A couple of years ago I wrote the following in an email that I intended to send to Sean Carroll PhD, Lawrence Kraus PhD, Jeff Hester PhD, and Lisa Randall PhD (all are Physicists and I have all of their email addresses). I was going to send it because too often I have heard that people may have good ideas but never present them to people that actually know anything about the topic. However, I kept it in my Draft email folder for a very long time and finally decided that each of these people would probably find it more of an annoyance than anything. So like everyone else who never says anything my intent came to a grinding halt.
Finally the other day I decided I would at least put it here in the unlikely event that anyone who might be interested would notice it. So without further ado here it is...
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All,
The following is a speculation based on years of consideration, but with absolutely no proof. You don’t have to respond to this, nor even acknowledge receipt. I just offer it as something that could lead to an interesting conclusion.
I have been very intimidated about sending this, but I figure what are the chances I will ever encounter any of you. Well, I guess it could happen with Lawrence since I live in Phoenix and have even interacted briefly with Jeff Hester (ASU) as he was preparing for his debate with William Lane Craig that is scheduled for this April. But what the heck.
Everyone seems to presuppose that in the absence of matter or energy that space-time would ideally be flat (i.e., no reason for any curvature or distortion). However, what if this presupposition is wrong? Of course describing 4 dimensional space time as being flat is probably an odd way to put it, but I think it is the best way of describing undistorted space-time.
So now let’s consider the possibility of space-time being distorted or curved by something that is external to the known universe. This is crazy, right? But is it?
Matter that has collapsed into a black hole has for all practical purposes left the known universe. With the exception of small amounts of Hawking radiation nothing entering a black hole can ever again interact with the known universe except for one very big effect that everyone just takes for granted. Gravity. Gravity does not “escape” the event horizon; it is the distortion of space time by something which has “left the building.”
At the event horizon of the black hole time stops, as viewed from our universe. Matter entering the event horizon is gone forever, but the gravity associated with that matter persists as a continuing distortion of space-time. Why? Then over very large amounts of time I suspect that the gravity well may become more and more shallow (perceived as lower amount of contained equivalent mass) and slowly fade away almost as if the matter is getting farther away from a universe where it is no longer present. This would be noted as a black hole appearing to shrink faster than can be explained by Hawking radiation.
If we consider the possibility that our universe exists on a brane and that there can be other branes, is there a mechanism by which branes interact without being in a full blown collision? Could there be an effect like gravity which can allow one brane to distort the shape of space-time in another brane?
If branes can in a sense feel the presence of nearby branes (via gravity?), then presupposing space-time being flat is probably a bad idea.
What if our brane is interacting with another large brane in a positive curvature sense? Then we would perceive that our universe instead of being flat would have a positive curvature that gives us the impression that there is dark energy pushing everything away at an increasing velocity. However, the positive curvature simply has all the matter in the universe rolling off the positive curvature hill of space-time.
What if we are also interacting with other smaller branes which cause localized negative curvature “pot holes” in space time. In those areas matter will roll into the pot holes just like water into regular potholes. It wouldn’t be that there is matter in this universe that caused the original pothole, but as matter moves into the pothole it would indeed get deeper. However, the matter in this universe will never explain the total depth of the pothole (gravity well). The dark matter itself will never be found because it doesn’t really exist in this universe. The distortion of space-time is being externally caused (perhaps by matter in an adjacent brane).
Galaxies will rotate as if there is dark matter because the total distortion of space time is not being caused by the matter contained within the galaxy. The galaxies will be flying away from each other because they are all sliding down the big space-time hill in differing directions.
If any of this is true it will be impossible to ever identify a source for dark matter or dark energy that resides within the known universe. All we are really detecting is a universe that is a big hill full of potholes and wrinkles caused by its interaction with other branes.
Anyone want to take a crack at this idea? You are welcome to it, or you can amuse your friends with a wacky idea from a crazy person. I won’t send anything further unless requested to do so.
All the best to each of you in your current endeavors.
Curtis Eickerman
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