A dialogue with a leading cosmologist about the emerging state of the field over the past 40 years, including the puzzles that still keep us up at night.
So we are under the impression that matter is both something at our observable scales and also mostly empty space at the femtoscopic scales.
The tug of war interaction between gravity and dark energy must be at the crux of expansion and the current limits of our observable universe, such as the light speed limit.
Could the observed Hubble shift, giving rise to the activation of dark energy about 5 billion years ago, a number not wholly coincidentally close to the birth of our solar system, possibly preceding Sol by a few hundred million years, explain some of why there are so few protons around?
Wouldn’t dark energy influence the photon to reach such phenomenal speeds? And as such, wouldn’t dark energy have something to do with this 1 proton to 2 billion photon discrepancy? Aren’t photons more sensitive to dark energy?
So we are under the impression that matter is both something at our observable scales and also mostly empty space at the femtoscopic scales.
The tug of war interaction between gravity and dark energy must be at the crux of expansion and the current limits of our observable universe, such as the light speed limit.
Could the observed Hubble shift, giving rise to the activation of dark energy about 5 billion years ago, a number not wholly coincidentally close to the birth of our solar system, possibly preceding Sol by a few hundred million years, explain some of why there are so few protons around?
Wouldn’t dark energy influence the photon to reach such phenomenal speeds? And as such, wouldn’t dark energy have something to do with this 1 proton to 2 billion photon discrepancy? Aren’t photons more sensitive to dark energy?
Both of you sound alike. Michael sounds slightly more youthful.