I Is there any mechanism possible for the Big Brake?

AI Thread Summary
The discussion revolves around the concept of the "big brake," a theoretical scenario where dark energy could change sign, halting the universe's expansion. Critics argue that this idea lacks a solid foundation in current physics and is largely speculative, as it deviates from established understandings of dark energy. The referenced papers suggest that quantum effects would prevent such a scenario from occurring. Additionally, the implications of a sudden stop in cosmic expansion raise questions about the effects on galaxies and black holes, but no mechanism for such an event has been identified. Overall, the conversation highlights the speculative nature of theories surrounding dark energy and the challenges in predicting its future behavior.
Trollfaz
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https://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1688
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014IJMPD..2350054P/abstract
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-s-end-will-be-the-end-of-endings/
According to these references they suggest that dark energy can suddenly change sign and causing the universe expansion to stop and turn static immediately, resulting in extreme(infinite) deceleration.
Is this just a speculation if how dark energy evolves in the future. As far as I know we have no idea how dark energy behaves in the far future that's why scientist come up with a lot of theories.
 
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Trollfaz said:
According to these references they suggest that dark energy can suddenly change sign
I don't think this is a good description. I realize it appears in the Scientific American article, but that's a pop science article and should not be taken as an accurate description of the actual physics.

The first paper you reference describes the "big brake" equation of state as ##p = A / \rho##, which is nothing at all like dark energy (dark energy is ##p = - \rho##). It is also nothing like matter or radiation, and in fact is nothing like anything we have ever observed. The paper makes no claim whatever about what would bring about such an equation of state, or whether it is even physically reasonable (my answer to that would be "no").

Trollfaz said:
Is this just a speculation if how dark energy evolves in the future.
It's certainly a speculation, and one without any foundation in what we currently know, as far as I can see; it's just an abstract investigation into the implications of a particular mathematical model. But, as above, it has nothing to do with dark energy.

Trollfaz said:
As far as I know we have no idea how dark energy behaves in the far future
If you want to discard everything we currently know about physics and say that anything goes, then of course we have no idea about how anything behaves in the far future. But that does not strike me as a fruitful way to proceed.

Trollfaz said:
that's why scientist come up with a lot of theories.
Scientists come up with a lot of speculations because (a) it's fun, and (b) it helps to generate more published papers. The vast majority of these speculations never result in anything relevant to our actual universe.

Note also that the point of the first paper is to show that quantum effects prevent the classical "big brake" scenario from actually happening.
 
PeterDonis said:
I don't think this is a good description. I realize it appears in the Scientific American article,
Yes the Scientific American article does in fact make a lot of unverifiable claims like the big lurch in the picture which has no supporting reference as well as the claim that phantom energy freezes everything in place.
 
An interesting aside to the question: what if space did stop expanding suddenly? What would be the effect on visible objects like galaxies and black holes?
 
James William Hall said:
An interesting aside to the question: what if space did stop expanding suddenly? What would be the effect on visible objects like galaxies and black holes?
You'd have to provide a mechanism by which it could "suddenly stop". Since we aren't aware of one, we can't really answer the question.

Honestly, in this context "space expanding" is not the best description of what's going on, although there are good reasons why people use it. The simplest way to put it is that galaxies move apart for the same reason a pool ball keeps rolling: inertia. It's complicated by the curvature of spacetime, which is where the "expanding space" explanation comes in, but at the root of it if you want to stop "space expanding" you just need to stop all the galaxies. We don't know a mechanism that can do that - hence my first paragraph.
 
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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...
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