X-Nico

unusual facts about Vacuum energy


Vacuum energy

In 1973, Edward Tryon proposed the zero-energy universe hypothesis: that the Universe may be a large-scale quantum-mechanical vacuum fluctuation where positive mass-energy is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy.


Zero-energy universe

It originated in 1973, when Edward Tryon proposed in the Nature journal that the Universe may have emerged from a large-scale quantum fluctuation of vacuum energy, resulting in its positive mass-energy being exactly balanced by its negative gravitational potential energy.


see also

Raychaudhuri equation

unstable: for example, the world lines of the dust particles in the Gödel solution have vanishing shear, expansion, and acceleration, but constant vorticity just balancing a constant Raychuadhuri scalar due to nonzero vacuum energy ("cosmological constant").

Zero-point energy

Robert Jaffe of MIT argues that the Casimir force should not be considered evidence for vacuum energy, since it can be derived in QED without reference to vacuum energy by considering charge-current interactions (the radiation-reaction picture).