[MikeD]

It's my understanding as well that Dark Energy has only been detected on a cosmological scale. Otherwise, we'd just consider it part of the usual gravity term. The weird thing is that we measure one effect (the usual 1/r^2 force) for nearby things, but some other effect (the dark energy term) for far away things.

What is dark energy? Beats the heck out of me. Is there a fifth force that only manifests at large distances? Is there another term in the gravitational force that only exerts itself at large distances? We don't know yet.

The more we learn, the more we realize we have yet to learn...

MD

[RadioAstronomer]

I thought so. Sure am glad you young whipper-snappers are on top of things. :-)