Far out cosmology: does dark energy kill galaxies? (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, March 24, 2017, 12:22 (2589 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We may be in an area of dark energy that is different from other regions of the universe, or not:
http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/can-dark-energy-kill-galaxies?utm_source=Nautilus&...

DAVID’s comment: Barnes is suggesting we live in a special place in the universe which supports our very special Milky Way. Is this God at work to protect life in a vast universe? Makes sense to me. Read the entire article to follow his reasoning.

Since we do not know the extent of the universe, and there may even be an infinite number of “regions”, we have no idea how many regions are similar to/different from our own, but as ours is the only one we know that supports life, it’s fair enough to say it’s special. Tucked away in this article, however, is a significant comment to counterbalance your own:

QUOTE: “In our region of space, the amount of vacuum energy is minuscule, requiring all these fields to cancel one another out to an incredible degree. That seems highly improbable, but in any large enough system, even the most improbable event will occur somewhere.”