Cosmological Chess


In game one of the 2016 World Chess Championship held in New York, USA, defending champion Magnus Carlsen with the white pieces played an unusual ‘Trompowski’ opening against the challenger Sergey Karjakin. Whilst throughout the entire game Magnus had the better chances, Sergey defended well and the game ended in a draw. 

Chess is all about balance and philosophy. Usually at high level matches with perfect play, games end in theoretical draws with white maintaining a tiny advantage and black defending solidly throughout. What makes chess fascinating is conscience decision. Players under pressure occasionally make mistakes or valiant sacrifices creating game changing imbalances.

The 'Trompowski' opening, an unusual position in elite chess, but nevertheless reasonably understood in book theory.

What does this have to do with cosmology? Well, one could a liken the universe as a sort of chess match, one between gravity and dark energy. These forces permeate the entirety of the cosmological board. Gravities game plan is to halt the expansive nature of space and allow mass to attract gravitationally, eventually collapsing the universe. Dark energies game plan is to continuously expand the universe beyond gravitational control.

The ‘Inflation’ opening involved rapid expansion of the universe in a short amount of time. Today the universe accelerates in expansion.

Einstein originally analysed this position and favoured gravities game plan. However, at the time we believed the universe to be empirically static. As a result, the cosmological constant (Λ) was added to his equations to counteract gravities attractive nature. Over a century has passed and we now believe the universe to be expanding at an accelerating rate, meaning the cosmological constant adopts a positive value. With 13.8 billion years on the cosmological chess clock dark energy has the overall game advantage.

What I find most fascinating about this cosmological chess game is which force made the first move? The opening involved rapid expansion of the universe in the form of cosmic inflation, was this a result of the expansive nature of dark energy, or is gravity on a tiny quantum scale actually repulsive? Elite chess is well understood in book theory whereas gravity and dark energy are not, nor do these forces possess consciousness, yet the cosmological board seems unbalanced.

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