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Why is energy not conserved in cosmology?

To be clear, energy is conserved on local scales, most definitely. However, on very large scales, the universe is undergoing accelerated expansion (and time invariance does not hold), and a valid way to think of this is to allow that the energy of the universe changes with time. Here is a discussion: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/. (This is getting well beyond the scope of this course, though.)



Kate Scholberg 2020-01-14