Ghost Town Sage

Expansion of the Universe

Other possibilities of how it might work.

Since the 1990's, astronomers had noticed several problems with the motion of galaxies and the expansion of the universe. They've proposed two different mechanisms to account for these two problems separately.
First, every galaxy known is rotating too fast, as if its gravity was stronger than its known mass. To account for this anomoly they theorized invisible matter that we can't see is surrounding the galaxies, which they call Dark Matter.
Second, the expansion of the universe seems to be speeding up, rather than slowing down, as if gravity had been getting weaker starting a few billion years ago. To account for this anomoly they theorized an invisible energy source that we can't see, which they call Dark Energy.
A few other physisists have come up with alternate theories to explain these anomolies, using variations on gravity and geometry. But most physisists are skeptical of these alternate plans. In the page below, I present my theory.
Originaly posted 2019.

Negative Matter to the Rescue

One big problem with all of these theories, mainstream or not, is that so far no one has been able to identify dark matter or dark energy. I had been skeptical too, not because no one can find these dark products, but because there are simpler explanations.

My explanation is basically this: Matter with negative mass is being drawn into the voids between galaxies and galaxy clusters. This matter repels regular matter, which causes the effects of both dark matter and dark energy.

It would work like this: Positive mass matter (normal) will attract to other positive mass, forming the visible galaxies and clusters. And negative mass matter will attract to other negative mass, which coalese into giant voids between galaxies. But the positive and negative matter will repel each other. This will cause regular matter to push the negative matter out of the galaxies and into giant voids. Once they are separated, negative matter will then cause a repulsion that expand the voids, squeeze the galaxies and drives expansion.

How Does That Actually Work?

If this was actually happening, the two types of matter would work together to form well defined galaxy clusters and voids. Negative mass would slowly accumulate in the voids between galaxies, making the voids bigger and bigger. The voids would then push galaxies into well defined clusters, and individual galaxies would be squeezed, causing them to rotate too fast. And if positive matter was being turned into negative matter somehow, it would cause the expansion of the universe to speed up.

That was my conjecture, which seemed a bit far fetched, until I read a story in Sky and Telescope magazine in Aug 2018. The story had diagrams of galaxy clusters versus the voids, and the geometry can't be explained by standard dark matter. Actual galaxy clusters tend to be concave on the sides with a galaxy wall stretching between clusters, while the voids are more spherical. It distinctly appears that the voids are squishing the clusters.

If positive gravity was the only force at play, the clusters would have rounded edges like an ameoba, and the voids would have concave edges. It would be nearly impossible for the clusters to form concave surfaces and flat walls using its internal gravitational attraction alone. For me, this was proof that the dark matter geometry won't work.

How Does Anti-Matter Actually Work?

It seems to me that normal matter can not cause this type of geometry. But there are several other possibilities and one in particular is very intriguing.

There are several alternate theories of gravity that give anti-particles negative gravity. For example, Dirac, Wheeler, Feynman & Stuckleberg proposed that antimatter behaves as if it moves in negative time. If this is interpeted litterally, it would cause anti-particles to behave as if they had negative mass in a gravity field. If this is accurate, then it's the exact mechanism that the theory above needs.

If antimatter would actually work that way, it would work for two additional reasons:
First, there is expected to be large quantities of antimatter left over from the big bang, but no one is able to find it. If it behaves as if it has negative mass, then it would accumulate in the voids between galaxies where it is far harder to find.
Second, galactic jets spew huge quantites of matter into intergalactic space, and this is thought to include a lot of antimatter. This antimatter would expel its self into the voids between galaxies, causing the voids to grow. This would result in more antimatter (and faster expansion) now than ten billion years ago.

A Computer Simulation:
I wanted to see if I could duplicate galaxy cluster geometry in a computer simulation.
I wrote up a simple simulation that evolves 10,000 randomly spaced galaxies to see if including negative mass would match the geometry shown in the Sky and Telescope pictures. The simulation was fairly simple, but the positive/negative version did match the actual universe more closely than the positive-only version. I can't include a screen image because a static image is very difficult to interpret.

A List of Things It Fixes

This whole story might seem far fetched, but it neatly explains a whole list of problems:
* Galaxies appear to spin too fast on their outer edges.
* Galaxy clusters appear to rotate too fast.
* The concave shape of galaxy clusters must be caused by an outside pressure.
* Galaxies between clusters are in ribbons rather than tubes.
* Galaxies will squeeze into a disk shape, oriented parallel to the void.
* The expansion of the universe appears to be speeding up.
* As galaxies expand away from each other, the stars in a galaxy do not.
* The universe seems to be missing anti-matter.
* Some of the oldest galaxies and quasars could not have formed so soon after the big bang.

However, there are several big problem with antimatter:
* A galactic halo of antimatter would be detectable. For example, there would have to be large quantities of antimatter near our galaxy to cause the galaxy rotation that we see. A halo of antimatter would look like regular matter, but any stars that are ejected out of the galaxy would plow right into it. In reality, this might not be a problem because: a. The low density of antimatter would cause only a slight glow on the surface of a bright star. b. The positive and negative matter would repel each other, so negative matter would get out of the way.
* It would take large quantities of antimatter in the giant inter-galactic voids to speed up cosmic expansion. And distant starlight passing through those voids would detect any antimatter.
* It's not clear if antimatter behaves in this way at all. Nobody has been able to measure gravity on anti-particles so far.

2025, Update:
Since I first wrote this essay in 2019 I have continued to study the problem, and so far I've found nothing to refute it. And at the same time, I keep finding new evidence to support it. For example: Astronomers are finding that some of the oldest galaxies and quasars had formed less than a billion years after the big bang, and that seems impossible via gravity and dark matter. But with positive and negative mass able to segregate from each other, you'll quickly get positive gravity pulling on the inside and negative gravity pushing on the outside. And the negative mass scenario would then cause galaxies to form a whole lot faster, easily within a billion years.