I know it is dangerous to get your science from magazines but
Astronomy magazine September 2006 has an article Tales from the Dark Side. Outlining three explanations for Dark Energy, firstly the Cosmological constant, secondly, "quintessence" ..an unidentified energy field of varying strength that fills space like a fog and thirdly that Dark Energy is an illusion and the effects we see as dark energy result from a break down in Einstein's theory of gravity over the largest distances...Well I sortta agree with all three The third explanation not entirely because it sort of indicates Einstein was wrong but really I think he was almost coming up with explanations one and two .. His constant was an attempt I believe to quantify mathematically the second explanation which to me is really a modern way to get back to the cosmological constant approach.
Saul Perlmutter was quoted in that article...it took us 10 years to realize the Universe is accelerating, and it will take as long to figure out what’s behind it"..I see it as my Universal pressure/gravity rain idea, which sounds like quintessence, which sounds like that was what Dr Einstein driving at with the need to include a "function" (I think the maths is new to me) in his sums which he called the cosmological constant.
That issue of the magazine had another article Ä Wrinkle in Space Time" which set out how Alan Guth (MIT) first proposed the concept of inflation. Guth argued that there was a remarkable moment when the Universe ""inflated". And quoting from the magazine..
In a moment, the cosmos ballooned in size by a factor of 10 to the power of 43."
Seems the theory inflated at a similar rate as it gained acceptance because of the problems it cured..which is their way of saying that without that magic moment the big bang theory was dead in the water... As far as I can tell acceptance of the inflation idea took hold because to quote Sean Carrol..
"Without inflation different parts of the Universe could not have points in common with the past"... my comment thats not the only way Mr Carrol do you have anything more tangible as evidence for a moment in time that the Universe grew from little to very very and add some big. The article covers LIGO and LISA experiment proposals... LIGO has not found gravity waves to the date of the article. They seek gravity waves to verify and quantify inflation.. however Physics Professor Rainer Weiss (MIT) was quoted ...
Unfortunately, LIGO will just not be sensitive enough to detect gravity waves from inflation"
...so I hope they plan to be able to do more with LIGO if that’s the case and I presume that they will still search for Space Time disruptions perhaps generated in a Super Nova...
AND The third article "The Universe is in the Details" an article on high energy particle physics which was very good as a quick overview of particles from space.
But with all that I am none the wiser.. as I cant get over for example how such a large galaxy as Abel 2029 can exist and how it could form in the time of 13 billion years even my gravity rain would have a big job keeping such a huge body in a manageable "blob" It is so difficult to see anything that could allow such a huge galaxy to be so big.. And no doubt it is getting bigger.. How big would it be today a lot of growing would have taken place since the light and x-rays left the galaxy all that time ago..
Hows your pet with the nine legs err how many do they have???
alex
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