Dark Energy May Be Incompatible With String Theory
A controversial new paper argues that universes with dark energy profiles like ours do not exist in the “landscape” of universes allowed by string theory.
Quantamagazine.org
Natalie Wolchover
Senior Writer/Editor
August 9, 2018
(This post was last modified: 2018-08-15, 04:20 AM by Ninshub.)
A controversial new paper argues that universes with dark energy profiles like ours do not exist in the “landscape” of universes allowed by string theory.
Quantamagazine.org
Natalie Wolchover
Senior Writer/Editor
August 9, 2018
Quote:The conjectured formula — posed in the June 25 paper by Vafa, Georges Obied, Hirosi Ooguri and Lev Spodyneiko and further explored in a second paper released two days later by Vafa, Obied, Prateek Agrawal and Paul Steinhardt — says, simply, that as the universe expands, the density of energy in the vacuum of empty space must decrease faster than a certain rate. The rule appears to be true in all simple string theory-based models of universes. But it violates two widespread beliefs about the actual universe: It deems impossible both the accepted picture of the universe’s present-day expansion and the leading model of its explosive birth.