Timothy Speed (2025)
Vacuum energy occupies a peculiar dual role in modern physics. On the one hand, it is formally unavoidable: in quantum field–theoretical calculations it arises necessarily and enters the cosmological constant Λ. On the other hand, its calculated value is empirically catastrophically wrong, deviating by many orders of magnitude from the observed cosmological expansion. This tension is usually interpreted as a fine-tuning problem or as an indication of new physics.
This paper argues that the tension is due less to missing dynamics than to a categorical overextension. Within the MNO (Minimal-Non-Object) framework, vacuum energy is not read as an ontological energy quantity, but as a residual quantity of a formalism that counts emergent difference even though it is designed exclusively for stabilization. In this reading, the cosmological constant does not appear as a physical object, but as a formal remainder of a boundary operation within a formalism that can secure stability without delivering ontological closure.
This paper functions as an interface text within a larger operator-based research corpus grounded in an autistic, recursive epistemology; its results cannot be fully interpreted in isolation.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18061827
Keywords: vacuum energy, cosmological constant, quantum field theory, general relativity, boundary operation, residual quantity, ontological closure, integration limit, effective field theory, MNO Theory
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