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Dark Energy

Dark Energy, of course, is the best known kluge of the Big Bang model, and is the supposed cause of spacetime expansion. It's hypothesized to be a ‘vacuum energy’ that stretches space out, causing galaxies to effectively move away from each other.


It's also hypothesized to be something like 70% of all energy in the universe.


But when we look into the vacuum, we don't see that energy. There's a surprising amount of activity in a vacuum, namely virtual particles - matter/antimatter pairs, blinking in and out of existence. But we see zero direct evidence of an expansive, antigravity, force in the vacuum.


And when we look within galaxies, we likewise do not see any force of expansion. In fact, the opposite is true. Gravity seems to be too strong within galaxies, clusters and superclusters. The other famous kluge, Dark Matter, had to be hypothesized to explain why galaxies don't spin themselves into expansion, as Newtonian gravity would predict.


A more elegant solution would be for the cause of the expansion of space to also be part of the cause of why galaxies, clusters, and filaments stick together, rather than those forces being in contradiction of each other.


For example, if this void and that void are both expanding, you can see how their expansion could actually provide a kind of pressure on the filament between them. Expansion in the voids might actually be part of what pushed filaments together, and what keeps them together now. In that way, expansion and gravity could assist each other, instead of being contradictory.

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