Monday, January 6, 2020

general relativity - Is the total energy of the universe constant?


If total energy is conserved just transformed and never newly created, is there a sum of all energies that is constant? Why is it probably not that easy?



Answer



No. The universe is dominated by dark energy, which is consistent with a cosmological constant $\Lambda$. In other words, as the universe expands, the energy density stays roughly the same. So the (energy density)*volume is growing exponentially at late times.


Although the total energy is not well defined (as the volume of the universe may be infinite), the fractional rate of growth is certainly nonzero.


You might wonder how the total energy can grow without violating energy conservation. The answer is that in general relativity, we just need $\boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \boldsymbol{T} = 0$, so a cosmological constant is perfectly consistent as $\boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \Lambda \boldsymbol{g} = 0$


For a nice explanation by Sean Carroll, see http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/


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