Hello Samuel:

I can tell you have been reading LOTS of physics. With the physics you've learned, you have tried to connect the dots, all of them. This is a fun thing to do, I give it a spin from time to time. I don't take anyone's yarns seriously - even professors at major Universities - until they say, yup, do this experiment and you should see exactly this sort of thing. So at this point I take the data for rotating profiles of galaxies, the big bang, the expanding universe, all that stuff is good, but the yarns, dark matter, inflation, dark energy, I don't think are anywhere near precise enough mathwise to be of long term value to physics.

Personally, I have spent a large block of time working with equations for gravity. I took a class on general relativity where we played with the Schwarzschild metric of general relativity and did calculations with it. A decade after that class I developed my own metric (which people already know about), and repeated many of those calculations (which reminds me, I should go through those old class notes!). I have, as you might say, zero sense of how to do a calculation with only zero, finite and infinite, zero idea of where to start.

You may be the sort that wants to study the ideas without combing through the math. In my experience, the math is far better than the words: math is compact, and equations can twist on a dime, in ways words get tangled. It is possible to play new games with equations, but new games with words tend to sound garbled.

Good luck should you decide to study the math behind physics, it is hard, but worth the effort.

doug