Is the cosmological "constant" a nonlocal quantum residue of discreteness of the causal set type?

Abstract

The evidence for an accelerating Hubble expansion appears to have confirmed the heuristic prediction, from causal set theory, of a fluctuating and ``ever-present'' cosmological term in the Einstein equations. A more concrete phenomenological model incorporating this prediction has been devised and tested, but it remains incomplete. I will review these developments and also mention a possible consequence for the dimensionality of spacetime.

arXiv commentplainTeX, 13 pages. To appear in the proceedings of the PASCOS-07 Conference, held July, 2007, London, England. Most current version is available at http://www.physics.syr.edu/~sorkin/some.papers/ (or wherever my home-page may be)

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