"Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)" wrote:
| "Dark energy" is really a stupid term, modelled on "dark matter" (which
| does make at least some kind of sense). Substitute "cosmological
| constant" as there is no evidence at all against the idea, and much for
| it, that "dark energy" is just the good old cosmological constant.
[...]
Yes, but can't they simply call it "vacuum energy" as in "vacuum"
displacement or polarisation when talking about eps_0 in EM?
(I confess to be a little motivated by Carlo Ovelli "Reality Is Not
What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity")
--
ciao,
Bruce
drift wave turbulence:
http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/
[[Mod. note --
Calling it "vacuum energy" would be making an implicit statement
that it has something to do with vacuum energy/polarization in the
sense you're using it. I don't think we know that.
(On the other hand... calling it "cosmological constant" is also
making an implicit statement that it's trully *constant*, i.e., that
it enters into the Einstein equations in a certain way, with NO terms
involving the spacetime derivatives of the "cosmological constant".
We don't know that, either. About all we know today is its average
value over the past 10^10-or-so years. We probably won't know much
about its time variation or lack thereof for another decade.)
-- jt]]