The zeropoint superfluid pervades everything and no material can compress it. The only thing that can compress it is the contraction of space itself. This would seem to be at odds with General Covariance: apart from tidal forces, nothing in a general inertial frame is aware that it is in a gravity field. However, viewed in global coordinates, the region in question has more space and hence more dark energy.
3.3.1. Dark-Energy Can Expand Space or Gravitate Dependent on Coordinate Viewpoint
In this section we shall show that dark-energy upon looking towards the centre of a gravity-well adds to the mass-energy causing the well but when looking away from the well, causes the expansion of space. This happens at several nested layers, the effect increasing with more expanse of space.
Thus: near the edges of a solar system the dark-energy contributes to the mass-energy of the system; nearby stars of the same group red-shift somewhat. At the edges of the star system the dark-energy contributes to holding it together but when looking at other star systems, they are observed to red-shift somewhat more. At the edge of a galaxy the dark-energy helps to hold it together and looking away at other galaxies, they are observed to be even more red-shifted.
Once again with Local Groups dark-energy helps to hold it together and looking away, other groups of galaxies are even more red-shifted. On the largest scales Super Groups are held together, observation of other Super Groups finds them fleeing at high red-shift. A “God’s eye view” of the whole Universe would find it held together with the assistance of dark-energy. Presumably God would see his other universes rushing away too – unless he went up a scale and stood outside it all again. None of this is paradoxical and is to do with the relative scales of the expansion between the different levels and the volume of space (and dark-energy contained therein or outside), as we shall now show.
The spherical metric in flat space is used as a comparison to the Schwarzschild metric in curved space resulting from a gravitating body,
Using the -+++ signature. Both these metrics have the same differential 4-volume element given by,
The three dimensional metric can be derived from the four dimensional metric thus[
1,
22],
(The signs are reversed for the +--- signature.) However then the 3-volume differential elements are different for these static metrics,
The flat space metric (consider a globe) has the usual shrinking of the volume element, as shown in
Figure 4, by the angles subtended from the radius. However an additional real shrinkage factor is caused by gravitational length contraction of
which of course acts radially. There is more space near a gravitating body and up to the Schwarzschild radius
(anything beyond this requires an interior coordinate system/metric[
1] for this is just a coordinate singularity and it is beyond relevance here for the general argument, such radius are small and well inside a gravitating body) an observer further out from the centre of the gravity-well will see an object squeezed and elongated, its volume apparently increasing as it heads towards the centre. However, gravity causes volume contraction.
This seems paradoxical until we realise that in flat space and spherical coordinates, a retreating cube doesn’t really become smaller – it is a trick of perspective. Yet when the ratio of volume elements for an observer at the edge of the gravity-well (or the edge of our spherical coordinate domain) is taken with the subject, some co-ordinate distance r into both and comparing ratios of volume elements,
The Schwarzschild volume element is bigger than the volume element of flat space, which doesn’t change size at all with position and conclude that space really has contracted in size by the factor
. Incidentally, the author has an earlier paper[
23] which attempts to put the effects of both Special and General Relativity on a mechanistic rather than a phenomenological basis, by the variation of masses of particles due to their velocity or position in a gravity field: that time dilation and length contraction (bond lengths governed by virtual or bound particles) are real physical effects.
Now if we consider the ideal dark-energy gas between an observer near the edge of the gravity-well and a subject inside the well, the pressure and volume changes between the two cases obviously relates as,
The volumes can be differentiated with respect to the polar co-ordinate,
Near the periphery of the well
is positive and near unity but
in the direction towards the centre is negative
and here is our point: Looking towards the centre, the usual negative pressure of dark-energy becomes positive and so contributes to the mass-energy of the whole system (we’d know this by taking the trace of the stress-energy tensor and obtaining the scalar curvature) and
gravitates. However, looking out of the well the pressure is negative and so the observer will see other gravitating bodies red-shifting away, especially with the large amount of negative pressure accrued over astronomical volumes.
3.3.2. The Variation of Pressure of the Degenerate Electron Gas with Volume
Having discussed gravitational contraction of volume, it the follows that there is a change in the degenerate pressure of the virtual e+e- pairs given by eqn. by the indirect action on the virtual photon gas. Differentiation results in the following,
And the change in pressure, as considered far from the gravitational-well by an observer is,
Utilising the figures from earlier, we can model the dark-energy contribution of a Milky-Way sized galaxy with an external Schwarzschild metric
3, that is, with a mass some 10
11 solar masses, so 2x10
41 kg and with the
fluctuation density for N/V from eqn. calculated earlier as 8.8x10
98 virtual pairs per m
3. We then multiply ΔP by κ
3, the Einstein constant in front of the field equations cubed[
15], to show that it is a 2nd order term and obtain the following graph of what a distant observer would reckon the dark-energy pressure/energy to be, looking into the galaxy and noting the volume contraction.
When this is integrated with respect to proper volume, the additional mass of the galaxy from dark-energy is,
Where, r
Schwarz is the Schwarzschild radius and as previously stated, κ
3 has been introduced along with fluctuation density for virtual e
+e
- pairs placed into eqn. (hence
Figure 5).
Figure 6 shows the integration of
Figure 5 over proper volume,
There is no point integrating when the vacuum energy becomes that of deep space and limits the process to a few million light years radii – the gravitational effect of the galaxy is minimal at that distance, compared to deep space. The result at 1 Mlyr is comparable to the mass needed (80-90% mass of the galaxy[
16,
17,
18], some 10
11 solar masses for the Milky Way) in the galactic halo.