Dark Energy Explorers is an online citizen science project working to understand the mystery of dark energy while simultaneously bringing accessible educational opportunities to people all over the world. This would be analogous to us, here on Earth, not knowing what water is, only knowing that some mysterious substance covers 70% of the planet’s surface.
Although it comprises approximately 70% of the universe, we have yet to identify what dark energy is. It is questionable whether dark energy can be explained under the standard model without new physics.Dark energy is arguably the most significant scientific mystery of our time. I have demonstrated recently a physical model for expansion that naturally includes dark energy. The standard model is wrong and a complete theory of energy will demonstrate the physics of expansion in a different way than the standard model.
The standard model is correct, yet we still need a complete theory of energy that includes dark energy. This leaves three fundamental possibilities: 1. Dark energy has been adopted in the mathematical model of expansion (Friedmann equations) to bring it in line with an apparent acceleration of expansion. Dark energy instead is a place holder term for a type of energy with an assumed negative pressure to give it a repulsive effect. Let's talk about the elephant in the room: The standard model does not include a fundamental physical understanding for dark energy.
The question about the origin/increase of (dark) energy is a question of fundamental physics. We can talk about the local conservation of energy, but not the global conservation of energy for the universe. If this seems abstract, it isn’t any more abstract than, say, quantum field theories of particle physics.Īs for violating the conservation of energy, that law cannot be consistently formulated for the universe as a whole. It’s there, in a very precise and well-defined way, to explain the observational fact that the expansion of the universe is speeding up rather than slowing down.įrom the point of view of the mathematics of General Relativity, it is an extremely simple and natural way to explain this fact. An energy density associated with pure space is just part of today’s cosmological models. Modern physics concerns itself with mathematical models that explain physical observations. As space expands, you simply get more dark energy because there is more volume a dark energy density is just something all space has. Dark energy isn’t something material that comes from somewhere. It’s closely related to Einstein’s old idea of a “cosmological constant”. In theories with dark energy, an energy density is just a property of space - even “empty” space devoid of matter and radiation.
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