Are Dark Energy and Dark Matter Different Aspects of the Same Physical Process?

TL;DR

This paper proposes that dark matter and dark energy are manifestations of the same fundamental process involving quantum emergence of spacetime, supported by modified gravity theories and observational evidence.

Contribution

It introduces a unified physical process explaining dark matter and dark energy through spacetime emergence, supported by recent modifications of Einstein's theory and observational data.

Findings

Dark matter appears to increase with universe age.

Modified gravity models explain galactic rotation curves.

The model predicts a small cosmological constant consistent with observations.

Abstract

It is suggested that the apparently disparate cosmological phenomena attributed to so-called 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' arise from the same fundamental physical process: the emergence, from the quantum level, of spacetime itself. This creation of spacetime results in metric expansion around mass points in addition to the usual curvature due to stress-energy sources of the gravitational field. A recent modification of Einstein's theory of general relativity by Chadwick, Hodgkinson, and McDonald incorporating spacetime expansion around mass points, which accounts well for the observed galactic rotation curves, is adduced in support of the proposal. Recent observational evidence corroborates a prediction of the model that the apparent amount of 'dark matter' increases with the age of the universe. In addition, the proposal leads to the same result for the small but nonvanishing cosmological constant, related to 'dark energy, as that of the causet model of Sorkin et al.