Greetings, Brent. Thanks for joining the conversation! On 8 Nov 2003 at 14:37, Brent Meeker wrote: > I think you are misinterpreting inflation. The cosmological >constant produces an inflationary pressure that's proportional to >volume, so over large distances it dominates over gravity. But over >shorter distances, i.e. galaxy clusters, gravity dominates. Since >gravity dominates, the matter in the cluster doesn't move apart and >gravity continues to dominate. Other clusters that are moving away >experience greater expansion force and move away faster as gravity >weakens due to distance. Of course it is not known whether the >acceleration observed is due to a cosmological *constant* or due to >some field that may dynamically depend on other variables and so >change or go to zero.
I think that's the same viewpoint that Joao is putting forth? Then the counter to my argument is that their can be no inflation within regions of the universe where the force of gravity is above a threshold value? That is a strong counter argument. I am not convinced that any value of gravity can stop inflation. Slow it locally, yes, and even slow it dramatically. I can not argue against that unless dark energy suddenly came into being everywhere and all at once when the universe was something around 5 billion years old. But I think it was there all along and from the moment of creation of the universe. It's just a matter of how it gets expressed when mitigating circumstances are specified. Instead I again think of the balloon model. Place one dot on the surface of a balloon that is being inflated. Place another dot 90 degrees away from it, also on the surface. As the balloon continues to inflate, the dots move away from each other. Although very primitive in description, this pretty much mirrors what seems to actually be happening to our universe. For simplicity of argument, I'm ignoring the dimensional movement of the individual dots relative to each other and which is not accounted for by inflation. However, I will consider the two individual dots, for the sake of argument, relative to what is happening to the balloon. As the balloon inflates the dots move away from each other. So do the subatomic components of an individual dot. But the dots are moving away from each other at a very much faster rate than are the subatomic components of an individual dot moving away from each other. It is, as you pointed out, a phenomenon that is relative to volume. There is more volume involved between the 2 dots than there is between the components that make up one dot. It is easy to measure the apparent inflation velocity of the 2 dots relative to each other due to the huge amount of volume involved. But the volume difference is so great between the 2 dots as compared to the components that make up just one dot that we simply have not observed the drastically slowed but still occurring inflation being experienced within 1 dot. Someone better than I am will have to do the calculations! But I am suggesting, based upon what I think is logic, that the amount of inflation occurring within one “dot” in the universe, relative to the amount of inflation assumed to be current for the entire universe, is going to result in a number that looks very familiar at the quantum level. And I’m suggesting that the value for it changes over time because it is dependant upon how much inflation has occurred. And, I suggest that this changing value is what describes the inflationary rate of the universe as it continues to speed up. At some finite time in the future it will make itself obvious at the quantum level. But for now entire galaxies are just too small in of themselves to fall apart, much less atomic particles! Not enough space/time volume involved! But given a distant yet finite time, in each case there will be, rather suddenly, enough volume involved. But it won't happen everywhere at the same time. Ron McFarland
