Dark Energy - Alternative Ideas

Alternative Ideas

Some alternatives to dark energy aim to explain the observational data by a more refined use of established theories, focusing, for example, on the gravitational effects of density inhomogeneities, or on consequences of electroweak symmetry breaking in the early universe. If we are located in an emptier-than-average region of space, the observed cosmic expansion rate could be mistaken for a variation in time, or acceleration. A different approach uses a cosmological extension of the equivalence principle to show how space might appear to be expanding more rapidly in the voids surrounding our local cluster. While weak, such effects considered cumulatively over billions of years could become significant, creating the illusion of cosmic acceleration, and making it appear as if we live in a Hubble bubble.

Another class of theories attempts to come up with an all-encompassing theory of both dark matter and dark energy as a single phenomenon that modifies the laws of gravity at various scales. An example of this type of theory is the theory of dark fluid. Another class of theories that unifies dark matter and dark energy are suggested to be covariant theories of modified gravities. These theories alter the dynamics of the space-time such that the modified dynamic stems what have been assigned to the presence of dark energy and dark matter.

Recent research by Christos Tsagas, a cosmologist at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, has argued that it's likely that the accelerated expansion of the universe is an illusion caused by the relative motion of us to the rest of the universe. The peer reviewed journal entry cites data showing that the 2.5 billion ly wide region of space we are inside of is moving very quickly relative to everything around it. If his theory is confirmed, then dark energy would not exist (but the "dark flow" still might). His research can be found in the journal, Physical Review D.

Some theorists think that dark energy and cosmic acceleration are a failure of general relativity on very large scales, larger than superclusters. However most attempts at modifying general relativity have turned out to be either equivalent to theories of quintessence, or inconsistent with observations. Other ideas for dark energy have come from string theory, brane cosmology and the holographic principle, but have not yet proved as compellingly as quintessence and the cosmological constant.

On string theory, an article in the journal Nature described:

String theories, popular with many particle physicists, make it possible, even desirable, to think that the observable universe is just one of 10500 universes in a grander multiverse, says Leonard Susskind, a cosmologist at Stanford University in California. The vacuum energy will have different values in different universes, and in many or most it might indeed be vast. But it must be small in ours because it is only in such a universe that observers such as ourselves can evolve. —

Paul Steinhardt in the same article criticizes string theory's explanation of dark energy stating "...Anthropics and randomness don't explain anything... I am disappointed with what most theorists are willing to accept".

Another set of proposals is based on the possibility of a double metric tensor for space-time. It has been argued that time reversed solutions in general relativity require such double metric for consistency, and that both dark matter and dark energy can be understood in terms of time reversed solutions of general relativity.