Does dark energy have anything to do with expansion?

[EnumaElish]

I know next to nothing about either concept, but that does not stop me from asking:

Have physicists/cosmologists considered dark energy possibly being associated with creation of new space?

Or are they totally unrelated? Or even opposite concepts?

 

[mathman]

I know next to nothing about either concept, but that does not stop me from asking:

Have physicists/cosmologists considered dark energy possibly being associated with creation of new space?

Or are they totally unrelated? Or even opposite concepts?

Your headline asks about dark energy and expansion. Here the theory is that dark energy is an explanation for the observation that the expansion is accelerating. "new space" is a concept that you will have to define.

 

[turbo]

That's not such an off-the-wall question, though. If the universe is expanding (getting larger) and the "empty" space thus created is suffused with the zero-point energy of the quantum vacuum, some questions arise. If DE is causing the expansion of the universe, and the space thus created itself has a non-zero energy, how are these related, and is there a thermodynamic model that can relate them?

 

[EnumaElish]

Your headline asks about dark energy and expansion. Here the theory is that dark energy is an explanation for the observation that the expansion is accelerating. "new space" is a concept that you will have to define.

I was using the term "creation of new space" equivalently with "expansion," which may or may not be technologically correct.

Thanks to your post I understand the existing theory a little better, in very broad brush terms.

I have two additional questions on the subject:

1. Do we experience/observe the acceleration (of expansion) as gravity, per Einstein's hypothesis that gravity is not distinguishable from acceleration?

2. What effect does dark energy have on the total entropy of the universe, if any?