Posted: Feb 21, 2012 1:10 pm
DavidMcC wrote:Dark matter and dark energy might be understandable in the context of this cosmology, by extension of the physics of this universe. Consider that BHs have gravitational interactions with each other, and may collide. Such a collision would release a huge amount of gravitational potential energy as the BHs fall into each other's potential wells. I propose that this energy somehow gets converted into "zero-point" energy (ie, space) in both BH/universes, causing both to expand and exhibit "dark energy".
Surely the collision of two BHs is extremely rare. I imagine that such events could happen in a binary system of massive stars (and a collision wouldn't happen for billions of years); also, the central supermassive BHs of two colliding galaxies might merge, but again, such an event is very rare in the present-day universe. Other than that, space is just too big for a chance encounter between two BHs.
In any case, I don't see how two colliding BHs have something to do with dark energy. They would release gravitational waves, but how is that connected with dark energy? And even if there would be such a mechanism, I cannot imagine that BH-collisions are anywhere near frequent or powerful enough to have any impact beyond their local neighbourhood, let alone the entire universe.