Quote:
Originally Posted by DARISC
So, I heard a while back that the universe is actually speeding up rather than slowing down. Does this mean that "the BIG BANG" is still banging?
I'm gonna have to get busy Googling.
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Aha! Now we get into my field of expertise...
Here's the deal...the big Bang gave a smack that started the expansion of the Universe. The problem is, that rotten gravity causes the structure of space to want to pull back on itself, thereby slowing down the expansion. This was the modern Inflationary Theory.
Now, a few years ago, they found that, in fact, the Universe is expanding FASTER now that before...huh? How?
Well, turns out that there is a repulsive force (it pushes things apart, opposite of gravity). It's called "quintessence", or in the liberal media, Dark Energy. It also acts like Einstein's Cosmological Constant...turns out his first round of General Relativity was right, whouda thunk it!
So, the thing is, this quintessence only manifests itself on huge distance scales...we're talking billions of lightyears. So, in all of the sky surveys we did earlier, it never appeared, because the strength of it was almost nil. It was only when the surveys started looking far enough out in space that it was seen.
On the distance scales that the Universe is now, it's becoming more powerful than gravity, and so has restarted the expansionary era of the Universe.
does your brain hurt yet?
