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Bizarre 'Dark Fluid' With Negative Mass Could Dominate the Universe (theconversation.com)
One of the most galling mysteries in physics is that of the dark matter and dark energy. Scientists believe that together, these could account for up to 95 percent of the total mass in the universe. Now, a researcher at the University of Oxford says a new theory could explain all that "dark phenomena." From a report: The two mysterious dark substances can only be inferred from gravitational effects. Dark matter may be an invisible material, but it exerts a gravitational force on surrounding matter that we can measure. Dark energy is a repulsive force that makes the universe expand at an accelerating rate. The two have always been treated as separate phenomena. But my new study, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, suggests they may both be part of the same strange concept -- a single, unified "dark fluid" of negative masses.
Negative masses are a hypothetical form of matter that would have a type of negative gravity -- repelling all other material around them. Unlike familiar positive mass matter, if a negative mass was pushed, it would accelerate towards you rather than away from you. Negative masses are not a new idea in cosmology. Just like normal matter, negative mass particles would become more spread out as the universe expands -- meaning that their repulsive force would become weaker over time. However, studies have shown that the force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe is relentlessly constant. This inconsistency has previously led researchers to abandon this idea. If a dark fluid exists, it should not thin out over time.
In the new study, I propose a modification to Einstein's theory of general relativity to allow negative masses to not only exist, but to be created continuously. "Matter creation" was already included in an early alternative theory to the Big Bang, known as the Steady State model. The main assumption was that (positive mass) matter was continuously created to replenish material as the universe expands. We now know from observational evidence that this is incorrect. However, that doesn't mean that negative mass matter can't be continuously created. I show that this assumed dark fluid is never spread too thinly. Instead it behaves exactly like dark energy.
Negative masses are a hypothetical form of matter that would have a type of negative gravity -- repelling all other material around them. Unlike familiar positive mass matter, if a negative mass was pushed, it would accelerate towards you rather than away from you. Negative masses are not a new idea in cosmology. Just like normal matter, negative mass particles would become more spread out as the universe expands -- meaning that their repulsive force would become weaker over time. However, studies have shown that the force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe is relentlessly constant. This inconsistency has previously led researchers to abandon this idea. If a dark fluid exists, it should not thin out over time.
In the new study, I propose a modification to Einstein's theory of general relativity to allow negative masses to not only exist, but to be created continuously. "Matter creation" was already included in an early alternative theory to the Big Bang, known as the Steady State model. The main assumption was that (positive mass) matter was continuously created to replenish material as the universe expands. We now know from observational evidence that this is incorrect. However, that doesn't mean that negative mass matter can't be continuously created. I show that this assumed dark fluid is never spread too thinly. Instead it behaves exactly like dark energy.
Yes. I majored in physics, and I find this theory utterly repulsive.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
At the edge of knowledge, you will always find strange concepts. That is nothing new. It never was different. Wave-particle-dualism, morphing spacetime, magnetism, electricity and light being the same thing -- all of those have been fringe ideas at first (or as Max Planck once put it: acts of desperation). Only in hindsight, when they are long established in the scientific community, we consider them matters of course.
Anonymous troll posts have existed on Slashdot for as long as I've been reading, but the sheer volume of them started climbing dramatically a few years ago.
Back in the day, I used to read with my threshold at 0 because you would see a fair number of thoughtful comments which were anonymously posted for whatever reason - I was willing to tolerate the crap posts in order to see the good ones. But the sheer number of garbage posts we see nowadays drove me to change my mind - nowadays my "one line comment threshold is set to 1. I know I'm missing some things which probably deserve consideration, but I am unwilling to slog through the cesspool.
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