In a December 16th, 2008 post, there appeared a post on the Wired.com blog about "dark energy" and Einstein's theories of general relativity and what came to be known as his "field equations." Apparently, scientists now postulate that “dark energy” (not to be confused with “dark matter”) is responsible for filling in the until-now-unidentified reality checks in Einstein’s equations.
This article is quite different from my usual. I don’t know enough about astrophysics to comment authoritatively on such findings, but below is provided a quick article/commentary/question that I typed after having read the Wired.com post. Hopefully, someone with similar interests or even hopefully someone of some expertise in the area of astrophysics would be able to comment on my observations, theories, and questions, thus providing answers to more of “life’s persisting questions,” as Garrison Keillor (of Prairie Home Companion fame) would say.
View the Wired.com blog post here: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/dark-energy-ein.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Einstein was creating his theory of general relativity, he included as the coupling constant in his equations k (kappa) -- then an unknown entity -- which he later dismissed as a fault. Now, with the discovery that this "dark energy" exists and could very well be that field equation constant, it's mind boggling just how accurate Einstein was almost 100 years ago when his "field equations" were originally published (1915).
Because the “dark energy” is what is keeping the universe from collapsing upon itself and is apparently responsible for the anti-gravitational force propelling the universe farther and farther apart (seen via the redshift effect), I wonder how the dark energy or "k" (if it is really found to be that) factors into the big bounce theory....
My questions are, first and foremost, from where does dark energy and dark matter actually come? If dark energy is essentially the fabric of space-time, where and how is it created? Because it essentially has an anti-gravitational force and it fills the area in which the universe expands, it must be either expanding itself (and ergo would be “decompacting”?) it must be in the continual process of being created or, more significantly, it is continually “introduced” into our universe via another route – i.e. from another source.
Also, as some scientists have suggested (and I had theorized since I was a kid), there must be multiple if not many many other, “parallel” universes out there. Perhaps this “dark energy” is really the “k” among them all, imbued into the “interuniversal” space-time continuum – especially as the “amount” currently understood and observed is minute compared to the expected, per the multiplying factor (for the stress-energy tensor) in Einstein’s equations!
Lastly, I don’t quite understand how the stability of “k” can really be that stable and constant when factored into the big bounce theory, as I don't quite understand how the dark energy, being as forceful and as extant as it is, can ever be overpowered or stretched to create an unbalance responsible for a collapse necessary to propagate the next universe “rebirth.” Are the two theories at odds with each other, or is there an explanation here that I’m missing?
And finally -- this would solve my question about the expansion of the universe that I was asking a while back. I just couldn't figure out how the universe was expanding at an ever-increasing rate if nothing was continually acting upon it. After all, how could something traveling though a void, having been set into motion once, be increasing in its speed?
I used to wonder at the mechanics of the Big Bang / Big Bounce theories. It just didn’t make sense how the universe could be continually expanding at an ever increasing rate, if the only force exerted upon the matter in the universe was at the Big Bang itself. But now, everything seems to come together: dark gravity is pushing/pulling/acting on matter, and countering (even overcoming) the more commonly-known force known as gravity. I was right in my assumptions that led to my confusion -- matter traveling though a void WOULD NOT increase in speed, having been acted upon only once. Something IS acting on it, and that thing is “dark energy.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please post your comments!
Best wishes for 2009,
Editor, The Threshold
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment