gutdoc wrote:Hi!
I just joined the forum to ask the following question; nonetheless, I am looking forward to following the discussions here.
I am in a small group that is reading Hugh Ross' The Creator and the Cosmos. Today, several of the group (non-scientists) were asking why the "stretchiness" of the space-time fabric was not momentum from the Big Bang rather than an intrinsic property of space. The biologist (me) and the two engineers in the group did not know the answer. Is there one? I've not been able to find a specific answer to this question but most of what I've read argues that the cosmological constant is an intrinsic property and not simple momentum.
Can anyone help me out?
Thanks in advance!
Randy
I am sorry I did not get to this sooner.
I will try to explain in a several ways you can pick! =)
The evidence seems to show that the Universal expansion is
accelerating! Momentum does not include acceleration.
1. Momentum is defined as a body in motion tends to stay in motion. For something to accelerate a force
must be acting on it.
2. Imagine being in a car and you let off the gas the car doesn't accelerate. If someone observes the car speeding up it is not momentum. Perhaps there is a push from behind? Perhaps the observer is accelerating backwards? Perhaps its the will of God? Perhaps its the cosmological constant.
The cosmological constant is in a way a fudge factor to explain this accleration. There is no explanation, in a way it can be likened to the hand of God. There is no evidence for it.
So physicists are forced to theorize on the source of the cosmological constant. Perhaps dark matter? Pperhaps there is a strong gravitational force outside of the Universe. Perhaps there is some other unknown force which we do not understand. Or an ingrained property of empty space!
The origins of the cosmological constant is important. It is an abandoned construct devised by Albert Einstein to account for things which did not fit the equation. A fudge factor. It describes empty space as having density and pressure, vacuum energy.
In the end it is really just a mathematical solution. Physically plausible but unproven. The only evidence is the mathematics. Not to down play this because mathematics is essentially models of reality.[/b]