  Some analysis of the supernovae type Ia observational data seems to indicate
that the Universe today is dominated by a phantom field, for which all energy
conditions are violated. Such phantom field may imply a singularity in a future
finite time, called big rip. Studying the evolution of scalar perturbations for
such a field, we show that if the pressure is negative enough, the Universe can
become highly inhomogeneous and this phantom menace may be avoided.
