ESTIMATIONS OF TOTAL MASS AND ENERGY OF THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE

Abstract

The recent astronomical observations indicate that the expanding universe is homogeneous, isotropic and asymptotically flat. The Euclidean geometry of the universe enables to determine the total gravitational and kinetic energy of the universe by Newtonian gravity in a flat space. By means of dimensional analysis, we have found the mass of the observable universe close to the Hoyle-Carvalho formula M∼c³/(GH). This value is independent from the cosmological model and infers a size (radius) of the observable universe close to Hubble distance. It has been shown that almost the entire kinetic energy of the observable universe ensues from the cosmological expansion. Both, the total gravitational and kinetic energies of the observable universe have been determined in relation to an observer at an arbitrary location. The relativistic calculations for total kinetic energy have been made and the dark energy has been excluded from calculations. The total mechanical energy of the observable universe has been found close to zero, which is a remarkable result. This result supports the conjecture that the gravitational energy of the observable universe is approximately balanced with its kinetic energy of the expansion and favours a density of dark energy Ω_Λ≈0.78.