A report in the New Scientist for 11th May reintroduced an old concept with the word quintessence. Quintessence was the name ancient and medieval philosophers gave to what they thought of as a fifth element forming heavenly bodies and pervading all things.

The word was used in the report to denote (paraphrasing here) “a mysterious energy field that behaves like a kind of repulsive gravity (someone is bound to pick up on that!) and might explain the accelerating expansion of the universe.” A diet of quintessence they feel might also have fed black holes at the very moment of the big bang.

Sounds like much the same idea as those old philosopher’s had. What goes around comes around!

If some astrophysicists think, as the report says, that an energy field - quintessence - was available to fatten up baby black holes in the first split second of the Universe’s existence I should like to know where they think it came from. The report doesn’t say.