PHYSICS SEMINAR
Phantom Energy and The Big Rip of the Universe
Dr. Valerio Faraoni
Physics Department
Bishop's University
Friday, November 27, 2009
1:45 p.m.
Nicolls 1
"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice".
Recollapse or endless expansion and cooling were the only two predictions for the fate of the universe until the discovery of the cosmic acceleration introduced a third possibility: an explosive Big Rip singularity at a finite future. Observational data allow for the possibility of increasing Hubble parameter and for phantom energy (dark energy with an extremely exotic equation of state), which may cause the Big Rip. A toy model of dark energy based on a single non-minimally coupled scalar field and exhibiting a Big Rip as a generic feature will be presented and its relevance discussed.
