2012/01/18 by M. Villata · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Antimatter #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmological constant #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #Dark fluid #Dark matter #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gravitation #Lambda-CDM model #Observable universe #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Theoretical physics #Void (composites) #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s10509-012-0994-9
published as Astrophys Space Sci (2012) 339:7-12 · 6 pages, accepted as a Letter to the Editor by Astrophysics and Space Science
arxiv created 2012/01/18 · openalex publication_date 2012/01/25 · arxiv updated 2013/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The unexpected discovery of the accelerated cosmic expansion in 1998 has filled the Universe with the embarrassing presence of an unidentified "dark energy", or cosmological constant, devoid of any physical meaning. While this standard cosmology seems to work well at the global level, improved knowledge of the kinematics and other properties of our extragalactic neighborhood indicates the need for a better theory. We investigate whether the recently suggested repulsive-gravity scenario can account for some of the features that are unexplained by the standard model. Through simple dynamical considerations, we find that the Local Void could host an amount of antimatter (∼5×1015 M_\odot) roughly equivalent to the mass of a typical supercluster, thus restoring the matter-antimatter symmetry. The antigravity field produced by this "dark repulsor" can explain the anomalous motion of the Local Sheet away from the Local Void, as well as several other properties of nearby galaxies that seem to require void evacuation and structure formation much faster than expected from the standard model. At the global cosmological level, gravitational repulsion from antimatter hidden in voids can provide more than enough potential energy to drive both the cosmic expansion and its acceleration, with no need for an initial "explosion" and dark energy. Moreover, the discrete distribution of these dark repulsors, in contrast to the uniformly permeating dark energy, can also explain dark flows and other recently observed excessive inhomogeneities and anisotropies of the Universe.