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davidjara t1_izbidwk wrote

Reply to comment by TwentyninthDigitOfPi in Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science by AutoModerator

Long story short, no. Dark energy is the energy of space itself. We cannot move it/compress it/manipulate it in anyway whatsoever. If I understood your idea correctly you want to put a lot of dark energy in a tiny space and see what happens. This is like asking if you can put a big chunk of space in a little space.

I want to stress that even though dark energy is code term for "weird energy of empty space we don't understand anything about" by its very nature, it cannot be manipulated and hence dark energy BH are simply not possible.

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TwentyninthDigitOfPi t1_izbk5jp wrote

How certain are we of that? Just from reading wikipedia, it looks like some models of dark energy are compatible with what you said (e.g. a cosmological constant), but other models seem to be more "normal" kinds of energy (like quintessence).

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davidjara t1_izbrmp2 wrote

Certain beyond reasonable doubt. Let me first say that the cosmological constant is not a model of dark energy. The cosmological constant is a low energy, effective description of whatever dark energy really is.

Dark energy is the term coined to describe the accelerated expansion of the universe, most people (myself included) believe that this is due to vacuum energy. The quintessence story is a way of explaining the expansion, not as vacuum energy, but as interactions with a field. This field violates basically every single reasonable expectation (that's why not many people like it) and (to my knowledge) it barely works even in the simplest situations. If the expansion of the universe is due to a field like in the quintessence story, then it's possible you could something with it. However, you will struggle to find a single researcher that believes the expansion of the universe is due to something different that vacuum energy.

So just to put a bit of salt on it. My answer was regarding the energy of empty space. I believe that beyond any reasonable doubt dark energy is the energy of empty space. If this is true, there is no way to make dale energy BH. On the other hand, if it turns out that the universe expansion is due to some matter fields then you could in principle build stuff with it (like BH).

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