Analogy to the Universe and Dark Energy

[Moonchild]

I've an explanation for Dark Energy, which I will demonstrate in the form of an analogy:

 

Dark energy is like the tide of an ocean, but without something pulling at it. It is random movement of the spacetime continuum. Now, picture two ships as stars, or galaxies if you will - objects with mass on the seemingly endless plane of fluctuating Dark Energy. The ships, of course, lie low in the water, so the closer ships are to each other, the more likely they'll "bump" into each other or graze past each other.

 

Now, this is only one explanation for the relationship between DE and gravity. Tell me how accurate this is, and share your own interpretations of the DE/gravity interactions.

[BlameTheEx]

Sounds to me like you are describing something rather like brownian motion.

 

Heat is stored in a gas as movement of its individual molecules. Each molecule is zipping around bouncing off anything that gets in the way.

 

You are suggesting that there is an awful lot of randomised kinetic energy in (apparently) empty space. If there is energy, then presumably that energy has mass according to the formula E=MC2, which can be rearranged as M=E/C2. Does this mean we have a source of dark matter?

 

Interesting. I had assumed that any lump of kinetic energy had to have a particle to carry it. If not conventional matter such as molecules or electrons, then photons or neutrinos.

 

Is there anyway to test your idea?

[Tormod]

You are suggesting that there is an awful lot of randomised kinetic energy in (apparently) empty space. If there is energy, then presumably that energy has mass according to the formula E=MC2, which can be rearranged as M=E/C2. Does this mean we have a source of dark matter?

 

That was my first thought, too. Moonchild, your idea is poetic but like Blame asks, how would we test it?

[paultrr]

Dark energy works in opposition to gravity while dark matter tends to work with gravity. Dark energy is from everything we can tell a vacuum pressure difference. At least when one models it this way we get the basic results we observe. The normal carrier of vacuum pressure, if one was to propose such would be the virtual particles themselves of the quantum zero point field. Outside of say performing a Casimir experiment at different points across space or observational evidence of clumping here and expansion there, or perhaps apperant slow down out of probes that cannot be accounted for any other way I too can think of nothing else to test such an idea upon. However, high kenetic energy regions might act simular to certain dispersion mediums. If they do then light shown through such might display simular effects to those type of mediums.

[BlameTheEx]

I have had a bit of a think.

 

Randomised kinetic energy just won't work as an explanation for dark energy. The problem is that dark energy moves things away from each other, but randomised kinetic energy will do no more than make them wobble. As space is everywhere, the energy would be everywhere. There would be the same amount of force on all sides of any largish object, and it wouldn't move. Small objects would move, but in no particular direction. The equivalent of brownian motion.