Anyhow, I am just throwing this out there for thoughts. I read the CNN article, and it spurred me to post here because I had recently had a traffic jam “brain storm”.

So here’s the resulting question/comment:
Has it ever been proposed that the bigbang was closer to a massive “crystallization event” than an explosion? I ask because I recall watching, as a child, a supersaturated sugar solution “instantly” crystalize from a seed or major disturbance to the container.

I wondered then, what if Dark Matter is really just the core solution of everything? And, at some point billions of years ago a huge super hot solution of dark matter “soup” just had a huge “crystallization event” with matter as we know it falling out of solution and propelled away as it no longer mixed well with its parent material??

I wonder if there’d be “dark matter paths” towards the interior of the universe to replace the matter “dropping out” of that primordial solution?

ugh. I know… crazy talk.

I’m sorry. I don’t pretend to know anything concrete in this field, but figure even as a common joe – it may be a “brainstorming” idea worth at least a mention.

(PS. while I’m out here feeling selfconscious, I’ll add a followup thought that the “disturbance event” which triggered the mass crystallization originated in an adjacent universe/dimension?)

FWIW

Abe Miller

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NASA fails to produce new data on dark energy

16 Nov 06 – NASA held a press telecon today about dark energy, but neither the press release nor the images accompanying it contained any useful information. There was no paper about the data on the preprint server either.

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It might be a good idea to stop participating in press events where the PIO has been so totally successful in Preventing Information Outflow.

In any case, your w = -0.8+0.6-1.0 for z gt 1 is the only quantitative result available. It also cannot possibly be correct without caveats. Certainly the data must be consistent with w = 0 for z gt 10. Or w could be 0 for z between 1.40 and 1.41.

I expect the analysis assumed a flat Universe, which is either faith-based following the prophet Guth, or a circular argument based on the consistency of all data with a flat lambda-CDM model which assumes w = -1. Then a correct statement of the significance of the results is that the set of all data has grown by a few percent and it is still all consistent with flat lambda-CDM.

News of the Universe
NASA fails to produce new data on dark energy
16 Nov 06 – NASA held a press telecon today about dark energy, but neither the press release nor the images accompanying it contained any useful information. There was no paper about the data on the preprint server either.

“you’re right that we could do away with dark energy by imagining that we lived at the center of a spherical inhomogeneity. (At least as far as supernovae and other kinematical tests go; I’m less sure about whether you could simultaneously fit structure formation.)”

right. Such other tests still need careful consideration.

” But: (1) That would actually be more surprising than a cosmological constant. Anthropic-type explanations would seem even more tempting in such circumstances.”

What is surprising or not is a matter of opinion and philosophical stance. There is no physical experiment to say this is more suprising than that; and if there was. it would still not *prove* anything about the way the universe actually is – sometimes reality is indeed very surprising. So this is an example of how much of modern cosmology, despite the appearances, is philosophically rather than data driven. There is nothing wrong with that, but it should be acknowledged.

“(2) There’s no reason why such a configuration would give us something extremely close to w = -1, as we seem to be observing. It would be allowed, but so would any other value.”

And there is no reason why there should be a cosmological constant or quintessence or whatever with the observed values.

“(3) The “biggest crisis” is really the fact that the vacuum energy is small, and zero would still count. An inhomogeneity wouldn’t solve that problem. ”

yes but there used to be the assumpotin that something (supersymmetry?) would cause cancellations leading to an exact zero, while a value of 10^{-80} or so would requre huge fine tuning. The zero would in some sense be more natural. Of course again a philosophical argument.

What is actually happening in the way things are done at present is that the assumption of spatial homegenity is put in by hand, and then used to derive an equation of state for “dark energy” that then follows from the astronomical data. A geometrical assumption is used to determine the physics that would lead to that desired geometrical result. So the question is, What independent test could there be of that supposed physics? Will it explain anything else other than the one item it was invented to explain?

Now you could claim of course that inflation would prevent any such inhomogeneities occurring (indeed I am surprised this was not on your list!). But inflation is a flexible enough subject that it can probably be varied enough to include such inhomogeneities. You can probably run the equations backwards to get a potential that will give the required result.

We needed explanation for the “why of it” and I was just wondering about the cross over point in LHC? More on name.

(1) That would actually be more surprising than a cosmological constant. Anthropic-type explanations would seem even more tempting in such circumstances.

(2) There’s no reason why such a configuration would give us something extremely close to w = -1, as we seem to be observing. It would be allowed, but so would any other value.

(3) The “biggest crisis” is really the fact that the vacuum energy is small, and zero would still count. An inhomogeneity wouldn’t solve that problem.