To understand Dark Energy is to also understand something about the Universe beyond our universe. Dark Energy and Dark Matter are not strange. They are natural components of our total world which invite elegant explanations.
I enjoy ironies, and perhaps the greatest scientific irony is setting up Dark Energy in opposition to Gravity. In fact, they could be seen as the same force. Likewise, General Relativity is usually pitted against quantum forces. Einstein said that God does not roll dice. On a subatomic scale the dice rule, but not far above that, even though all big things are composed of little things. In the macro world where humans live randomness statistically smooths, and predictable patterns emerge.
Gravitons are likely Higgs bosons (1) which may emerge from atomic nuclei. The exact nature of gravitons is still not established, but their initial flight must follow quantum rules, i.e., randomness both in time and in direction. If this is so, then gravitons can be generated from many locations, and travel in all directions. The more locations, the more gravitons. Matter, both classical and dark, can generate gravitons. Unseen matter deep in space can generate gravitons, which is one response to the idea that gravitons are generated in space itself. Therefore, it would follow that large concentrations of matter would spawn large concentrations of gravitons.
General Relativity comes into play when we talk about immeasurably large numbers of gravitons and other photon-like elements flying about in all directions. The idea of a ball indenting a sheet is employed to illustrate the relationship of mass and gravity to space, with space being the sheet. Space can be warped even by a very small mass, but imperceptibly so. Gravitons flow along curved space toward masses in proportion to the amount of curvature - size and shape - generated by different masses, "dragging" smaller masses toward the greater masses. I say masses, not mass, because there are always many different gravitational flows influencing any one object; yet only the most powerful one is usually described as having a gravitational effect on the attracted object. In brief, whereas it looks like an object attracts another, what is going on is differential "graviton wind," pushing the less massive to the more massive.
An understanding of Dark Energy would be a doorway to understanding more of the total Universe itself, within which our own universe exists. Dark Energy appears to us as a kind of anti-gravity force pulling our universe apart. This is an illusion brought about by the quaint idea that "all there is" is our big-bang universe. A better explanation would allow gravitons to freely travel among universes, including our universe and whatever else is in the neighborhood beyond our expanding bubble. There is no reason that hyperluminal gravitons should be bound within our universe or any other region of Totality. In truly distant space there could be other expanding "bubbles," some eventually contracting, and some eventually dissipating or merging with others. See the state of cosmic inflation theory at (2).
There is elegance to the idea that gravitons interpenetrate regional universes. If so, then the evidence of accelerating matter within our historical bubble beyond five billion light years makes sense, as that matter approaches other giant matter beyond the boundary. It would be possible for high level mathematics to model such a process, and then test this model against observations that will be made over the next decades.
Certain patterns of differential acceleration within our universe could indicate how near matter beyond our bubble could be, and how massive it would be. If there is little or no difference in rates of acceleration across the dome, then it could mean that the area proximal to our universe is diffuse. If initial indications (3) of very weak Dark Energy are confirmed, it could mean either that other universes are truly distant from ours, or that the area just beyond our bubble is not heavily populated with matter.
Thanks for getting back to me. I am used to little people with big letters after their names stonewalling my ideas. Many new paradigms follow this fate: first, they are ignored; then they are attacked; and eventually they are embraced as actually belonging to those who first ignored the author! On the other hand, there are many ideas which are initially embraced, only to be later ignored when science disproves them. What really irritates me are metaphysical paradigms that can never be proved or disproved, and which prosper only because they fulfill certain psychological or political needs of those who hardly care about logic.
There is a Japanese cultural proverb which applies to abstract scientific professions: "The nail that sticks up will be hammered down." Being an amateur, almost an artist of the mind, I have the freedom to speculate as scientifically as possible, without fear of being ostracized within my academic profession. Nobody is going to cut off my astronomy paycheck!
There is the curious branch of physics which is scientific and logical, and yet not scientific. I refer to the theory of strings and branes. It's all wonderful and elegant mathematics, yet totally unverifiable. My speculations about some aspects of gravity, dark matter, dark energy, and the proximal multiverse are also unverified, but not totally unverifiable eventually. That's a big difference! Many ideas in science were yesterday's metaphysics, and became today's physics. Some of today's physics may join tomorrow's metaphysics. If my speculations look like metaphysics, they have the pedigree of physics.
By the way, I have other essays dealing with relativity, and the inside of black holes, even with the philosophical consciousness of computer life forms. I'll inflict one or more of them on you later, if you wish.
Now to your brief initial comments: It is accepted that gravitons in our universe may go no faster than light speed. It is accepted that General Relativity is superior to Newtonian physics in macro dimensions. Beyond this seemingly vast universe of operational physics is a much greater universe of logical physics, of which string theory is only one possible idea. The trick is to go beyond the tautology of mere logical consistency and elegant formulae; we must also try to keep anchored somehow within what we can measure or manipulate. Beyond provable physics is absurdly unprovable mysticism.
According to the multiverse concept each universal "bubble" can have its own set of physics. If that be so, then the absoluteness of our light speed in a vacuum may be absolute only within this universe. I like that approach, because I am hesitant to mix cause and effect. Making light speed in a vacuum an independent absolute, and then saying that all else must obey this speed limit, is a back door way of invoking divinity. I am more comfortable with saying that light speed is one measure of accelerating force and inertial mass. It is also odd to pollute relativity/Relativity with absolutes.
As for my think piece, it may be that gravitons (when they are detected and measured) will be shown to obey the light speed limit, being "a particle representative of a process," as you phrased it. That process should be consistent within any one universe. On the other hand, if bubble universes form when black holes "go critical" from accreted matter/energy, then it would be possible for part of this universe to have residue from previous universes. Likewise, it should be possible for gravitons from proximal universes to interpenetrate our own. What I have modeled is somewhat within the realm of scientific experiments, unlike strings and branes. If gravitons in the wild can be found to have different speeds, then this would be major evidence for other universes, or at least earlier universes.
I have long intuitively resisted the Newtonian idea of gravity being an "attractive" force. Using the shaped space of General Relativity we can envision gravity as more like the force of flowing streams of water. The water from upstream pulls us downstream. This makes my idea of gravitons flowing down the General Relativity slope toward greater masses quite elegant.
My idea of matching up randomly generated gravitons with dark energy and dark matter -- the former being an expression, and the latter being a source -- does a lot to explain certain unexplained cosmic phenomena, such as the apparent acceleration of the universe beyond five billion light years from us. If gravitons are generated from dark matter and regular matter nearly everywhere, and if there are great concentrations of matter beyond the ethereal boundaries of our universal bubble, then it would be logical to say that gravitons are also flowing toward the distant concentrations of matter proximal to our bubble boundary. Again, here is an idea that could be scientifically explored as we look for irregularities at the universal boundary.