Fractals and Dark Energy
Fractals and Dark Energy (Cosmic Acceleration)
A Fractal = A pattern (often occurring in nature) in which smaller parts of the pattern are similar to the larger/whole pattern, repeating on a range of scales.
Concerning the accelerating expansion of the cosmos, commonly labelled ‘dark energy’, a frequently asked question is, ‘If the visible universe is accelerating apart, then why do we not observe this phenomenon here in our solar system?’
The answer usually given is because the solar system is too small for the effect to show. One should elaborate and say that we can observe the effect in the cosmos by looking billions of years into the past, whereas here our observations will be over a very short time in cosmic terms, so to detect an expansion here, and if it is accelerating, would be very difficult. Nevertheless, given the sensitivity and power of modern telescopes etc., should it not be possible?
Perhaps there is another reason why it would not be observed. Suppose that the accelerating expansion was not due to the energy inherent in space (as that calculation is now famously out by 120 orders of magnitude anyway). Suppose instead the rate of acceleration was proportional to the (real) mass contained in a volume of space. In that case the rate of expansion in the visible universe (of about a hundred billion stars in each of a hundred billion galaxies) proportional to its mass, should be 23 orders of magnitude higher than what would be observed in the solar system. The solar system’s rate of expansion would be 23 orders of magnitude less than what would be assumed from an overall expansion of space.
In this model we would see that subdivisions of a whole, collective mass, on all scales, would accelerate apart at slower rates, on progressively smaller scales (fractals), so the effect would look like the granulation or clumping of mass in the progression of the expansion. Clumping leads to voids, but where voids, containing less mass, develop, then their expansion rate decreases, so there may be complex / chaos driven alternation between relative clumping and expansion.
As to what may cause an acceleration that is proportional to a collective mass, well we already have that in Gravity. Gravity, of course is associated with attraction and things falling together, not accelerating apart (for reasons not explained, pending a theory of everything), so if we stick to gravity as usually observed, then the acceleration may be caused by an attraction to/of a greater/ infinite mass (of an infinite multiverse beyond / before our visible universe/bang. Apart from nicely describing the way in which the visible universe has expanded this explanation also helps to explain other 'anomalies' like the cold dark spot in the CMB and the discrepancy in expansion calculations given by the CMB and the galaxies.
Mark
