Quintessence: Aether or Dark Matter?
Quintessence: Aether or Dark Matter?
Good day readers. Today, i wish to discuss an issue that has tugged me for a while. Looking up at the night sky, and see the crescent moon blaring with great intensity, the stars shining at their full capacity, almost evenly distributed in what seems like a deep dark space. Filled with a deep sense of awe, i was almost force to ask myself, “what is really out there and what is 'out there' really composed of?” and in a more definitive phrase, "what is quintessenceof our universe?". Fortunately, this is not the first time this question has been thrown to the wind and there has indeed been various explanations that attempts to answer this question, both from the philosophical point of view and the scientific point of view, "of what is our universe composed of?"
What is Quintessence?
Quintessence as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is the "the essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form."
The Oxford dictionary defines quintessence as "The aspect of something regarded as the intrinsic and central constituent of its character." it also proceeds to describe it as the "refined essence or extract of a substance."
I define the concept of quintessence in very simpler words as that which "is the most essential component of a substance, and the most concentrated."
Over time, from the ancient Greeks to mordern science, the concept of quintessence has been a brain racking one, and if properly understood, can give us insights on many other knowledge including the origin of the universe, it's evolution and perhaps, it's destination.
Now that we understand what the concept of quintessence entails in its most basic definition, let us foray further into the crux of this matter, cross-checking observations, hypothesis and speculations concerning this issue from both the philosophical sphere and the scientific sphere.
Aether : A philosophical Speculation
In his book, on the heavens, Aristotle, who was a student of Plato agreed with his teacher on the composition of the universe and its elements. Plato, in his book Timaeus had proposed that the universe was composed of four element, earth, water, fire, and air, where he describes the elements as inhomogenous, and non-uniform, mixed and were in a state of constant motion. All this elements, he proposed, were embodied in a prime element, one which he termed soul of the world. Aristotle, however, disagreed with Plato on this subject, in his book on the heavens, he describes a system of classical elements where the four terrestrial classical elements,i.e, water, fire, earth, and air, were in fact subject to change and moved in a linear manner. He also went ahead to introduce a first element to this system of classification, this first* element he proposed existed in the heavenly and celestial bodies and were unlike the other four terrestrial elements in characteristics: it was neither hot nor cold, dry or wet and had no unnatural motion. It was this fifth element that popularly became known as **Aether. **
Aether
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It was described to be perpetual and had no opposing motion, i.e it moved in the form of spheres. It was this element that was considered as the quintessence of the universe by ancient and even medieval philosophers, permeating the universe in all directions and was the most essential component of all celestial bodies. One major difference, however, between the Aristotlean definition of Aether and the medieval definition was the attribution of density to the aether element which was assumed by medieval scholars to be less dense than the celestial bodies.
This even had an effect on Aristotlean physics as a whole. During the 18th century, most physicists made use of the Aether models to explain unfamiliar concepts such as propagation of light, electromagnetic and gravitational forces. Even Sir Isaac Newton used the Aether as a complimentary tool in his explanation for gravitational effect. However, as time went on, more evidences came up and the idea of the Aether begun to be rejected by most physicists, after the experiment by Michelson–Morley, the evidence for Aether was rendered inconclusive in the scientific community.
But this was not to last long? Redefinition, a perpetual force for originality, came into play.
Dark energy : a scientific hypothesis.
In 1988, Ratra and Peebles, proposed a scenario alongside an example proposing a quintessence Of the universe. This essential component was called dark energy or scalar field which substituted for an explanation for an accelerating expanding universe. In this explanation, however, quintessence was measured as a reference to time, changing and evolving as time moved on. By 1998, Robert R. Caldwell , Rahul Dave and Paul Steinhardt released a first paper on the subject and hence, quintessence or Dark energy was referred to many physicists as the fifth fundamental force (the other four being the strong force, the weak force, electromagnetism and gravitational force.)
dark energy
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There have also been postulated special cases of this energy, an example is the phantom energy which has an unknown form of moving energy. The existence of this energy is proposed to be as a result of the increasing density of dark energy which would aid in accelerating the universe at a faster-than exponential rate.
One thing is certain, that the universe is composed of something, something essential and vital to its existence. Something promodial peharps, but important nonetheless.
Even this idea of quintessence has disseminated into the medical field since the 15th century where it is believed that the quintessence was a Catholicon for all of man's illness..
Whatever the universe is made of, Aether, dark energy, phantom energy, we can only continue to speculate until concrete evidence is provided. However, this leaves us with a feeling that we may perhaps know quite little about our universe and its components. Thank you for reading. And once again, do Stay Scientific, Always.
References
Whittaker, Edmund Taylor, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the 19th Century . pp. 101-02, (1910).