Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Richards
Is that it, or is it that on huge distance scales, the volume of space, and thus quintessence, is large enough to aggregate this repulsive force to a level that exceeds the gravitational force (which, of course, weakens w.r.t. distance)?
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Eh, depends on what kind of words you want to use. Every natural force has a representative distance scale for it's strength, kind of like the time constant in a RC circuit. Nuclear is very small (the force is huge across nanometers, and drops off quickly to near zero beyond that). Electromagnetism is medium scaled (force is strong to a few meters, then drops off quickly). Gravity is much larger (a scale of 10^25 meters), and quintessence is much larger still (who knows, 10^35, 10^40 meters?)
Each force however is weaker overall at that representative distance as the distance gets larger (ie. nuclear at 1 nm is MUCH stronger than gravity at 10^25 meters).
We don't yet know the details on quintessence enough to quantify it much, but we're working on it.