Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: thedoc on 11/10/2016 11:53:02
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Derek McComiskey asked the Naked Scientists:
Dear Naked Scientists. A question for you.
Cosmologists are pretty certain that cosmic inflation happened, and that dark-energy is currently happening - causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Could they be related? Could they have the same underlying cause? Could dark-energy be the current manifestation of inflation?
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Derek
What do you think?
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Dark energy is broadly similar to (Cosmological) inflation and is thought to be causing the expansion of the present-day universe to accelerate. However, the energy scale of dark energy is much lower, 10−12 GeV, roughly 27 orders of magnitude less than the scale of inflation.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)#Observational_status
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My concern with dark energy is, dark energy has never been seen in the lab to prove it is real. We infer dark energy from distant affects. There is a gap between theoretical imagination, and direct lab proof. Under those loose science criteria, one could attribute cosmic expansion to unicorns, since these have also not been seen in the lab, but they have magical powers based on theory. It should not come down to a consensus between no lab proof, since this is not how science works.
One logical way, to help decide which phenomena is causing the cosmic red shift, would be to set the conditions that all postured theories need to be inferable from affect, while also being demonstrable in the lab. One such affect is entropy.
Say we had a tank of compressed gas. We open the valve and allow the gas to expand. What we will notice is the gas and the tank will both get colder. This amounts to a red shift in the tank and the gas. Entropy is the basis for second law and does to require adding anything new that is not already accepted. We can do the tank experiment in the lab so show a red shift in IR.
An entropy increase needs to absorb energy. While the second law states that the entropy of the universe has to increase. Therefore, there will need to be a constant cooling of universal energy; red shift, to drive the second law. If the universe was not red shifting I would question that second law, but it appears to hold up in the entire universe.