User:MajoranaF/sandbox/Cosmological Constant
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In cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: Λ) is the value of the energy density of the vacuum of space. It was originally introduced by Albert Einstein in 1917[1] as an addition to his theory of general relativity to "hold back gravity" and achieve a static universe, which was the accepted view at the time. Einstein abandoned the concept after Hubble's 1929 discovery that all galaxies outside the Local Group (the group that contains the Milky Way Galaxy) are moving away from each other, implying an overall expanding universe. From 1929 until the early 1990s, most cosmology researchers assumed the cosmological constant to be zero.
Since the 1990s, several developments in observational cosmology, especially the discovery of the accelerating universe from distant supernovas in 1998 (in addition to independent evidence from the cosmic microwave background and large galaxy redshift surveys), have shown that around 68% of the mass–energy density of the universe can be attributed to dark energy.[2] While dark energy is poorly understood at a fundamental level, the main required properties of dark energy are that it functions as a type of anti-gravity, it dilutes much more slowly than matter as the universe expands, and it clusters much more weakly than matter, or perhaps not at all. The cosmological constant is the simplest possible form of dark energy since it is constant in both space and time, and this leads to the current standard model of cosmology known as the Lambda-CDM model, which provides a good fit to many cosmological observations.
"Since the cosmological upper bound on was vastly less than any value expected from particle theory, most particle theorists simply assumed that for some unknown reason this quantity was zero."
"The only other natural value is Λ = 0. If Λ really is tiny but not zero, it adds a most stimulating though enigmatic clue to physics to be discovered."
References
Citations
- ^ Einstein, A (1917). "Kosmologische Betrachtungen zur allgemeinen Relativitaetstheorie". Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Berlin. part 1: 142–152.
- ^ What is Dark Energy?, Space.com, 1 May 2013
Further Reading
- Peebles, P. J. E.; Ratra, B. (2003). "The Cosmological Constant and Dark Energy" (PDF). Reviews of Modern Physics. 75 (2): 559–606. arXiv:astro-ph/0207347. Bibcode:2003RvMP...75..559P. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.75.559. ISSN 0034-6861.
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(help) - Weinberg, S. (1989). "The Cosmological Constant Problem" (PDF). Reviews of Modern Physics. 61 (1): 1–23. Bibcode:1989RvMP...61....1W. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.61.1. hdl:2152/61094. ISSN 0034-6861.
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(help) - Weinberg, S. (2015). Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-11166-0. LCCN 2015021123. OCLC 910664598.
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