Richard Feynman famously said, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
He was one of the most brilliant physicists who ever lived, having written many accepted theories and hypotheses about quantum mechanics.
So, if Richard Feynman doesn’t understand it, I sure don’t. That’s why I don’t feel bad about not understanding yet another scientific mystery. (No, not women, enigmas that men never will understand). I’m referring to dark energy.
“Dark energy” is the name given to some unknown thing that seems to be making the universe expand at an accelerating rate.
It’s called “dark” because no one knows what it is. It’s called “energy” because it moves the universe.
If you think moving a car, a truck, or a train requires energy, think of moving the entire universe.
The mystery goes something like this. In the beginning of the universe, there was something possibly resembling an explosion called the “Big Bang,” where, in a short time, the universe went from something very tiny to something orders of magnitude bigger.
That took great energy because it had to overcome gravity and inertia.
However, it did overcome gravity, which led to an even greater mystery. In our experience, gravity eventually wins. Throw a ball into the air, and it will begin to slow and eventually fall back. Same with a bullet.
If you have a powerful enough gun, the bullet even can escape earth’s gravity and go on forever. But — and this is the important part — the bullet will begin fast, and as it rises, it will slow down.
Even though gravity weakens with distance, it will have taken energy from the bullet. Going fast enough, the bullet even may escape the earth’s gravity, but it always will slow down unless it receives additional bursts of energy.
For that reason, scientists had thought that after the “Big Bang,” the universe’s expansion would slow, perhaps after many billions of years, and even begin to reverse because of gravity and start coming back together in a “Big Crunch.”
Imagine the surprise when measurements seem to show that not only was the expansion not slowing, but it was speeding.
There seemed to be some repulsive force that overcomes gravity at greater distances.
While gravity declines with distance, the effect of “dark energy” seems to increase with distance. No one ever had seen such a force.
This is being studied by great minds with far more knowledge about the subject than I have, so with a dash of humility and a dollop of trepidation, I ask whether any of my readers can comment on this question: Every effect I’ve heard of seems to increase with decreasing distance. Gravity and magnetism are examples.
So, is it possible that so-called dark energy merely is gravity from other universes?
There has been much speculation about the possible existence of multiple universes. No proof of other universes exists, but for the moment, let’s say they might.
And if they do, they might have gravity, just like ours does.
And if they have gravity, that gravity might extend beyond the “borders” of the other universes, affecting adjacent universes.
And, if all those aforementioned “mights” exist, how would we know? What would be the effect on our universe by surrounding universes?
Could there be a gravitational effect whereby all universes would expand faster through time, as they pulled on each other?
Could our expanding-faster universe be evidence of multiple universes?
If you know anyone who is expert in these matters, please ask them to comment on this post.
I will be the first to admit I know even less about the subject than your loud-mouth neighbor knows about Monetary Sovereignty.
The difference is, unlike your loud-mouth neighbor, I recognize my ignorance, and wish to learn. Any thoughts?
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
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#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
I’d like to ask a different question. Just as uninformed as yours, but similar in certain aspects: How does a giant redwood grow (expand) from a relatively tiny seed, and, if there were a tiny being sitting on the seed, what would he think is expanding his universe — the tree — and would he even understand/comprehend how big his universe is getting to be?
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You grew from an invisibly tiny seed. Did you understand how big your universe is getting to be? 🙂
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That is one point of my question. The other is where did we get the energy to grow as quickly as we do from a sperm and an egg to adulthood? Seems to me there would be a lot of “dark energy” in our own growth.
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Found this: Different cells in the human body use different sources of energy:
Red blood cells rely on glucose and convert glucose to lactate.
The brain uses glucose and ketone bodies.
Adipose tissue uses fatty acids and glucose.
The liver primarily uses fatty acid oxidation.
Muscle cells use fatty acids, glucose, and amino acids.
The basic energy-producing parts of a cell are called Mitochondria
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And while we are in our mother’s wombs, we are being supplied with all these things. But what does a redwood seed have? A thin covering of food to help it grow a root and a leaf, then it has to suck energy from the soil, and carbon dioxide from the air. It has no guarantee the soil will provide for it all its necessities. Yet it grows,
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Perhaps that is why nature spreads billions of seeds on the ground, expecting only a minuscule percentage to survive even a day and a much smaller percentage of those to procreate.
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I’m just looking at the ones that grow. The rest have no information on quantum mechanics.
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One broader thing comes to mind with regard to the untidiness of the human condition and our individuated consciousness — which for sure relates to all the branches of science (and like, you know, everything). We don’t as a species seem to like celebrating not having answers, even less as a prompt to pursue them anyway with the expectation our latest findings will only satisfy a facet here, there, of something. So not-sexy! If there is such a thing as collective social evolution, it’s a killer.
Any new kind of healthy social movement or ideology that might *look* a little like religion, or politics, say, would embrace the dilemma in a big grown-up bear hug.
The iconoclast 60s culture I remember seems now to have been co-opted/perverted by online trolls. “Question the Science” seems more a slogan for chaos farming whatever the issue, whatever opportunity presents. I hope we make it as a species.
I liked your pictures of multiple universes tugging at each other.
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Not being that knowledgeable in current quantum physics, I propose my thoughts. Our universe is expanding at a increasing rate, at the farthest reaches of human understanding light has a speed that is limited for us to quantify. The expanding universe doesn’t allow us to see or understand our universe beyond light. There is light that will never be seen on earth or any place in our universe because the universe at the farthest is expanding beyond the speed of light. As far as all other measurable data here on Earth, or any place in the existing universe, there is no boundary because we are bound by our observations of light travel, magmatism, and all energy. Energy never decreases, and always changes in our observable data.
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So far, the universe has not expanded beyond the point where we can’t see what we believe to be the beginning. Supposedly it will, and there even may come a time when the entire sky will look black to any creatures still alive. I’ll miss the sunrises and sunsets. 🙂
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Our solar system isn’t expanding, to my knowledge, gravity of the sun prevents that. As far as our ability to collect data of the creation, or big bang, the speed of light, the bending of light by gravity, and the slowing of time as we speed away from the outer universe probably will be a positive, never to be seen .
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One hypothesis holds that as the universe expands, the internal structure of atoms will expand, making all matter, first the things near the top of the scale, then even hydrogen, will cease to exist.
The good news is that with time slowing, I could live to see me reach 6′ tall. 🙂
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You can get a LOT from the internet. Theories and facts up the Ying yang. To me, the universe is what hard science tells us it is by way of proof. So far, there’s only one universe; the speed of light varies with the medium it goes through, and no other intelligent life exists, except here.
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Including MAGAs?
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They have intelligence, but not put to very good use.
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Hi Rodger,
Its something I’ve wondered about myself. Try this one I came up with….
If you were a photon just created, you’d be moving at light speed which means all the other dimensions are compressed to zero length so you can be anywhere, in zero time and having moved (as far as you know) zero distance.
To a newly instantiated photon the world is a zero point object.
I asked a professor of quantum physics that question and he said, and I quote:
“ We don’t like to think about that ”
I was in my freshman physics class and we did E=hF.
It took me about 30 seconds to go from E=hF to E=MC2 using simple substitution.
Which means that Planck knew that E=MC2 and that Einstein must have known that too.
Cheers,
Wilson.
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Take a look at MOND: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics. and https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-just-revived-a-previously-debunked-alternative-theory-of-gravity.
They propose a modified view of gravity that seems to predict the actions of distant galactic object pretty well, perhaps augmenting Newtonian theory of gravity at very great distances that Newton could not have known about.
There are other alternative theories too: https://scitechdaily.com/new-discovery-indicates-an-alternative-gravity-theory/
If you really want to blow your mind, read about Expansion Theory. I did a review of a review of a book positing it in 2010: https://www.opednews.com/articles/Expansion-Theory—Our-B-by-Roland-Michel-Trem-100511-652.html. Basically, the idea is there is no such thing as gravity but instead, EVERYTHING from the smallest particle to the largest star is continuously expanding – yes, including us – and what we perceive as gravity is just the push of other expanding objects, like the Earth, against us or our spaceships. Since everything is expanding, including distances, we can’t detect it.
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If everything were expanding, we wouldn’t be able to detect the expansion of the universe, would we?
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I can’t claim to have checked the very complicated math of the author, who’s an electrical engineer, not a cosmologist, but he claims it all works out because it’s different rates, and red-shifting is still possible at great distances, but the expansion is persistent throughout.
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