Towards a future singularity?

Abstract

We discuss whether the future extrapolation of the present cosmological state may lead to a singularity even in case of "conventional" (negative) pressure of the dark energy field, namely $w=p/\rho \ge -1$. The discussion is based on an often neglected aspect of scalar-tensor models of gravity: the fact that different test particles may follow the geodesics of different metric frames, and the need for a frame-independent regularization of curvature singularities.

8 pages. Essay written for the "2004 Awards for Essays on Gravitation" (Gravity Research Foundation, Wellesley Hills, MA, USA), and selected for "Honorable Mention"

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Future Singularities of Isotropic Cosmologies
• Slice Energy in Higher Order Gravity Theories and Conformal Transformations
• Cosmology: Techniques and Observations
• Dark Energy and Life's Ultimate Future