Dark Energy: back to Newton?

Abstract

Dark Energy is currently one of the biggest mysteries in science. In this article the origin of the concept is traced as far back as Newton and Hooke in the seventeenth century. Newton considered, along with the inverse square law, a force of attraction that varies linearly with distance. A direct link can be made between this term and Einstein's cosmological constant, Lambda, and this leads to a possible relation between Lambda and the total mass of the universe. Mach's influence on Einstein is discussed and the convoluted history of Lambda throughout the last ninety years is coherently presented.

14 pages; with slight modifications to the version published in Astronomy & Geophysics journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, February 2008 issue, vol. 49, pgs. 1.13-1.18

References in corpus (3)

• Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
• Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae
• Prospects for probing the dark energy via supernova distance measurements

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Beyond $\Lambda$CDM: Problems, solutions, and the road ahead
• An approximate treatment of gravitational collapse
• The size of our causal Universe
• Constraining the cosmological constant and the DGP gravity with the double pulsar PSR J0737-3039
• Cosmology with Hypervelocity Stars
• Dynamical aspects for scalar fields coupled to cubic contractions of the Riemann tensor
• Quantifying the Projected Suppression of Cluster Escape Velocity Profiles
• Dark Energy: is it `just' Einstein's Cosmological Constant Lambda?
• A note on cosmological features of modified Newtonian potentials
• Asymptotically Schwarzschild solutions in $f(R)$ extension of general relativity