"Dark Energy" Will Cause Our Universe to Expand Forever

Will our Universe expand forever or will its life end back at the pre-Big Bang point of indescribable pressure and heat? Current developments at the farthest regions of the universe from Earth clash with the existing scientific theories of the nature of the matter and energy, their interaction, and their influence on the future of the universe. Specifically, current theories, based on Einstein's theory of relativity, predict that the universe, while still expanding following the Big Bang, is doing so at a progressively slower speed. Eventually, the expansion should stop, and the universe will begin to contract, with gravitational forces leading the galaxies ever closer to one another.

The reality, as determined from observing very distant supernovas over a period of time to see the rate at which their luminosity diminishes and thus calculating the speed with which they are traveling progressively farther from Earth, is different. These stars appear to be moving away faster than theoretically predicted. In other words, instead of slowing down, the expansion of the universe appears to be speeding up.

For the scientific community, this means that the existing theories must be revisited and radical changes made. Two major possibilities are entertained. One is that there is some force - or forces - previously unknown that influence the interaction of matter and energy in the universe, forcing it to expand faster. For now, the presence of this unknown force is acknowledged only by identifying it as "dark energy," thus placing it into the category similar to "dark matter" that has not yet been identified by scientists but the presence of which is unarguable - it is even estimated to account for about 22% of the entire weight of the universe. Similar to Einstein's constant (which, by the way, recent observations have shown to be anything but constant), this "dark energy" force, when discovered and examined, might fit into the existing theories about the nature of the universe after all.

Another possibility is that current theories are fundamentally flawed. Specifically, one logical claim is that the universe does not really consist of only four dimensions (the three spatial dimensions plus time) but of many more, opening up a possibility of multiple universes existing at the same time and connecting with one another at certain points. While this possibility is so radical as to be almost unthinkable to an average person, the possibility of existence of multiple universes running parallel to one another in time has been entertained ever since the acceptance of quantum physics as hard science. Since there is no way to know for sure where an electron is at any given time in its rotation around a proton, there might exist a universe where it is at one location at a particular moment in time, and there also might exist a universe where it is at a different location at the same particular point in time.

Interestingly enough, in his book Final Theory, Douglas Preston builds the plot of the novel on the premise that Einstein has developed the ultimate "field theory" connecting the explanation of interactions of both subatomic and cosmic forces - ultimately coming up with a conclusion that a multiverse indeed exists. While the book is fictional, the author is proficient enough in physics to show convincingly that such a reality is theoretically possible.

-------------------------

References:

Dennis Overbye, "Dark, Perhaps Forever." The New York Times, June 3, 2008.