«
»

One Hundred Years of the Cosmological Constant: from ‘Superfluous Stunt’ to Dark Energy

Some months ago I did a little post on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the cosmological constant which included a link to the original paper on this subject by Albert Einstein. A nice thread of well-informed comments followed that post and one of the contributors to that thread, Cormac O’Raifeartaigh, is lead author of a paper that has just appeared on the arXiv. It’s quite a lengthy paper (62 pages) that gives an account of the cosmological constant in the context of modern observational cosmology. You can get a PDF of the paper here. It’s well worth reading!

The abstract reads:

We present a centennial review of the history of the term known as the cosmological constant. First introduced to the general theory of relativity by Einstein in 1917 in order to describe a universe that was assumed to be static, the term fell from favour in the wake of the discovery of cosmic the expanding universe, only to make a dramatic return in recent times. We consider historical and philosophical aspects of the cosmological constant over four main epochs: (i) the use of the term in static cosmologies (both Newtonian and relativistic; (ii) the marginalization of the term following the discovery of cosmic expansion; (iii) the use of the term to address specific cosmic puzzles such as the timespan of expansion, the formation of galaxies and the redshifts of the quasars; (iv) the re-emergence of the term in today’s Lamda-CDM cosmology. We find that the cosmological constant was never truly banished from theoretical models of the universe, but was sidelined by astronomers for reasons of convenience. We also find that the return of the term to the forefront of modern cosmology did not occur as an abrupt paradigm shift due to one particular set of observations, but as the result of a number of empirical advances such as the measurement of present cosmic expansion using the Hubble Space Telescope, the measurement of past expansion using type SN 1a supernovae as standard candles, and the measurement of perturbations in the cosmic microwave background by balloon and satellite. We give a brief overview of contemporary interpretations of the physics underlying the cosmic constant and conclude with a synopsis of the famous cosmological constant problem.

This entry was posted on November 21, 2017 at 4:12 pm and is filed under History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “One Hundred Years of the Cosmological Constant: from ‘Superfluous Stunt’ to Dark Energy”

  1. Cormac O Rafferty's avatar
    Cormac O Rafferty Says:
    November 21, 2017 at 4:28 pm

    Thanks for the plug Peter! I can’t believe I didn’t spot the typo in the second line of the abstract, ah well. More importantly, the paper is actually only 40 pages long. I must have been possessed when I posted it

    Reply
  2. Cormac O Rafferty's avatar
    Cormac O Rafferty Says:
    November 21, 2017 at 4:38 pm

    I will swear that word ‘cosmic’ survived 60 drafts, incredible!

    Reply
  3. Cormac O Rafferty's avatar
    Cormac O Rafferty Says:
    November 22, 2017 at 11:11 am

    Good question Phillip! If I remember rightly, the European Physical Journal was the name given to the amalgamation of several major European journals such as Zetischrift fir Physik, Journal de Physique and Il Nuovo Cimento. I gather it hasn’t really had the big impact one might expect from such big names, I suspect a lot of people don’t know it’s pedigree.
    As for EPJ(H), it’s only about 10 years old, but I think it has established itself as a good journal for the history of physics by physicists and for physicists (as opposed to sociological history of science). My own experience with EPJH has been very positive – good rigorous comment from referees, fast turnaround, lovely journal in hardcopy. The downside is that it has a very small readership in the US, but I guess that’s true of all the history of science journals

    Reply
  4. cormac's avatar
    cormac Says:
    December 15, 2017 at 12:08 pm

    Thanks Phillip!
    Re status, right now I’m working in some good suggestions from the referees, should be done by Monday. Just to give you an idea, of the sort of points raised:
    (i) The paper is a bit thin on the pre-Zeldovich history of zero-point energy and the quantum vacuum given the importance of such considerations in modern explanations for the cc. So I’m adding a short section on work on this by Nernst, Lenz, Jordan, Pauli etc
    (ii) I mentioned the old argument for a cc from the standpoint of mathematical generality, but I didn’t say anything about the use of the term in unified field theories, from Eddington onwards…so I’m adding a few sentences on that too!
    This is why I like this EPJH, good suggestions from the referees within less than a month of submission

    Reply

Leave a reply to Cormac O Rafferty Cancel reply