Question: Conservation of (Dark) Energy ?

Foundations of physics and/or philosophy of physics, and in particular, posts on unresolved or controversial issues

Question: Conservation of (Dark) Energy ?

Postby RArvay » Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:49 am

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Conservation of mass/energy is not an intuitive concept. Small children, and even adults in primitive societies,
seem historically to have accepted that objects can appear as if magically from nothing.

However, once one internalizes the concept of the laws of conservation (of mass/energy), the concept becomes
deeply rooted in the psyche. Few ideas make as much sense in physics as that matter (that is, mass/energy) can
be neither created nor destroyed. Cosmic accounting is double-entry.
Every debit must be balanced by an equal but opposite credit.

We all know that matter and energy are inter-convertible. For the universal accountant to increase the amount of matter
in the universe, there must be a corresponding decrease in the amount of energy, or vice versa.
The balance does not change. The scale does not move.

No sooner have we internalized this concept, and transformed our way of thinking, however,
than an opposing idea imposes itself into our physics.
Energy, and even space itself, can seemingly be created where it previously did not exist.

Or perhaps not. But if not, the accountant has some explaining to do.

It is sometimes said that the Big Bang created space-time and mass-energy.
It is also said that the amount of space in the universe continues to increase (expand).
This conflicts with our ideas of conservation.

The books could hypothetically remain balanced with a theory that “conserves” space and energy,
but only if we suppose that, for example, new space is not being created, but rather, that something
that already exists is being converted into space. Likewise, something is being converted into dark energy.

But if space is being increased, then what is being decreased? What is being converted into space and (dark) energy?

Suggestions have been made that forces from outside what we define as our universe are acting in a way that produces the accelerating expansion.
Other suggestions are entirely unorthodox, involving for example, a “great Attractor,” or negative pressure from a void surrounding our universe.

My question is, is space being created, or is expanding space the result of a conversion of something else? What might that something else be?
Like-wise with dark energy.

Or might the entire concept of conservation be wrong, flawed, or incomplete?
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RArvay
 
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