Gravitational repulsion in an expanding ball of dust

Abstract

In general relativity, there is a velocity dependent term in the gravitational acceleration of a test particle for an observer at infinity. Depending on the direction of motion and the speed, that term can be repulsive. We show that this is also the case in the Parametrized Post-Newtonian (PPN) formalism. We compute the magnitude of that repulsive term for an expanding sphere of dust observed at infinity, and find that it could mimic the effect of a cosmological constant. The time evolution of such an expanding ball of dust for an observer at infinity is calculated, and compared with the standard ΛCDM model. We find that the so-called coincidence problem does not exist for such a model as the energy density attributed to the expansion is always of the same order as the matter energy density.