Dark Energy as a Falling Pencil ⚡ экспресс

Modern telescopes see distant galaxies flying apart faster and faster. The cause is called dark energy, but its nature has been a mystery. On top of that, calculations of the expansion rate in the early and late Universe don't match. The answer might lie in an event much like a falling pencil.

In the first moments, the Universe had perfect equilibrium — a large-scale symmetry. Then it spontaneously broke, like a pencil balanced on its tip falling in a random direction. That fall gave birth to a new field — the dilaton field. It creates a weak but constant repulsion, making the cosmos expand ever faster.

Calculations that include this field astonishingly match the observed expansion and even link the strength of dark energy to the curvature of spacetime predicted by Einstein. This takes us beyond the Standard Model of physics. An amazing fact: although this energy accelerates galaxies, within the volume of a room there's barely enough for a feeble finger snap.