Fascinating! I think it's better to look at Hubble's law then the cosmological constant in this particular regard. Hubble's law was published at the end 20's decade. If you contemplate the law it follows naturally (although counter-intuitively) that very far away galaxy's might speed away from each other faster then the speed of light. How this can be understood with regard to relativistic effects or the uncross-able universal light speeding law is another intriguing topic.
So perhaps Stapledon thought of this or someone else thought about this (Lemaitre?) and Stapledon read or heard it.
With regard to the cosmological constant, Einstein dropped it but Lemaitre didn't. Lemaitre argued in the early 1930's that the rate of expansion of the universe was accelerating.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Without-Yesterday-Cosmology/dp...
"Lemaître was then invited to London in order to take part in a meeting of the British Association on the relation between the physical Universe and spirituality. There he proposed that the Universe expanded from an initial point, which he called the "Primeval Atom" and developed in a report published in Nature.[15] Lemaître himself also described his theory as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation"; it became better known as the "Big Bang theory," a pejorative term coined during a BBC radio broadcast by Fred Hoyle who was an obstinate proponent of the steady state universe, even until his death in 2001."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
So some have (mistakenly) attributed intuition of dark energy to Einstein and his cosmological constant or some like you would argue that Stapledon was spectacularly smart or lucky but I think I'd attribute it to Lemaitre and I think indirectly (or directly) Stapledon heard or read about this. Perhaps as an academic he was even present at the "British Association" meetup on science and spirituality.
But if so, why did Lemaitre keep Einstein's cosmological constant in his own work and why did he think the expansion rate of the universe was increasing?
Even so I'd like to believe Stapledon really was traveling among the stars 'in some way', also his description of the out of body experience is oddly similar to credible accounts later in the 20th century and might be autobiographical but if not could be explained by him reading earlier accounts of this psychological effect.
"Lemaître was then invited to London in order to take part in a meeting of the British Association on the relation between the physical Universe and spirituality. There he proposed that the Universe expanded from an initial point, which he called the "Primeval Atom" and developed in a report published in Nature.[15] Lemaître himself also described his theory as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation"; it became better known as the "Big Bang theory," a pejorative term coined during a BBC radio broadcast by Fred Hoyle who was an obstinate proponent of the steady state universe, even until his death in 2001." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
So some have (mistakenly) attributed intuition of dark energy to Einstein and his cosmological constant or some like you would argue that Stapledon was spectacularly smart or lucky but I think I'd attribute it to Lemaitre and I think indirectly (or directly) Stapledon heard or read about this. Perhaps as an academic he was even present at the "British Association" meetup on science and spirituality.
But if so, why did Lemaitre keep Einstein's cosmological constant in his own work and why did he think the expansion rate of the universe was increasing?
Even so I'd like to believe Stapledon really was traveling among the stars 'in some way', also his description of the out of body experience is oddly similar to credible accounts later in the 20th century and might be autobiographical but if not could be explained by him reading earlier accounts of this psychological effect.
edit: apparently Lemaitre discovered Hubble's law before Hubble did! http://www.universetoday.com/90862/the-expanding-universe-cr...