In most of our undergraduate physics courses, we study what can happen in space, but space itself plays a passive role. In basic cosmology, the opposite is true. It is the behavior of space that plays the major role. In this, paper #2, we first discuss the nature of a simple expanding space, and then look at the consequence of applying Newton's law of gravity in this space. The calculations are particularly simple if most of the energy behaves like the vacuum energy discussed earlier in paper #1.1 The calculation is easy but the results are spectacular.
REFERENCES
1.
Elisha
Huggins
, “Vacuum energy and inflation: 1. A liter of vacuum energy
,” Phys. Teach.
51
, 354
(Sept. 2013
).2.
Elisha
Huggins
, “Vacuum energy and inflation: 3. Newtonian cosmology and GR
,” Phys. Teach.
51
(Nov. 2013
).3.
Andrew
Liddle
, An Introduction to Modern Cosmology
, 2nd. ed. (Wiley
, New York
, 2003
). ISBN978-0-470-84835-7.4.
Alan
Guth
, The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins
(1997
), ISBN 0-201-32840-2. We credit Alan for the visual description of sprinkling galaxies (he said a few particles) around a vacuum energy universe to observe the vacuum expanding. See his pages 40–41, which also describe an interesting history behind this approach.© 2013 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2013
American Association of Physics Teachers
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