A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering
by Ann K. Finkbeiner · 16 Aug 2010 · 225pp · 65,922 words
hadn’t known about. Maybe gravity doesn’t work the way Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity says it does. Maybe Einstein’s famous cosmological constant—which he put into the equations of general relativity to fudge the universe’s expansion and which he later took back out—was right after
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Sky Survey Congress, U.S., 39, 78 Connolly, Andy, 155, 169 Copernicus (space telescope), 33 cosmic microwave background, 143, 146, 175, 195 cosmic rays, 64 cosmological constant, 148 Crafoord Prizes, 42, 195 critical path, 83–84 Crocker, Jim, 82–85, 86, 90–91, 105, 118 Leger appointed telescope engineer by, 110 monitor
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, 125, 162 Dusty (software), 197 dwarf galaxies, 163–65 Early Data Release, 138, 158 East Tennessee State University, 165–66 Einstein, Albert, 11, 43, 148 cosmological constant of, 148 Eisenstein, Daniel, 145, 147, 178, 180 electrons, 137, 187–90 elements, formation of, 188, 190 elliptical galaxies, 173, 182–83, 185, 191, 192
From eternity to here: the quest for the ultimate theory of time
by Sean M. Carroll · 15 Jan 2010 · 634pp · 185,116 words
constant density of energy through all space and time. And in fact, that’s an old idea, dating back to Einstein: He called it “the cosmological constant,” and these days we often call it “vacuum energy.” (Some people may try to convince you that there is some difference between vacuum energy and
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the cosmological constant—don’t fall for it. The only difference is which side of the equation you put it on, and that’s no difference at all
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gravity caused by ordinary matter, the effect of vacuum energy is to push things apart rather than pull them together. When Einstein first proposed the cosmological constant in 1917, his motivation was to explain a static universe, one that wasn’t expanding or contracting. This wasn’t a misguided philosophical stance—it
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Einstein imagined a universe in delicate balance between the pull of gravity among galaxies and the push of the cosmological constant. Once he learned of Hubble’s discovery, he regretted ever introducing the cosmological constant—had he resisted the temptation, he might have predicted the expansion of the universe before it was discovered. THE
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MYSTERY OF VACUUM ENERGY In theoretical physics, it’s not easy to un-invent a concept. The cosmological constant is the same as the idea of vacuum energy, the energy of empty space itself. The question is not “Is vacuum energy a valid concept
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have been observed many times over. Virtual particles carry energy, and that energy contributes to the cosmological constant. We can add up the effects of all such particles to obtain an estimate for how large the cosmological constant should be. But it wouldn’t be right to include the effects of particles with arbitrarily
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’s beaches is only about 1020. The fact that the vacuum energy is so much smaller than it should be is a serious problem: the “cosmological constant problem.” But there is also another problem: the “coincidence problem.” Remember that vacuum energy maintains a constant density (amount of energy per cubic centimeter) as
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which it differs from the real world don’t seem extremely relevant for the information-loss puzzle—in particular, we can imagine that the negative cosmological constant is very small, and essentially unimportant. So we make a black hole in anti- de Sitter space and then let it evaporate. Is information lost
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the universe accelerate. We don’t know for sure what the dark energy is, but the leading candidate is “vacuum energy,” also known as the cosmological constant. Vacuum energy is simply a constant amount of energy inherent in every cubic centimeter of space, one that remains fixed throughout space and time. The
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holes will evaporate, and everything will be pushed away by the accelerating effects of vacuum energy. In particular, if the dark energy is really a cosmological constant (rather than something that will ultimately fade away), we can be sure that the universe will never re-collapse into a Big Crunch of any
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the prospect of an endless duration of dark loneliness after a relatively exciting few years in our universe’s past. The existence of a positive cosmological constant allows us to actually prove a somewhat rigorous result, rather than just spinning through a collection of thought experiments. The cosmic no-hair theorem states
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fields will, if it lasts long enough for the vacuum energy to take over, eventually evolve into empty universe with nothing but vacuum energy. The cosmological constant always wins, in other words.249 The resulting universe—empty space with a positive vacuum energy—is known as de Sitter space, after Dutch physicist
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-entropy states than low-entropy ones. Then we argued that truly high-entropy states basically look like empty space; in a world with a positive cosmological constant, that means de Sitter space, a universe with vacuum energy and nothing else. So the major question facing modern cosmology is: “Why don’t we
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clear. It was first broached in a 2002 paper by Lisa Dyson, Matthew Kleban, and Leonard Susskind, with the ominous title “Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant,” and amplified in a follow-up paper by Andreas Albrecht and Lorenzo Sorbo in 2004.253 The resolution to the puzzle is still far from
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clear. The simplest way out is to imagine that the dark energy is not a cosmological constant that lasts forever, but an ephemeral source of energy that will fade away long before we hit the Poincaré recurrence time. But it’s not
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for all eternity. Admittedly, our own universe does not look much like five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space—it has four macroscopic dimensions, and the cosmological constant is positive, not negative. But Maldacena’s example demonstrates that it’s certainly not necessary that spacetime have a beginning, once quantum gravity is taken
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be arguments both for and against. We also don’t completely understand the role of the vacuum energy. We’ve been speaking as if the cosmological constant we observe in our universe today is really the minimum possible vacuum energy, but there is little hard evidence for that assumption. In the context
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one in which the product of the Hubble parameter with the distance to any particular galaxy is increasing. It turns out that, even with a cosmological constant, the Hubble parameter never actually increases; it decreases more slowly as the universe expands and dilutes, until it approaches a fixed constant value after all
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the matter has gone away and there’s nothing left but cosmological constant. 47 We’re being careful to distinguish between two forms of energy that are important for the evolution of the contemporary universe: “matter,” made of
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branches, oriented oppositely in time (Page, 1985). Hawking later called this his “greatest blunder,” in a reference to Einstein’s great blunder of suggesting the cosmological constant rather than predicting the expansion of the universe (Hawking, 1988). 280 Price (1996). 281 See, for example, Davies and Twamley (1993), Gell-Mann and Hartle
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and Biology in an Open Universe.” Reviews of Modern Physics 51 (1979): 447-60. Dyson, L., Kleban, M., and Susskind, L. “Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant.” Journal of High Energy Physics 210 (2002): 11. Earman, J. “What Time Reversal Is and Why It Matters.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science
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Darwin College Lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Riess, A., et al., Supernova Search Team. “Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant.” Astronomical Journal 116 (1998): 1009-38. Rouse Ball, W. W. A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, 4th ed., reprinted 2003. Mineola, NY: Dover
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Press, 2003. Vonnegut, K. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell, 1969. Wald, R. W. “Asymptotic Behavior of Homogeneous Cosmological Models in the Presence of a Positive Cosmological Constant.” Physical Review D 28 (1983): 2118-20. Weinberg, S. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. New York: Basic
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recurrence theorem and singularity hypothesis speculative theories time before time since and time symmetry and uniformity uses for term Big Crunch and black holes and cosmological constant debate on and de Sitter space and empty space and lumpiness of the universe and time asymmetry and time reversibility and time symmetry biophysics biosphere
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and fluctuations and Hawking radiation and the horizon problem and inflationary cosmology and reconstruction of the past and relativity cosmic no-hair theorem cosmic strings cosmological constant cosmological horizon “Cosmological Principle,” cosmology. See also specific models CPLEAR experiment CPT Theorem creationism Crick, Francis Cronin, James culture of the sciences “The Curious Case
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prediction and the Schrödinger’s equation DeWitt, Bryce Dicke, Robert dimensions directionality. See arrow of time disorder. See also entropy distance “Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant” (Dyson, Kleban, and Susskind) DNA “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy Content?” (Einstein) “doomsday argument,” Doppler effect Doroshkevich, A. G. double
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background radiation and entropy and inflationary cosmology lumpiness of and smoothness Eddington, Arthur efficiency eigenstate Einstein, Albert and black holes on Brownian motion and the cosmological constant and curvature of spacetime and empiricism and entropy and the EPR paradox and expansion of the universe and general relativity “miraculous year,” and popular culture
Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
by Tyler Cowen · 11 Sep 2013 · 291pp · 81,703 words
. String theory is known to contain configurations that describe all the observed fundamental forces and matter but with a zero cosmological constant and some new fields. Other configurations have different values of the cosmological constant, and are metastable but long-lived. This leads many to believe that there is at least one metastable solution
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that is quantitatively identical with the standard model, with a small cosmological constant, containing dark matter and a plausible mechanism for cosmic inflation. It is not yet known whether string theory has such a solution, nor how much
Coming of Age in the Milky Way
by Timothy Ferris · 30 Jun 1988 · 661pp · 169,298 words
, Einstein reluctantly concluded that there must be something wrong with the theory, and he modified its equations by adding a term that he called the cosmological constant. Symbolized by the Greek letter lambda, the new term was intended to make the radius of the universe hold steady with the passing of time
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. Einstein never liked the cosmological constant. He called it “gravely detrimental to the formal beauty of the theory,” pointing out that it was nothing more than a mathematical fiction, without any
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the lambda term. (Fumed Einstein, “If Hubble’s expansion had been discovered at the time of the creation of the general theory of relativity, the [cosmological constant] would never have been introduced.”)2 Yet Hubble, like Slipher, was isolated by the gulf that still separated the world of the American observational astronomers
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the universe as a whole. Combines astronomy, astrophysics, particle physics, and a variety of mathematical approaches including geometry and topology. (2) A particular cosmological theory. Cosmological constant. A term sometimes employed in cosmology to express a force of “cosmic repulsion,” such as the energy released by the false vacuum thought to power
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largely untouched by other biographies. —————. Hans Bethe: Prophet of Energy. New York: Basic Books, 1980. Anecdotal profile of the pathfinding physicist. —————, and Gerald Feinberg, eds. Cosmological Constants. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Berry, Michael. Principles of Cosmology and Gravitation. London: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Berry, W.B.N. Growth of a
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inflationary universe hypothesis, 345, 356–360, 362 prescientific creation myths, 349–350 quantum genesis hypothesis, 351, 362–365 vacuum genesis hypothesis, 351–356, 361, 362 Cosmological constant, 205–206, 208 Coulomb barrier, 260, 262–263, 274, 352 penetration by protons of, 262, 264–265 quantum indeterminacy and, 288 Council of Nicaea (A
The Doomsday Calculation: How an Equation That Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe
by William Poundstone · 3 Jun 2019 · 283pp · 81,376 words
universe would have quickly collapsed in a “big crunch,” before intelligent life had time to evolve. Ken Olum and Delia Schwartz-Perlov estimate that the cosmological constant (a measure of the abundance of dark energy) is about 10120 times bigger than is expected by theory. This suggests that the chance of there
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and Biology in an Open Universe.” Reviews of Modern Physics 51 (1979): 447–460. Dyson, Lisa, Matthew Kleban, and Leonard Susskind. “Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant.” 2002. arXiv:hep-th/0208013. Eckhardt, William. Paradoxes in Probability Theory. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. . “Probability Theory and the Doomsday Argument.” Mind 102 (1993): 483–488
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. It has been followed by many more earnestly scholarly treatments. 4. Whitrow’s argument for the necessity of 3-D space: Whitrow 1955, 31. 5. Cosmological constant is 10120 times bigger: Olum and Schwartz-Perlov 2007. 6. “a magic number”; “hand of God”: Feynman 1985, 129. 7. “You must not fool yourself
Stephen Hawking
by Leonard Mlodinow · 8 Sep 2020 · 209pp · 68,587 words
it keeps the universe from collapsing upon itself. They were unsuccessful. Even Einstein joined the game. He added an extra “anti-gravity” term, called the cosmological constant, to the equations of general relativity to supply the repulsive force needed to keep the cosmos from contracting.*2 The realization that all these eminent
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“unchanging” they meant on the cosmic scale. Obviously, small-scale change is part of nature—planets orbit, rocks fall, people live and die. *2 The cosmological constant acts only on very large scales. It introduced no effects that could be measured with the technology available at the time, and so whether or
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
by Ray Kurzweil · 14 Jul 2005 · 761pp · 231,902 words
universe arises because we notice that the constants in nature are precisely what are required for the universe to have grown in complexity. If the cosmological constant, the Planck constant, and the many other constants of physics were set to just slightly different values, atoms, molecules, stars, planets, organisms, and humans would
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? In my view, the primary issue is not the mass of the universe, or the possible existence of antigravity, or of Einstein's so-called cosmological constant. Rather, the fate of the universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right.94
Day We Found the Universe
by Marcia Bartusiak · 6 Apr 2009 · 412pp · 122,952 words
-accepted astronomical observations, Einstein altered his famous equation, adding the term λ (the Greek letter lambda), a fudge factor that came to be called the “cosmological constant.” This new ingredient was an added energy that permeated empty space and exerted an outward “pressure” on it. This repulsive field—a kind of antigravity
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hammer blow,” swiftly swinging down his hand to illustrate the point to his audience. Einstein at this stage recognized that he no longer needed his cosmological constant to describe this dynamic universe. His original equations could handle the cosmic expansion just fine, which pleased him immensely. From the start, he had had
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surveyor of stellar parallaxes. Georges Lemaître made few notable contributions to cosmology after 1934 but continued to publish reviews and discussions. Although Einstein abandoned the cosmological constant λ in 1931, Lemaître continued to champion it. They had friendly arguments about this issue whenever they met, which led to the joke that “everywhere
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quantum or cosmological theory and primarily tried, unsuccessfully, linking the forces of nature in one grand unified theory. He died in 1955, still thinking the cosmological constant was his biggest blunder. Ironically, astronomers have recently brought back the constant to help explain a universe that is not only expanding but accelerating, a
The World According to Physics
by Jim Al-Khalili · 10 Mar 2020 · 198pp · 57,703 words
than we do about dark matter, but that is now changing. There is a quantity in Einstein’s equations of general relativity, known as the cosmological constant (and denoted by the Greek letter Λ, or lambda), that fits the bill. What we call dark energy is most likely the energy of empty
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the same as claiming a calm ocean has no depth. The equivalent of water beneath the ocean surface is this dark energy—it is the cosmological constant. However, having a mathematical symbol for dark energy does not mean we entirely understand its nature yet. Astronomical measurements suggest that the
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cosmological constant has a certain numerical value, but, like the mass of the Higgs boson in the Standard Model, we do not know why it has this
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–27, 126 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 27 Cosmic Background Explorer (Explorer 66), 199n2 cosmic inflation, 208–19, 276 cosmic microwave background (CMB), 34, 101, 197, 198–99 cosmological constant, 203 cosmology, 12 creation myths, 1 Crick, Francis, 243 CT (computed tomography), 246 curved spacetime, 64n2, 78, 82, 187, 234; dark matter and, 196; gravitational
Is God a Mathematician?
by Mario Livio · 6 Jan 2009 · 315pp · 93,628 words
Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright © 2009 by Mario Livio All rights reserved
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