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While gravity is a force that attracts objects with mass, dark energy (or, alternatively, the accelerated expansion of the universe) is not.

However, I have found numerous articles, forums, questions in the stack exchange network... where people seem to say that if you get further from a gravitational source (e.g. a galaxy) there would be a point where the influence of gravity (attractive) and dark energy (repulsive) would be balanced out (sometimes even using the term "force").

But again, dark energy is not a force (as said in here and also here). So what is happening here? Is there such a point? If not, then, why are there so many people saying that there is? This is confusing...

PS: Examples of people mentioning a point where there is a balance between Dark Energy and gravity:

https://old.reddit.com/r/cosmology/comments/16x0uud/what_effects_does_dark_energy_have_in_the/

https://imgur.io/IMUhq

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/422/4/2945/1048646?login=false

https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.1433

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/54826/dark-energy-affecting-the-ejection-and-infall-of-material-in-galaxies

vengaq
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1 Answers1

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Dark energy exerts a repulsive gravitational influence.

Dark energy is not normally considered to be itself a force. Instead it is a substance or form of energy that is uniformly distributed throughout the universe, and (like everything else) it exerts a gravitational influence, but its gravitational influence is repulsive. This verbage matches how dark energy is treated mathematically in general relativity. Whereas matter is modeled as a (nearly) pressureless perfect fluid and radiation is modeled as a fluid with pressure $p=\rho/3$ (where $\rho$ is the energy density and I take $c=1$), dark energy is a fluid with $p=-\rho$. Due to how both pressure and energy density contribute to gravity, a fluid with $p<-\rho/3$ exerts gravitational repulsion inside it.

At what distance does dark energy's gravitational repulsion balance a mass's gravitational attraction?

For a mass $M$ and uniformly distributed dark energy with density $\rho_\Lambda$, the gravitational attraction and repulsion balance when the distance $r$ from the mass is such that the average enclosed mass density is twice the dark energy density, i.e. $M/(4\pi r^3/3)=2\rho_\Lambda$. This leads to $$r = \left(\frac{3}{8\pi}\frac{M}{\rho_\Lambda}\right)^{1/3}. \tag{1}$$ The density comparison comes from the second Friedmann equation, according to which the gravitational acceleration of a spherical shell is proportional to $\rho+3p$ (taking $c=1$), where $\rho$ and $p$ are the enclosed density and pressure, respectively. Matter has zero pressure while dark energy has $p=-\rho_\Lambda$, so the gravitational acceleration is proportional to $\rho_m-2\rho_\Lambda$, where $\rho_m$ is the matter density.

If dark energy is a cosmological constant, its value is $\Lambda=8\pi G\rho_\Lambda$, so an alternative expression is $$r = \left(\frac{3GM}{\Lambda}\right)^{1/3}.\tag{2}$$ This can alternatively be seen to follow directly from the Newtonian limit of de Sitter space. In the Newtonian limit, the gravitational acceleration induced by dark energy at position $\vec r$ with respect to any freely falling observer (at $\vec r=0$) is $$\ddot{\vec{r}}=\frac{\Lambda}{3}\vec r=\frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho_\Lambda \vec r.$$

In our universe

The density of dark energy is about $9\times 10^{10}$ M$_\odot$ Mpc$^{-3}$, so from equation (1), the forces of the matter and dark energy balance when $$r\simeq 1.1~\mathrm{Mpc}\left(\frac{M}{10^{12}~\mathrm{M}_\odot}\right)^{1/3}.\tag{3}$$ Notice that $10^{12}~\mathrm{M}_\odot$ is about the mass of the Milky Way, and it's within a factor of a few of the mass of the Local Group. Thus, in the asymptotic future (assuming dark energy is a cosmological constant), only a sphere about 1 Mpc in radius is expected to remain bound to us. For reference, that's comparable to the present distance to the Andromeda galaxy (which is about 0.75 Mpc away).

Edouard
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Sten
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