Travis Vocino Experiments in Art, Science & Technology.

From a Space.com article, a rather harrowing new theory about the death of the universe paints a picture of “phantom energy” ripping apart galaxies, stars, planets and eventually every speck of matter in a fantastical end to time.

Are you scared yet?

Actually, what the Rip Theory implies is that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, not like the way one would think if gravity were the only force that is acting. But there are no reasons to think that the force of gravity is the only large range force relevant to the expansion of the universe — it was simply the simplest (and most reasonable) assumption to make based on what we knew previously.

When Einstein first developed his General Theory of Relativity, he realized that his equations predicted a universe that was either expanding or contracting. Since at that time there was no evidence that the universe was anything other than static, he included ad hoc a term (the so called cosmological constant) to cancel out these effects so that a static universe would result.

Then it was discovered that the universe is expanding after all — so it was eliminated.

Now there is evidence that the rate of change of expansion is not what one would expect if the gravity were the sole determining factor. So people are reintroducing this cosmological constant to take this into account.

At any rate, Big Bang is really a description of the early universe based on the observation that the universe is expanding, and so must have been smaller in the past. There is nothing about Big Bang itself that determines the rate of change of expansion; rather the expansion is taken as a given (based on General Relativity, of course, and the other laws of physics as currently understood).

It may be, though, that this new “Dark Energy” (as this new force is called) may lead to new physical insights, and may change certain aspects of our understanding of the early universe.