Enthalpy Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 in even total empty space there are things called "virtual particles" that pop in and out of existence that are little understood so far...I see these particles as analogous to the air of earth as an "air of space", but have very different properties...it's a very exciting prospect to find out what they are and if they affect things other than the cosmic expansion, of which they may be causing...they are also sometimes referred to as dark energy... What kind of relationship do you imagine between virtual particles, which are well understood, and dark energy?
hoola Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 (edited) enthalpy, I think they are one and the same. The leftover energy of the fleeting particles annialation is dark energy... virtual particles are well understood? How are they well understood and their source is unknown ? We do know some things due to casimir experiments, if that is what you are referencing... Edited March 7, 2014 by hoola
Strange Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 The leftover energy of the fleeting particles annialation is dark energy... Is there any "leftover energy"? And what evidence do you have that it is dark energy?
hoola Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 (edited) the reason I think dark energy is sourced from virtual particle pairs, is that they are "there" (everywhere) as prospective candidates, and look attractive as candidates as any mechanical process has an inherent inefficiency...that inefficiency in the annilalation phase is the small remnant leftover energy.. Edited March 7, 2014 by hoola
swansont Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 the reason I think dark energy is sourced from virtual particle pairs, is that they are "there" (everywhere) as prospective candidates, and look attractive as candidates as any mechanical process has an inherent inefficiency...that inefficiency in the annilalation phase is the small remnant leftover energy.. Mechanical inefficiency, as in waste heat from entropy gains? Particle annihilation doesn't suffer from this.
imatfaal Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 Trouble is that our theories of virtual particle annihilation and the energy of free space overestimate the energy available by a considerably silly amount (10^120 or something)
hoola Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 (edited) imatfaal....right, which is (one reason) why I stated that we know little of them...if they are considered as mathematical structures giving appearance into the "physical" universe, instead considered as traditional physical objects, a more accurate assessment of their nature might be given...that, I think is the "symmetry breaking" between mathematically described things and the things that end up getting "built" using those descriptions....namely, our universe... Edited March 7, 2014 by hoola
hoola Posted March 8, 2014 Posted March 8, 2014 (edited) virtual particle pairs may not suffer heat loss due to annihilation since they are not "real" in the sense of visible matter. The fact that virtual particles exist for such brief periods could determine a change from heat output upon annilihation to a related quantity of repulsive tensor force... Edited March 8, 2014 by hoola
MigL Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 (edited) Virtual particles are the result of the quantum fields which permeate all of space. A simple calculation placing harmonic oscillators at every point in space for energy calculation along with suitable boundary conditions for the cut-off point gives the silly value that Imatfaal alluded to. This vacuum energy ( and false zero states ) have been used to account for inflation and the cosmological constant ( Einstein's biggest blunder ? ). The cosmological constant is one of the leading candidates for universal expansion and acceleration, i.e. dark energy. Just because our calculations are too simplistic and not mature enough to give reasonable results for vacuum energy is no reason to discount the idea that dark energy is related to vacuum energy which may be related to virtual particles. Edited March 9, 2014 by MigL
swansont Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 Just because our calculations are too simplistic and not mature enough to give reasonable results for vacuum energy is no reason to discount the idea that dark energy is related to vacuum energy which may be related to virtual particles. By the same token, asserting that we know that dark energy is the vacuum energy is overstating what we know.
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