From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Tue Feb 25 2003 - 23:35:08 MST
http://xxx.lanl.gov/list/astro-ph/new
astro-ph/0302506 [abs, ps, pdf, other] :
Title: Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday
Authors: Robert R. Caldwell, Marc Kamionkowski, Nevin N. Weinberg
Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures, latex
Cosmologists have long wondered whether the Universe will eventually
re-collapse and end with a Big Crunch, or expand forever, becoming
increasingly cold and empty. Recent evidence for a flat Universe, possibly
with a cosmological constant or some other sort of negative-pressure dark
energy, has suggested that our fate is the latter. However, the data may
actually be pointing toward an astonishingly different cosmic end game. Here,
we explore the consequences that follow if the dark energy is phantom energy,
in which the sum of the pressure and energy density is negative. The positive
phantom-energy density becomes infinite in finite time, overcoming all other
forms of matter, such that the gravitational repulsion rapidly brings our
brief epoch of cosmic structure to a close. The phantom energy rips apart the
Milky Way, solar system, Earth, and ultimately the molecules, atoms, nuclei,
and nucleons of which we are composed, before the death of the Universe in a
``Big Rip''.
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