What creates it?
Space is not a material thing that needs to be created. It's just a bit more general notion of distance between objects. When you separate two things, one way or another, you don't create anything in-between them. Yet, there is now 'more' space.
With dark energy, what confounds is our everyday intuition that stationary things don't start moving apart unless there's some unbalanced force involved. But it doesn't have to be true. It might just be that it is natural for things to accelerate apart, and the faster the more distant they are. But it is such a very, very, very tiny effect that it gets swamped by local forces. So we have no common-sense reason to think that it is a natural state of affairs to see distant objects accelerate away. And yet, on large enough scales, that's exactly what is observed.
Once we grant that, we can turn the question on its head, and instead of asking where does the thing 'pushing' objects apart come from, we can ask why certain things don't accelerate apart - like they should be doing. And that's much easier to answer with more palatable intuitions - it's because this system is bound by gravity, this system is bound by electromagnetic forces, this system is bound by... etc.
 
  • Like
Likes Imager and PainterGuy
PainterGuy said:
I was reading the following article.
That article is a pop science article, and is not a good source if you actually want to learn the science.

PainterGuy said:
How come the density of dark energy remains constant?
We assume it is constant in our models because we have no evidence to suggest that it isn't, and it being constant is the simplest possibility. But it is not the only possibility; one can construct models in which there is a scalar field that acts like "dark energy" in its effects (causing accelerated expansion of the universe) but does not have a constant density everywhere.
 
Bandersnatch said:
Space is not a material thing that needs to be created. It's just a bit more general notion of distance between objects. When you separate two things, one way or another, you don't create anything in-between them. Yet, there is now 'more' space.

Thank you.

But if the space is discrete and made up of infinitesimally small particles or whatever, then more space would mean more discrete particles. I was thinking more along these lines earlier. Could you please guide me?
 
PainterGuy said:
if the space is discrete and made up of infinitesimally small particles or whatever
This is personal speculation and is off limits here.
 
  • Like
Likes Vanadium 50
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombination_(cosmology) Was a matter density right after the decoupling low enough to consider the vacuum as the actual vacuum, and not the medium through which the light propagates with the speed lower than ##({\epsilon_0\mu_0})^{-1/2}##? I'm asking this in context of the calculation of the observable universe radius, where the time integral of the inverse of the scale factor is multiplied by the constant speed of light ##c##.
The formal paper is here. The Rutgers University news has published a story about an image being closely examined at their New Brunswick campus. Here is an excerpt: Computer modeling of the gravitational lens by Keeton and Eid showed that the four visible foreground galaxies causing the gravitational bending couldn’t explain the details of the five-image pattern. Only with the addition of a large, invisible mass, in this case, a dark matter halo, could the model match the observations...
Hi, I’m pretty new to cosmology and I’m trying to get my head around the Big Bang and the potential infinite extent of the universe as a whole. There’s lots of misleading info out there but this forum and a few others have helped me and I just wanted to check I have the right idea. The Big Bang was the creation of space and time. At this instant t=0 space was infinite in size but the scale factor was zero. I’m picturing it (hopefully correctly) like an excel spreadsheet with infinite...
Back
Top