Dark energy and dark matter as curvature effects?

Abstract

Astrophysical observations indicate that huge amounts of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’are needed to explain the observed large scale structures and cosmic acceleratingexpansion. Up to now, no experimental evidence has been found, at the fundamental level,explaining such mysterious components. The problem could be completely reversed byconsidering dark matter and dark energy as ‘shortcomings’ of general relativity andclaiming the ‘correct’ theory of gravity as that derived by matching the largest number ofobservational data. As a result, the accelerating behaviour of cosmic fluid and therotation curves of spiral galaxies can be reproduced by means of ‘curvature effects’.