«We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them»Albert Einstein
Hello everyone, today I want to talk about someone who made a "Homer" (succeed despite having done something stupid).
When Einstein formulated his theory of general relativity and gave a change to how we understand gravity, ceasing to be a force of attraction between objects and becoming a field that fills space and curves under the effect of massive bodies, thus changing the very framework of space time around them; he realized that, as a consequence of his equations and the field they defined, the universe should collapse on itself, as an effect of attraction; by that time, the dominant scientific current, affirmed that the universe was stationary, invariable in time and as a consequence of this, and faithful believer of this dogma, Einstein introduced in his equations what would be, the "worst mistake of his career", the COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT, TAAAN - TAAAN - TAAAAAAAAAAAN!
The cosmological constant, or Lambda (Λ), for friends; was the mechanism introduced by Einstein to stop the collapse of the universe in its equations, a kind of repulsive force, which maintained a precarious balance, giving stability to the universe. But what was the error ?, Well if you have not heard yet, in 1924, Edwin Hubble, yes ..., as the space telescope; he discovered that many of those objects that had been called nebulae, seemed like clouds of gas and star dust; actually they were formed by stars and were much farther away than they appeared, concluding that they were not clouds, but galaxies like ours, and later in 1929, discovering that, with the exception of a small group of them called the local group, the other galaxies were moving away from us, defeating the idea that the universe was stationary.
Given Hubble's results and the confirmation of the hypothesis of an expanding universe, Einstein misses the introduction of the cosmological constant in his equations, however, years later, subsequent observations showed that the universe expanded faster than it did. should, the predictions of the equations were short, not only the galaxies were moving away, but the farther they were, the faster they moved away, they were "accelerating", so that in time the farther away would no longer be visible, because they would be moving away at a speed greater than that of light, so that their light could never reach us.
But how was this possible? How could galaxies move faster than light? and more importantly, what do we do now ?, the answer came from the old reliable, the COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT, TAAAN - TAAAN - TAAAAAAAAAAAN!.
The results of the observations of the expansion of the galaxies, did not fit with theories that claimed that the universe was only composed of matter and dark matter, needed an additional ingredient to accelerate the expansion, therefore, they realized that this obeyed more to a model in which there is a cosmological constant, such as "force" that has the repulsive effect necessary to cause accelerated expansion.
So, this new perspective of the cosmological constant was associated with what would be called Dark Energy, associated at the same time with the vacuum energy, a consequence of Heisemberg's uncertainty principle, - the theoretical physicist, not the Beaking Bad one - , according to which, in the quantum vacuum, virtual particles, bosons and pairs of particles and antiparticles are produced, which decay rapidly and form fluctuations in the respective quantum field, which at great distances would have a repulsive effect between matter.
As an effect of dark energy space would be expanding, inflating, accelerated, consequently, galaxies would not be moving faster, it would be the same space existing between them that expands at a rate that in the case of farther away exceeds the speed of light, so it would not be violating a fundamental principle of relativity, because according to it, no particle of matter could exceed the speed of light, but nothing says that space can not grow to a greater speed.
Current estimates indicate that approximately 69% of what the universe is dark energy, on the other hand, the cosmological constant is one of the biggest problems to solve of the current physics, because there is a difference of 10E120, between the theoretically estimated value for this, and calculated according to the observations.
Anyway, the one that Einstein believed was his worst mistake, he ended up coming back, like the bad fashions to hit us in the face, as if to tell us.
So far the post, I hope you liked it, if so, you know what to do, until next time.
, Barcelona, Venezuela, July 2018
Sources:
Wikipedia, Cosmological constant, Wikipedia.
Wikipedia, Edwin Hubble. Wikipedia.
Wikipedia, Dark energy. Wikipedia.
Wikipedia, Vacuum energy, Wikipedia
Wikipedia, Virtual particle, Wikipedia.
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