New Explanation for Dark Energy? Tiny Fluctuations of Time and Space

Since the late 1920s, astronomers have been aware of the fact that the Universe is in a state of expansion. Initially predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, this realization has gone on to inform the most widely-accepted cosmological model – the Big Bang Theory. However, things became somewhat confusing during the 1990s, when improved observations showed that the Universe’s rate of expansion has been accelerating for billions of years.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

New Explanation for Dark Energy? Tiny Fluctuations of Time and Space

Since the late 1920s, astronomers have been aware of the fact that the Universe is in a state of expansion. Initially predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, this realization has gone on to inform the most widely-accepted cosmological model – the Big Bang Theory. However, things became somewhat confusing during the 1990s, when improved observations showed that the Universe’s rate of expansion has been accelerating for billions of years.

more…

Unruh again. His work should always be taken seriously, even when it’s wrong.

I gather the idea here is that huge positive and negative values can cancel out to a value that is almost but not exactly equal to zero, after cancellation the result agrees with the observed Lambda. It’s a possibility.

from the article

They then considered the possibility that on the tiniest of scales – billions of times smaller than electrons – the fabric of spacetime is subject to wild fluctuations, oscillating at every point between expansion and contraction.

As it swings back and forth, the result of these oscillations is a net effect where the Universe expands slowly, but at an accelerating rate. After performing their calculations, they noted that such an explanation was consistent with both the existence of quantum vacuum energy density and General Relativity. On top of that, it is also consistent with what scientists have been observing in our Universe for almost a century. As Unruh described it:

“Our calculations showed that one could consistently regard the Universe on the tiniest scales is actually expanding and contracting at an absurdly fast rate; but that on a large scale, because of an averaging over those tiny scales, physics would not notice that ‘quantum foam’. It has a tiny residual effect in giving an effective cosmological constant (dark energy type effect). In some ways it is like waves on the ocean which travel as if the ocean were perfectly smooth but really we know that there is this incredible dance of the atoms that make up the water, and waves average over those fluctuations, and act as if the surface was smooth.”

Is the space time acceleration expanding the fluctuations at every point in the universe between expansion and contraction?

Tau.Neutrino said:

Is the space time acceleration expanding the fluctuations at every point in the universe between expansion and contraction?

That’s how I understand this theory.

Something very similar is needed to explain how initially very large amounts of both matter and antimatter manages to annihilate to leave a small excess of matter.

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Is the space time acceleration expanding the fluctuations at every point in the universe between expansion and contraction?

That’s how I understand this theory.

Something very similar is needed to explain how initially very large amounts of both matter and antimatter manages to annihilate to leave a small excess of matter.

That it was undergoing one of these contractions at the time and it resulted in matter winning