Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Nereid
Perhaps a first step to testing your idea would be to find out how much 'light energy' there is, throughout the universe?
|
That has been my thinking. I’ve made some OOM estimates, but that is jumping ahead a little. Allow me to diverge here just a bit. As an “outsider” (no PhD; no association with an Institute), I am “pointing the way,” not providing an answer. I know “the sign” (positive, i.e. expansion), but I do not know the magnitude. It will take “real scholars” in their ivory towers to do the calculation in a way that everyone will accept, but recent work gives me hope.
Fred Cooperstock and Steven Tieu (C&T) have submitted calculations for journal publication that show galactic “dark matter” is explained simply by properly applying GR to galaxy rotation.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...rk_matter.html
Their calculations have met with a lot of skepticism, but as Einstein would say, “The theory is correct,” and their work will surely be accepted. It will certainly go down in history as a turning-point in our understanding of the cosmos. “Dark matter” has been an enigma for about 7 decades. Ironically, GR has been around for about 8. Why did no one previously turn to GR as an explanation for dark matter? As far as I know, Einstein was as baffled as anyone by the mystery of dark matter, and he would surely be pleased to know that yet another long-standing observational mystery is explained by his venerable theory.
In the narrow, conservative manner of academics, C&T only claim to explain dark matter within spiral galaxies, but I am betting that when the dust settles, GR will explain intergalactic dark matter as well. And of course, I’m betting that when the dust settles, GR will explain “dark energy,” in a round-about sort of way. Take the observed distribution of visible matter in the universe, and the rate at which it is radiating energy; model the observed distribution of matter and the energy radiation using GR, and you will find that “space” expands at some rate in such a model. My central contention is that when this calculation is done, the predicted rate of expansion will be close to or equal the observed rate of expansion, 73 ppt/yr.