FECYT: Dark energy hides behind phantom fields

[Doum]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 032614.php

[MargaritaMc]

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, February 2014:
Effective equation of state for running vacuum: ‘mirage’ quintessence and phantom dark energy
Spyros Basilakos and Joan Solà

Abstract

Past analyses of the equation of state (EoS) of the Dark Energy (DE) were not incompatible with a phantom phase near our time. This has been the case in the years of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe observations, in combination with the remaining cosmological observables. Such situations did not completely disappear from the data collected from the Planck satellite mission. In it the EoS analysis may still be interpreted as suggesting ωD ≲ −1, and so a mildly evolving DE cannot be discarded. In our opinion, the usual ansatzs made on the structure of the EoS for dynamical DE models (e.g. quintessence and the like) is too simplified.

Read the rest of the Abstract at:
http://m.mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/437/4/3331

The MNRAS article is only available to subscribers, but some information about this research is available at ArXiv:
Entropic-force dark energy reconsidered

POSTSCRIPT. This is a quote from the press release published by Eureka and others:

...Another possibility is the presence of an energy or phantom field whose density increases with time, causing an exponential cosmic acceleration. This would reach such speed that it could break the nuclear forces in the atoms and end the universe in some 20,000 million years, in what is called the Big Rip. ...

Oops...

I'm assuming that this is meant to read 20,000 billion years (unless this is a very dramatic bit of research!) I checked what I assume is the original Spanish version here and it also says "20,000 milliones". It looks as tho the word "mil" was omitted. As Spanish speakers at Asterisk will know, in Spanish the word "billion" has the meaning of "a million millions" and the English language use of billion is written as "a thousand million", "mil milliones".

Margarita