From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 04:54:03 MDT
Some bits of news and info re: cosmology
'Dark energy' is a hypothetical repulsive force that exerts a negative
pressure which cosmological theoreticians are using to try to explain
the observations from 3 years ago that the universe's expansion is
accelerating. More recent observations of distant supernova have confirmed
the observations from 3 years ago (see Science News April 7, 2001, "A Dark
Force in the Universe"), and the astrophysics community are in a tizzy,
judging from the number of abstracts I see in the Los Alamos preprint
server.
'Quintessence' is a variable form of dark energy, where the properties
vary with time. When the universe was very young and radiation was the
dominant form of energy, quintessence would have exerted a positve pressure
and an attractive gravitational force. About 50 000 yrs
after the Big Bang, when matter became the dominant reservoir
of the universe's energy, quintessence would have begun exerting
a negative pressure and a repulsive gravitational force.
Try the following to see some of the papers from this year
on the Los Alamos Preprint server about 'dark energy' and
'quintessence'
http://arXiv.org/find/hep-th,astro-ph/1/abs:+AND+energy+AND+quintessence+dark/0/
1/0/past/0/1
Amara
********************************************************************
Amara Graps email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: finger agraps@shell5.ba.best.com
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
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"Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the
future of the human race." -- H. G. Wells
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