The Bakhos Theory of Dark Energy and Matter

@PdotdQ Of course I would like to continue to address each of the points that you made; but we’ll set it aside for now. I very much appreciate your taking the time to respond to me. I will not post any of your comments anywhere else. I am in California, so I am going to say goodnight for now, though I do not know where you are.

I would be very pleased to have a conversation with you by phone some time.

What, in your understanding, is antimatter?

I’m fairly amazed at the patience of @dga471 and @PdotdQ here.

@Joe_Bakhos, what would it take to convince you this theory is false? What experiments would invalidate it? What would it take to convince you?

I ask this because it does not appear you are reasoning about this in a way that matches @physicists. As a lowly computational biologist, I may be misinterpreting this though.

My understanding of antimatter is, according to current theory, matter composed of anti-particles that are sort of mirror images to the particles that we know. An example of this is the positron / electron pair.

Under current theory, a positron is supposed to come into existence only under special conditions in a particle accelerator.

I am speculating that maybe positrons are always present in matter; i.e., as I explained, that a neutron is actually composed of three parts: Something I am calling a sub-neutron, plus a positron, plus an electron.

So what we are calling a proton is actually this composite thing I am talking about that has lost an electron.

I am roughly aware of how current chromodynamics works – I mean the quark model and so forth – and I acknowledge that I am unqualified to be positing some kind of subatomic theory. So on this issue I am purely speculating.

I am speculating that when dirac predicted the existence of the positron, this would not necessarily mean that the positive charge from a proton and the positive charge from a positron are necessarily coming from two different things. It could be that a positron is present within the proton.

What do you think are antiprotons and antineutrons?

In my theory and in several of my comments I have stated some things that would falsify what I am saying. I will give you a few examples:

The basic shape of the gravity function that I am positing is not that complicated. Now it is true that applying it to galactic motion would be a challenging computational task – but this is exactly what astrophysicists are doing with the concepts of dark matter and dark energy – So one way of falsifying what I’m saying is if no equation roughly similar to what I’m saying can simultaneously predict galactic accelerations and also galactic rotations.

Now if a model can be found that does fit the data, this does not prove the model is correct. It would only prove it was worth investigating further.

Another example that I’ve stated already in this thread is the acceleration of the Andromeda galaxy: If what I am saying is correct, then its acceleration towards us should be different than what is expected, i.e. its velocity should be changing in an unexpected way.

Just off the top of my head there are a few other things that would falsify what I am saying, to wit: If any sample of dark matter was ever discovered or captured. Current theory posits that our galaxy is about 90% dark matter. So if someone ever recovers some, that would falsify my theory. Same goes for dark energy: If it is ever detected apart from the increased gravitational potential energy caused by the galaxies accelerating away from each other – this would also falsify my theory.

So when you say something like I am not “reasoning about this in a way that matches physicists” I do not understand what you mean.

Now as regards the anti-matter sub-atomic particle stuff – that is pure speculation and I am not making any claim about it being true. With that stuff I am just thinking out loud. About the dark matter / dark energy idea however, I am just maintaining that my idea is worth modelling; it is worth investigating.

Anti neutrons I have not thought about. An anti proton I would speculate is a neutron that has lost a positron.

OK. So in your model, you have a sub neutron, a positron and electron. Why do you think the positron doesn’t just annihilate when coming into contact with the electron?

@dga471 Hi Daniel, I am sorry that I did not reply sooner, but this site understandably has a limit on the number of new posts by a brand new member. I hit that limit last night and was unable to respond. In answer to your question: I would guess that being bound to the sub-neutron has a property such that the positron and electron do not annihilate.
I am afraid we are off on a tangent that I am really not able to address. Please let me explain where I am coming from. My ideas led me to two startling conclusions:

  1. That gravity reverses at great distances.
  2. That gravity is a property of space that acts upon matter; i.e. matter does not cause gravity – gravity acts upon matter.
    These two ideas led me to some hasty, off-the-cuff speculations on a wide variety of other subjects. This anti-matter speculation is one of those. I started thinking about this because I thought to myself: “If gravity reverses, perhaps the other forces do as well? Perhaps the other forces are also properties of space that act upon matter, rather than forces that are generated by matter?”
    Now I am aware of chromodynamics and the quark theory. I am aware of all the effort, including tens of billions of dollars spent on particle accelerators, and the concerted work of thousands of scientists over the course of decades to put together the standard model. But I do not understand chromodynamics, and I do not know or understand the standard model. So my speculation OF COURSE, must be considered false. I do understand that. I am just speculating out loud that maybe an expert might be able to re-work the standard model in such a way that the quark system is relevant to the sub-neutron that I am talking about, and re-work the standard model in such a way that therefore the positron is understood to be always present in the nucleus of normal matter.

Perhaps, to an expert, this speculation is patently absurd and obviously and trivially false. In this discussion, in this thread, let us just assume this is the case – because of my lack of expertise in this area, we are not going to have a productive discussion about it, because I don’t know anything. You are talking to me as if I have developed a theory and a working model on this matter when I have not done so.
So leaving aside the actual construction of the nucleus, I would like to ask your opinion on this portion of my essay:
A little thought experiment to show what I mean. According to traditional theory, an electron is generating an electric field around itself; this field would repulse other electrons.
Now imagine you could capture another electron and hold it, and then force it near the first electron, which is also held in place.
Now continue doing this with more and more electrons; keep forcing them into place around the first electron, until it surrounded by a sphere of other electrons being held in place.
We can see from this that according to current theory, that single electron would be pushing against all the others – i.e. that single electron would be the source of a near infinite quantity of force, depending on how many other electrons we bring near it.
If however, we say that force is a property of space that acts upon electrons in a certain way, then we avoid this idea and the near infinite force in this situation is being generated by space itself. In this way of looking at things, traditional “fields” don’t exist, although they are obviously a very useful, predictive, mathematical tool.

Now with that said, I would much rather return to the discussion about dark matter and dark energy, because I do not have anything further to offer on particle physics.

@Joe_Bakhos I’m afraid it might be a bit late where you are, but would you like to continue our discussion from last night?

I am still quite unsure of what problems you were trying to solve with your theory. In my mind, there seems to be three things that might be relevant:

  1. Dark matter: Historically, this was imposed initially to solve the flat rotation curve of galaxies. However, in contemporary physics, its most important feature is that it allows for cosmological structure formation. Without dark matter, matter and light is fully coupled and cannot collapse during the early universe.
  2. Cosmological expansion: this is the so called Hubble Flow, where galaxies move away from each other. In mainstream physics, this expansion is due to the initial condition of the FLRW metric. As I have mentioned multiple times in this thread, this is not an acceleration, and thus cannot be compared with gravitational acceleration. Importantly, dark energy is not responsible for the cosmological expansion!
  3. Acceleration of the cosmological expansion: this is where it was found that the cosmological expansion is accelerating. In mainstream physics, this acceleration is due to dark energy. In local regions, this looks like an honest to goodness acceleration, and thus can be compared with gravitational acceleration.

Note that Dr. Farnes’ research is quite different from your model. His model includes a mixture of negative and positive matter which acts the way they do regardless of any lengthscale (i.e. not all faraway things are repulsive, and not all closeby things are attractive). Further, he still initiated the FLRW metric the same way as standard physics, so that he has the same cosmological expansion as mainstream physics.

Which of these three “problems” (I hesitate to use the word problem, as the 2nd is not really a problem the same way as the 1st and the 3rd are) are you trying to solve with your theory?

@PdotdQ I believe you are mistakenly representing each of these problems. I have a lot to say about each of them; I will treat with them one at a time or else the post will be too long. About the CMB: Originally the hot, dense, ionic soup near the beginning of the universe was opaque to light because the charged particles interacted with light; so light could not travel far. Once the universe had expanded and cooled enough, then the light was liberated and could travel.

The problem is that the anisotropies of the CMB are so small (i.e. matter density seems to be so evenly distributed) that just gravity and just the visible matter we see would not have had time to form the structures (galaxies, clusters, walls, filaments) that we see today. There has not been enough time.

So they posit that dark matter existed back then and began structure formation and continued it to this day; since dark matter does not interact with light, it could have been forming structures before the decoupling of light from ordinary matter. Under my idea, I would posit that since gravity reverses – structure formation would happen much, much quicker than an exclusively normal gravity situation. Shortly after decoupling, the attractive/repulsive effects of gravity would rapidly cause the structures we see today. In other words, these structures would have had the time to form after all.

A galaxy would have its own gravitational force attracting its matter, but it would also have the repulsive force of surrounding dust, gas, and other galaxies. Thus, structure formation is rapid for the same reason that galactic rotation of outer stars is faster than expected.

This is a bold claim that is bordering on ad hominem. As I said, I am a professional physicist with a decade of experience in the field. This means that you are accusing me of either being incompetent or a liar. I do not appreciate this.

None of this is different from my characterization of this problem, so I don’t know why you claim that I am mistakenly representing this problem:

All I want to know is how do you think this can occur in your theory, which you answered:

Again, all of this you claim without proof. This is not acceptable. In order to solve the dark matter problem, as a first go you need to at the very least prove that:

  1. Your theory can produce a flat rotation curve
  2. Your theory can produce rapid structure formation

Otherwise it is impossible to evaluate whether your theory is valid or not.

I would be happy to help you prove these by guiding you through the necessary mathematical machinery, but not if you attack my professional competence and honesty.

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I apologize. I have been so used to being attacked, ridiculed, and insulted – I made a poor choice of words. If you would help me to build a model I would be tremendously grateful.

I am not pretending or trying to “prove” anything right now, because I do not have the ability. I will use an analogy:

When Darwin first started speculating about his theory of evolution, the first step was just trying to think of plausible mechanisms, and to answer anticipated criticisms. Proving it must come later.

Right now I am at the stage of trying to think of plausible mechanisms. I have no proof. The first step would be an attempt to build a model, along with relevant equations, to see if it is possible to model all of this in such a way that it fits the astronomical data. I understand that this would still not prove the theory correct, BUT the theory must survive this first hurdle before it can go any further.

If you could help me to build a model, I would be tremendously grateful.

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Joe, my advice to you, echoing what @PdotdQ said, is to learn physics and mathematics properly first instead of straight away trying to build a theory that will overthrow all of physics. This will make you less likely to be attacked and insulted. Is there a reason why you don’t seem to be interested in this at all?

Both @PdotdQ and I have studied physics and math for years and neither of us are even anywhere near the stage where we are trying to overturn the paradigm of an entire field of physics, much less multiple fields. I myself am far from mastering everything in my sub-sub-field of precision measurements using atomic physics techniques. After seven years of study, I can only claim that I know the basics of the field of atomic physics, and a good amount about one specific type of experiment. I would be happy enough if one day I could think of just one new experimental technique to investigate dark matter or exotic particles. Why are you so intent on proving that all the rest of us have gotten it wrong when you don’t even have basic competence?

And it’s not impossible to do start learning basic math and physics even if you are just doing it yourself. For example, Nobel Laureate Gerard 't Hooft has set up a site collecting all the free online resources to progress from basic arithmetic all the way to string theory: http://www.goodtheorist.science/. There are also countless video lectures, problem sets and solutions, free textbooks, all over the internet. It is again, great that you seem interested in learning about physics. Why not start learning the real thing, instead of crude approximations? Then you can actually ask questions which are fruitful, even if they are basic questions (there are many such basic but fruitful questions asked in this forum about physics and many other fields).

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If you will read my article, it answers your questions. I was not setting out to do this. I was working on a fairly straightforward geometric problem. In the course of working on this, I stumbled (by accident!) upon an idea that I thought relevant to the dark matter / dark energy problem. After reading about it further, and investigating further, I still believe it is relevant. I think it is true.

Now your entire post, in my opinion, is basically saying that you think the idea (the dark matter / dark energy portion; I am not talking at all about my anti-matter statements) to be absurd and not worth discussing.

You are entitled to your opinion, and certainly your degree of education makes your opinion more important than mine.

But if you don’t want to discuss the idea, I think you’ve made your point – there is no need for you to post anything again.

No. I don’t know for sure if it’s worth discussing or not. I’m letting @PdotdQ assess whether it is, as it is closer to his field. I know that I’m not an expert on the astronomical evidence for dark matter. I won’t even bother trying to speak something that I don’t know about, which will only erode my overall credibility. If I want to start discussing it, I will go back, open a basic textbook on astronomy and cosmology, read many papers on dark matter - basically learn a new field from scratch. This is a major difference between us. Do you understand?

That being said, even though I am not an expert in your field, your Reddit posts indicate many red flags that indicate you are not yet at the level of competence to posit a worthwhile theory. For example: your attempted mathematical proof that there cannot be more than 3 geometrical dimensions doesn’t prove what you think it does. Secondly, even with regards to your dark matter theory, you are positing an equation without bothering to even fit it to existing astronomical data for dark matter to see if it is any good. Thus, I am not even sure at this point if your equation has anything to do with explaining dark matter.

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First: in your thought experiment, if you could somehow bring in a point-like, classical electron close enough to another one, overcoming the repulsive force between them which goes to infinity as the distance approaches zero, you would need infinite energy. So this is not a situation that you would expect to find in nature. I’m not sure what this proves though? It would be different if we actually discovered a phenomenon like this experimentally and couldn’t explain it otherwise.

Secondly, it is not clear to me either what it means to say “traditional fields don’t exist.” I’m not sure what “exists” means at this level. It is clear that fields are a very useful way of thinking about matter and their interactions, one which has borne a lot of fulfilled predictions. That is all physicists care about. Physicists are not concerned as much about what “actually” exists! We only care about different models of reality, some of which are better and more useful than others.

Lastly, I know that you don’t want to be grilled on your antimatter speculations. But upon hearing your suggestion that an antiproton might simply be a neutron and an electron, I was curious and did a Google search on whether it is possible for a neutron and electron to be bound together. Interestingly, someone has thought about this problem: Does a Free Neutron-Electron Bound State Exist?. The paper imagines several different interactions possible between a neutron and electron and calculates whether any of them can result in a bound state - i.e. a composite particle were the kinetic energy of the system is less than the potential energy, such that an electron could orbit around a neutron. The short answer is that based on these simple approximations, such a bound state is not feasible! Thus based on what we know about neutrons and electrons, it is not likely that we will ever find this in nature, much less have this responsible for being an antiproton.

Note that it is actually possible for a positron and electron to be bound together to form a new particle, at least temporarily: this is what positronium is. However, positronium is not a very stable particle; there is a high likelihood that the positron and electron will annihilate each other and release gamma rays.

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The point of my thought experiment was to say that in classical theory the source of a force approaching infinity is caused by a tiny particle. In classical theory, this near infinite force is expressed as an existing field all the time, whether another particle is near it or not.

I am suggesting that if forces are a property of space in the way that I am describing, then the force is dependent upon space and the particles relative position in that space; i.e. there is not an existing field being generated all the time – the “force” acts specifically upon the particles and does not exist anywhere else.

About the neutron paper you cited; it is not relevant to what I am speculating about.

My speculation is that right now, what we call a “neutron” may actually have a sub-structure composed of a positron and an electron bound to something I am calling a sub-neutron.

So I am speculating that if a neutron loses its existing positron, current theory would call this an “anti-proton.”

I was not talking about adding an electron to an existing neutron. In that case, according to my speculation, there would be two electrons present.

sorry, I misstyped. I meant that if a current neutron loses a positron, it would become an anti-proton.