Anti-Gravity, the Force that's Tearing Space Apart!

PATREON

REFERENCES

CHAPTERS
0:00 Is repulsive gravity key to forming the universe
0:40 Newton vs Einstein's model of gravity
2:14 Repulsive gravity and dark energy
3:29 Repulsive gravity and the Big Bang
4:10 Support our sponsor Incogni
5:35 Is repulsive gravity fundamental
6:47 What is negative pressure in space?
8:45 What is Dark Energy made of?
10:00 Inflaton field or Quintessence?
11:30 Exciting sci fi tech by harnessing dark energy

SUMMARY
What if gravity repelled instead of attracted? Repulsive gravity may have shaped the entire history of our universe. For centuries gravity was defined by Isaac Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation which said, “every object in the universe attracts every other object, with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance”.

But in 1915, Einstein developed a more complete theory of gravity. He unified space and time, previously believed to be universal and independent, into a single 4-dimensional continuum. He followed that up 10 years later with General Relativity, which showed that mass and energy could warp this spacetime. So that’s when we were introduced to the idea of spacetime as a malleable fabric that could compress and expand. Gravity was better modeled by geometry.

But if mass curves space, why couldn’t things curve it the opposite way—pushing rather than pulling? This might be the only way to explain the current state of our cosmos. Astronomers had assumed the expansion of the universe should be slowing down due to the gravitational pull of matter. But in the late 1990s, distant supernovae observations showed that the universe is not just expanding—but the expansion is accelerating. Something is pushing space apart, acting like an anti-gravity force, dark energy.

We don’t know what dark energy is. It could be a new kind of energy field, or it could be an intrinsic property of empty space. It makes up 68% of the total energy in the universe. In contrast, normal matter only accounts for about 5% of the energy, and Dark matter is 27%.

But dark energy isn’t the only time repulsive gravity may have played a role in shaping the universe. The birth of the universe, the Big Bang, might have been driven it too. According to the theory of cosmic inflation, a brief but immense expansion occurred in the first tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, causing the universe to grow exponentially. This rapid expansion requires a form of repulsive gravity, possibly caused by a high-energy field known as the inflaton field. Repulsive gravity could have shaped both the beginning of the universe and its long-term fate.

How can gravity repel? Einstein’s equation can be rewritten in the following way known as the Friedmann equation. It shows that there are two ways to get an accelerated expansion, or repulsive gravity: negative energy, or negative pressure.

Normal matter has positive energy and exerts a negligible positive pressure. It attracts, and its energy density decreases as 1/a^3 with expansion. Radiation has positive energy and pressure. It also attracts, and its energy gets diluted faster than that of normal matter, evolving as 1/a^4 due to redshift in addition to volume dilution. Dark energy has an unusual property: negative pressure. A substance with negative pressure will get diluted slower than normal matter, or not at all.
#gravity
#darkenergy
In the latter case, known as “cosmological constant”, the energy density remains unchanged throughout cosmic history. In other words, as the volume of space increases, more energy is continuously created; the cumulative repulsive effect then leads to exponentially accelerated expansion.

But what is this dark energy made of? For its density to remain constant with expansion, this mysterious component must be an intrinsic property of spacetime, present in equal amounts at every point and continuously stretching the fabric of the cosmos. A possible solution could be that the vacuum energy cancels out to 0 through an unknown symmetry, and that dark energy is made of exotic particles. This scenario, known as ‘evolving dark energy’ or ‘quintessence’, relies on a scalar quantum field.

Just like the Higgs field, vacuum energy is a scalar field that has a single value at every point of spacetime. This is unlike, for example the electromagnetic field which is vector field, having both a have a value and direction. The energy of such a field can vary in time and space. If it varies, it would be a form of evolving dark energy called quintessence.

If we could create repulsive gravity artificially, it could unlock futuristic sci fi technologies, like wormholes and warp drives.

[Songfugel]

Never knew I could have something in common with gravity

[KiaAzad]

So, particles pop in and out of existence, some of them release some energy that pushes the spacetime apart, and the more space there is for this to happen, the more pushing apart energy is released. Seems like a reasonable explanation for why the expansion is accelerating.
The question we should answer is: Does the same thing happen every time particles want to pop in and out? Or there are cases of something different happening to the ones that pop in close to each other.

[blvcink]

Oh boy this really really really got me thinking...

[charlesvincent]

Could dark matter be the nanbu-goldstone boson that was created in the early universe through interactions with antimatter and dark energy is the nanbu-boson that did not have this interaction?
My thinking is that "pull" of gravity is higgs boson at or above the vacuum energy state and the "push" is the higgs boson below the vacuum energy state as well as a solution to the matter/antimatter symmetry problem.

[TimeCapsuleMan]

Very interesting. 😎 I learnt something new today! 🙂 Thank you!! 🙏👍

[stevejeffryes]

To my mind, the Casimir effect has nothing to do with negative energy. It is simply the net external pressure due to long wavelengths of quantum fluctuations being excluded from an interior by the physical arrangement of two plates.
Something that is seldom discussed by physicists is that the concept of ongoing expansion of the universe due to the ongoing creation of new energy within the cosmic void is not inconsistent with the concept of a universe which has no beginning, but has been self creating and expanding for an infinite amount of time and will continue to self create and expand for an infinite amount of time, and that what we, with our prevailing concept of a time of creation, perceive as the far limits of the universe is actually the limit of what we can observe up to the sphere beyond which the universe is receding at greater than light speed and that the CMB is actually the last remnant of observable radiation as all other wavelengths have been red-shifted to unobservable wave lengths.
Gravity would be highly localized distortions of space-time which cause the appearance of attraction bodies which are relatively close to each other while the more general outward movement of ongoing space-time expansion is the observed dispersal of the universe.
The rate at which energy and space-time are generated in the void would be low enough that we do not perceive the creation of matter within the void but that creation of new matter might maintain a relatively constant density of matter throughout the universe.
The universe might have always looked like it looks now, and might always look like it looks now. It just seems that current observations of ancient galaxies ate very great distance are more in line with the steady state universe.

[PaulMcWheels]

Thank you Arvin, always great topics 👍

[Stinger-rqgy]

great video saw this and it was new learning.

[okman]

Babe wake up!
New Arvin Ash video just dropped

[Khashayarissi-obyj]

Beautiful and great as always.
Hoping for more videos.
Wishing you more success.

[LuminiferousAether-RGB]

At this point, I will _speculate_ as follows: *1)* there is, indeed, a link between the (hypothesized) inflaton field (a.k.a. the "cosmic inflation") and the dark energy (however, I must also stress that I don't like the idea about eternal inflation, just FYI; infinity × infinity simply doesn't compute); *2)* I would argue that space-time is extremely durable (super-elastic, just not in a classical sense) when it comes to "negative pressure" (a.k.a. dark energy) - quite in contrast to its durability in terms of supporting abnormal mass-energy density (per unit volume), such that goes beyond density of neutron stars, when a black hole inevitably forms (in the fabric of space-time); *3)* speaking of... Einstein was both right and wrong (about spacetime), and did some disservice with its (otherwise brilliant) introduction to the modern physics; *4)* dark energy is not constant - a blunder, but doubly so (note to self: don't make last-minute edits!); *5)* dark matter (the one that is not baryonic in nature) is also related to dark energy (an irreversible process when the former transforms to the latter)... Therefore, I also like the idea of quintessence... But the term "repulsive gravity" is hard to swallow, although in GR vocabulary gravity is just the curvature of spacetime (or so I've heard, many times, from science popularisers on YouTube): it (the fabric of spacetime) can be convex as well as concave; same difference... Gravity is also very, very, very weak - but it couldn't be any other way if one wanted to build a functional universe (recall that there's merely a 5-percent mass-energy content in the universe that corresponds to "ordinary matter")... Finally, as I've said before, physics completely missed one or two components in this universe (one of them being entity formerly known as "spacetime", but not recognised as such (and by this I'm referring to insinuations about spacetime "emerging as the consequence of QM entanglement", which is nonsense)... And with that I'll end this entry... Nice video (in all aspects)! Very nice.

[Okla_Soft]

I learned about repulsive gravity through either Sean Carrol’s or Greene’s books, probably the elegant universe, but he demonstrates that when the gravitational field is completely balanced, I.e. all matter is distributed completely evenly and gravity pushes every particle outward with ferocious force.

That was my understanding of repulsive gravity, it was likely a factor in the early universe/inflationary epoch.

Great stuff, as always Arvin. You’re a true class act!

[ronaldkemp]

This was how I worded it in the book I published 09-27-2021, Gravity produces both an equal negative attraction and positive repulsion. Gravity is not a force, it's a reaction to what's happening deep inside of all large, almost perfect spherically shaped bodies because they're suspended in the vacuum of space by an infinite "undefined" amount of EM fields or light. This action is the same action causing stars and galaxies to slowly accelerate at a rate of in/s (0.0000122 cm/s) which equals to a 1 mi/h (1.61 km/s) increase in their velocity every 10, 000 years. Scientists blamed this action on gravity, dark energy and dark matter. This slow acceleration is a constant because the action produced deep inside of large mass is also a constant. For every action, there's an equal yet completely opposite reaction. The motion of matter blamed gravity, dark matter, dark energy and more are caused by this single action. I've even explained how this action is able to cause small matter to fall towards large mass, while at the same time causes repulsion to bodies like stars and galaxies producing massive amounts of gravity and energy.

Einstein and Newton didn't know what was causing gravity, so they never included it in their equations. When I revised their equations the predictions general relativity and the laws of motion made changed drastically. Especially when it comes to massive bodies like supermassive black holes.

The revisions also made a wild prediction concerning observations of bodies extremely far from us. The revised equations predicted the JWST would discover old, fully grown galaxies as far as it's able to see, even further than 14 billion light years away if the telescope was able to see that far. Sure enough, the JWST discovered old, not young but old fully mature galaxies further than a light distance of 14 billion light years away with the JADES survey.

When I threw this idea at NASA on their space forum in 2010, they laughed at me. Now the same thing has been proposed by other scientists. Imagine that.

[TheOtherSteel]

Tearing space apart.

In about ten years of watching astrophysics videos, never once have I heard a description of what space or spacetime is made of, or what the mechanism of its expansion is.

I went off to Google to ask what space is made of. Instead it tossed out a lengthy explanation of what occupied space.

I tried a longer definition, and got the same answer.

After a third even longer definition, it finally gave an answer that space is nothing.

1 - If space is nothing, how does it expand and carry matter and energy apart?

2 - If space is nothing, why would nothing accept/require energy to expand (tying to #1)?

3 - How does nothing tear?

4 - How would gravity interact with nothing?

5 - How would anti-gravity interact with nothing?

6 - If anti-gravity exists, wouldn't the source be negative mass/energy? I thought negative mass/energy had never been observed.

7 - I have heard countless times that negative mass/energy results in perpetual motion machines. Is that not true?

8 - If space is torn, wouldn't there be two "fabrics?" Would that be two partially superimposed spacetime diagrams? (Again, how could nothing be a fabric that has properties or functions?)

I haven't the math to prove anything, but I suspect space is indeed made of something, perhaps it is the composition of space that provides the missing dark-matter and/or dark-energy. (No, I've nothing to prove that either, but I hate the space is nothing yet does things explanation.)

[sathearn]

In his book Beyond Newton: An Explanation of Gravitation (1964) and many other works, the engineer-scientist Dewey B. Larson developed the theory that gravitation is not a force between masses, or a relation between a mass and geometrical space-time, but a three-dimensional inward motion in opposition to the otherwise all-pervasive expansion (three-dimensional outward motion). Each atom or object with mass simply moves toward all other mass within a finite distance (its "gravitational limit") that increases with the mass of an object. Outside the gravitational limit, the _net_ motion is outward. Hence, according to Larson, the physicist's expectation that gravitation should have been slowing down the recession of distant galaxies was tantamount to _double-counting_ the gravitational effect.

Another implication is that according to Larson, star clusters and galaxies are in a liquid-like equilibrium. The individual stars in fact move, or at least tend to move, away from one another, but this motion is opposed by the mass of the cluster as a whole.

Larson's most radical proposal was that the _same_ two forces are responsible for solid cohesion (and he would insist that _two_ forces are indeed needed to explain the observations - an electrical force of attraction would not suffice, were it in fact operative). When two atoms come to within unit distance, the two forces still operate in the same natural "direction": the "space-time progression" is always a motion _away_ from unit distance, and gravitation is _always_ a motion toward unit distance. But inside unit distance, "away from unity" is _inward_ and "toward unity" is _outward_. That is, the space-time progression (which may be equated with what is nowadays called dark energy) is the force holding the atoms of a solid together, while _gravitation is the force responsible for resistance to compression_ . Which is to say that _within_ unit distance, it acts as a _repulsive_ force.

[homemedia]

Who else saw a blue Pac-Man 03:14 - errm... I can't un-see it now!!!

[Jamex]

I sometimes speculate on a version of kaluza klein theory with 1 extra scalar field in an effort to unify electroweak symmetry and gravity and explain the apparent weakness of gravity. This theory would be best described as having 3+1i dimensions of space. The 1i dimension is not compactified but instead we see the effects of in the form of charge and quantum spin. Which is actually just motion through an imperceptible hidden vector. And offers a deterministic alternative explanation for the double slit experiment, wave function collapse and random quantum fluctuations. It posits that this extra field, called the dirac field, is a 0 spin scalar field made up of an n dimensional manifold of 1d particle like scalar fields, and that our higgs field is a condensate of this n dimensional manifold. But despite being separate fields, they still interact via spin-2 gravitons.

It posits an equivalence principle where real mass objects fall into the real mass field due to gravity, and vice versa for imaginary mass objects which travel at slower than light speeds in an imaginary mass field. Conserving causality. All particles have both real and imaginary masses and just like yukawa coupling with the higgs field gives particles mass, yukawa coupling with the dirac field gives particles charge and there is both an imaginary mass-charge coupling constant as well as a higgs dirac tensor that predicts particle behavior when exposed to varying real and imaginary mass fields. And virtual particles are 1d soliton-like interactions that travel through the dirac field and obey a constant force law because they're interacting in 1d.

This has a number of implications, including topological smoothing such as imaginary mass objects falling out of the higgs field due to gravity, and may be why we've never observed magnetic monopoles even though they should exist. They do exist, they're just inobservable because they fall out of the higgs field and into the dirac field because they'd be objects with no mass and only charge, making them imaginary mass objects. As well as the accelerating expansion of space, which is a product of the imaginary mass of the dirac field, which produces a repulsive gravitational effect. Scalar field clustering could also account for observations of dark matter since quantized 1d scalar fields interact via the force of gravity, and there should be imaginary mass counterparts at larger scales in cosmic voids, too. There should also be a dirac boson, and this theory would also put time and mass constraints on quantum entanglement and quantum tunnelling since it posits that particles that move through both of these mass fields can overcome barriers and travel along this hidden vector by overcoming the force of gravity alone. But gravity is also why we can't turn 3 times and accidentally slip into this extra dimension, as famously criticized by Oskar Klein. Also, there is no CP symmetry violation. Baryon asymmetry emerged due to a charge asymmetry between the higgs and dirac fields due to their varying masses. Essentially charge is just the topological curvature of the dirac field, meaning these fields can exhibit charge like properties without charge carrying particles. Its all just topology and geometry. Magnetism is just the gravitational warping of the dirac field due to a particle's imaginary mass.

[SilentStormParadox]

There has to be conservation. So if certain parts of space-time are contracting to create gravity there must be other parts that are expanding to balance it out.

[digiryde]

Extra points for repeatedly saying "might" instead of "is" with regards to the various theoretical concepts!

[willowwisp]

In the spacetime geometry framework, gravity is not strictly attractive or repulsive. It is a manifestation of curvature—and depending on the context, it can present as concave or convex.

Popular explanations, like the analogy, depict gravity as a concave well. This explains orbits well enough for intuition, but it misses how gravity acts on light and field geometry.

In the 1919 eclipse experiment that confirmed Einstein’s predictions, light from a distant star curved around the sun—not because it fell into a concave well, but because it followed a geodesic across a convex curvature gradient.

Gravity reshapes geometry. What we call “attraction” or “repulsion” is really the consequence of how a particle or wave responds to curvature structure.
• Mass responds by collapsing inward (concave interpretation)
• Light responds by bending outward (convex interpretation)

Gravity is both because it’s neither. It’s not a force that pulls or pushes—it’s a frame of curved reference.

In spacetime geometry, dark energy isn’t required to explain cosmic expansion. The universe unfolds because curvature relaxes—the opposite of black hole compression. What looks like repulsion is just geometry stretching out.

Gravity is not linear. It is not one-way. It is curvature, and that curvature can bend toward, away, or around depending on who’s asking.

Understanding this dual curvature behavior reframes gravity as a geometric medium, not a force.