Bizarre 'Dark Fluid' With Negative Mass Could Dominate the Universe (theconversation.com) 166
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.
I'm so terribly sorry about that,.. (Score:4, Funny)
I had the lamb vindaloo for lunch.
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Am I supposed to know you?
No electic force? (Score:1)
"Doc" Smith was right... (Score:3, Funny)
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Grasping at Straws (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it just me or has the physics community been grasping at straws lately?
Re:Grasping at Straws (Score:5, Insightful)
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We're not allowed to use straws anymore..
The matter isn't "dark", it just vibrates at a very low frequency.
He's very tall, you know
I know, I know
He looks even taller because he has high blood pressure
Re:Grasping at Straws (Score:5, Funny)
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I wonder which facts support it. I guess none.
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Yes. I majored in physics, and I find this theory utterly repulsive.
Yes, I see what you did there... Very good... I just wish I had mod points today.
+1 Funny
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Yes. I majored in physics, and I find this theory utterly repulsive.
There is no need to be so negative about this matter.
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Whether he's negative or not, when he pushes it away, it will come back to him.
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Yes. I majored in physics, and I find this theory utterly repulsive.
That's a charged statement!
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Physics is always "grasping at straws". Anti-matter (the positron specifically) was first predicted because of an unavoidable negative-energy solution that popped out in some math that Dirac was doing with regard to electrons. So, negative mass being predicted and then searched for is not at all unprecedented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron#Theory
Re:Grasping at Straws (Score:5, Informative)
Is it just me or has the physics community been grasping at straws lately?
Certainly TFS is, or string theory for that matter. Dark matter and dark energy are a bit different: they're observed phenomena that we can't explain. Gotta call them something. It's only been a few years since is was confirmed that dark matter was even "mater" (not modified gravity or somesuch), and it's still just guesswork that dark energy is "energy" in te way we currently understand it.
Minor quibble, but I cringe when stories talk about energy having mass. While you can express that mathematically and be fine, it doesn't match the meaning of those words in common usage. It's better to say that mass is a particular kind of energy than to say that e.g. a magnetic field "has mass" or that a spring has more mass when compressed. Being cryptic for the sake of being cryptic doesn't belong in science.
Re:Grasping at Straws (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Grasping at Straws (Score:4, Informative)
Occam's razor suggests that it's better to expect an explanation for metric expansion of space in future improved versions of existing theories.
"inflation" theories have been all the rage for a decade (strange overlap between cosmology and QM). A big percentage of dark energy theories are just new versions of inflation theories. But "inflation" is not much better understood than dark energy, so I'm not sure that helps much. The cosmology of the first tiny fraction of a second of the universe is going to be stuck without evidence until someone invents a neutrino observatory.
Heck, it's not even certain dark energy is a change in the metric (though it's pretty likely), all we know for sure is that distances are increasing, at a possibly accelerating rate. Dark energy as a sort of negative pressure (tension) in space is I think the leading idea, but that's not really explaining anything interesting, just restating the problem in terms of general relativity.
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The cosmology of the first tiny fraction of a second of the universe is going to be stuck without evidence until someone invents a neutrino observatory.
Like this one? [wikipedia.org]
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That's a detector, not an observatory, despite the jumped-up name. To measure the CNBR, we'd need to be able to measure a large sample of neutrinos coming from an arbitrary direction with a controlled aperture. What we can measure now is the light cone of Cherenkov radiation from the decay products of neutrinos interacting with stuff, and the knowledge that neutrinos passing through the Earth behave slightly differently than those that don't.
It's the difference between a telescope, and measuring the curr
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Please feel free to email your design for a neutrino telescope to Santa Claus at the North Pole.
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That was my original point, right? We're stuck until we get a neutrino observatory (and that may be a while).
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Maybe when the "Big Bang" occurred, the universe began to coalesce into bubbles of space-time and matter, which then eventually began merging. Maybe the "missing" matter resides in these separate space-time bubbles that have yet to merge with ours and which we have no means to see or detect from within our own bubble.
The first part of that is very similar to inflation theories, but different space-time bubbles "not yet merged" wouldn't affect our own in any way (unless you just mean black holes).
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The first part of that is very similar to inflation theories, but different space-time bubbles "not yet merged" wouldn't affect our own in any way
That's the point, it's where all the missing "dark matter" is at and why we've not found it. When a bubble merges you get things like a quasar suddenly (over about a decade, more or less) appearing to turn into a galaxy
A galaxy here, a galaxy there, and pretty soon you're talking about some real mass.
Strat
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Well, the point of "missing mass" is that it's mass that affects the universe. We can see its effects, but we can't see the cause. Most of it turned out to be dark matter, but there's still some missing.
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Yes. Exactly like the Luminiferous Aether was made up, and exactly like neutrinos were made up to make the numbers come out right. The only difference, of course, being that neutrinos actually exist. This "dark fluid" may exist, but I'm not planning to put any belief into it until there's some actual e
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I cringe when stories talk about energy having mass.
Energy may not have mass but it does have gravity. [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, that was exactly the point. Energy is the thing with gravity, inertia, and so on. Mass is a specific kind of energy (though even that gets a bit fuzzy, as most of the mass of familiar matter is the binding energy of the strong force in hadrons).
Re: Grasping at Straws (Score:2)
Why? Because if it didn't we wouldn't be here to answer the question
Re:Grasping at Straws (Score:5, Interesting)
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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).
And wave-particle dualism still sounds hinky. There has to be a better explanation for the double slit experiment. Wave-particle dualism sounds like a bad analogy for whatever is really happening.
And so we have this argument [wikipedia.org].
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Someone once told me, for him the wave-particle dualism looks to him as if macroscopicly, there are mansions, and there are workshops. And now someone talks about the mansion-workshop-dualism of bricks, and how only the constructio
Re: Grasping at Straws (Score:2)
AFAIK wave particle dualism doesn't allow us to calculate much of anything though. It's just a proposed explanation for an observed phenomenon. I'm not familiar with the quote but I think Feinmen must have been talking about something else there. Certainly there are things in physics which seem counterintuitive or nonsensical, but do allow us to make some incredibly precise calculations and predictions.
On that note, so did Newtonian physics. Newtons models are still very useful even today. They just tu
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The obvious gap here is how the "dark fluid" is continuously created. Even if the theory fits all cosmological observations, that would still need to be explained.
The only thing I can think of is that it would accumulate like the scum on a sea quantum foam.
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If I understand correctly, author actually cites the fact that the Hubble constant does in fact seem to change between measurements as supporting evidence that dark fluid may be a more accurate model than dark energy.
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Wrong, the CC is an average of it distributed over the entire universe for mathematical calculation purposes, but it is not proven to be constantly distributed. In fact that's entirely contradicted by the theory. It's an averaged value.
He also called it his "greatest mistake" because though it did help solve the mathematics, he couldn't explain or define it and was basically stuck with a magic goose.
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That's what science is. You grasp at straws to explain the unexplained, until you find the right straw.
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
Just NOPE. Dark fluid ... being magically replenished ... wrong answer to a rather complex question.
They need to explore / understand the fabric of space *itself*. It is stretchable. It can contract. It is also, itself, simply coming apart. If you try to measure this "coming apart" the problem (that I have) is that the measuring instrument itself is coming apart (expanding).
One day the cohesion of space itself will come to a breaking point (the end).
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Why is dark fluid being "magically" replenished any less plausible than dark energy being magically replenished?
And what evidence do you have that space itself is coming apart, much less the things within it? I've never heard of any model that postulates such a thing.
If the shoe fits, wear it. (Score:2)
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Awww -- forget the article. I AM A CRACKPOT. I must be right then. Feels good.
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How TF do you know? Scientists only understand 4.6% of the universe.
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Speaking of dark matter (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I alone in Iâ(TM)m getting tired of looking at comments because I donâ(TM)t want to sift through pages of creamer/apk/nazi/racist posts.
It wouldnâ(TM)t be so bad if these were original. Today it really looks like a few bits running and spamming every post.
I miss hot grits, Natalie Portman, Beowulf clusters of thingiemabobs and even the goatse man himself. Well, I donâ(TM)t miss him that much.
How did we go from meme to vile?
Agreed (Score:1)
These aren't even trolls so much as sad autists. Spewing the same copy and pasted garbage in every post. The janitors who run the place can't figure out a simple filter for them. Or perhaps more likely they don't read the comments or even care.
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We don't even have APK any more thanks to insensitive clods
Re:Speaking of dark matter (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Gaming the system (Score:2, Interesting)
Step 1: Write a peer reviewed article challenging accepted cosmology. Leave open the option that it may be nonsense, so no one can say you're a total crackpot and can pass peer review.
Bonus step: resuscitate a long dead competitive cosmology model.
Step 2: Write an opinion piece to generate publicity and buzz for your crazy theoryle (helpful if on Slashdot).
Step 3: Sit back and watch the refutations publish over and over, thus
The answer is simple (Score:3, Interesting)
While all the material we see in our universe is due to one big bang, my theory is that the larger universe of truly far away objects is the result of a collection of as many big bangs as there are stars. These big bangs are far enough away that they are unobservable (with current tech) and distributed in such a way that our observable material is pulled apart by them.
This has the benefit of explaining why our universe is accelerating outwards, and gets away with the fools assumption that the big bang is the one thing in the universe that is unique (hit anything that happens can happen over and over again. Additionally we have no need for some fancy jumping though hoops to explain why we cant see some dark matter that would have to comprise the vast majority of our IMMIDATE surroundings (on a astrophysics scale)
There it is, give me my Nobel prize. That darn Hawking stole my other one for his obvious theory that black holes decay (nothing lives forever)
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Quoting one [helsinki.fi] of our most famous physicists:
I am interested in the backreaction conjecture, according to which structure formation would lead to the observed larger expansion rate and longer distances without the need for dark energy or modified gravity.
Not quite your multi-big-bang theory but similar elements wrt dark matter/energy. And something that's being studied by professional physicists around the world.
I'm not familiar with the multi-big-bang theories (I've only seen some headlines) but I have some understanding of the classical idea. Basically, we're inside the ongoing big bang, and it looks like a black hole to the outside. There are probably a lot more out there (see this book [wikipedia.org] for one fun idea) but t
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The multiverse as I understand it (hey I am not an astrophysicist) is based off of extra dimensions. My half cocked theory is that these extra big-bangs are within but not limited to our current set of dimensions
Picture a set of atoms within a big old bowling ball, the gravitational pull on atoms near the middle would be similar to this hypothesized gravitation pull, pulling apart our universe.
Given this theory we could test it by seeing if we can observe differences in the Doppler shift depending on
Good right up to to the last part (Score:3)
However, that doesn't mean that negative mass matter can't be continuously created
and that's were I got lost. I fail to see how a theory can be dependent on something so fundamental, yet fail to account for it.
There is also the question of how a negative mass fluid would react with other n/mass fluid particles around it. If positive masses attract each other, and a positive-negative mass interaction results in repulsion, how would two negative-mass particles interact with each other?
Re:Good right up to to the last part (Score:5, Informative)
There is also the question of how a negative mass fluid would react with other n/mass fluid particles around it. If positive masses attract each other, and a positive-negative mass interaction results in repulsion, how would two negative-mass particles interact with each other?
If you did the math or read the original paper, you'd know that positive masses attract, positive-negative masses accelerate in the same direction, and negative masses repulse.
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You talk about knowing these things, but they are pure speculation, and not even widely believed speculation. There are no observations of things with negative mass or anything like it.
Of course not. You certainly don't care because you're just a worthless AC troll, but there are possibly others that have the same idea because they don't know much about science, or at least physics. For the most part, theoretical physics has passed experimental physics because the cost of experimental observations on the edges of physics are complicated and expensive things. Particle physics must explore theoretical physics for the most part because nobody is building a surplus of larger particle collider
Physicists believe in negative mass.... (Score:4, Insightful)
because math allows it. But not everything is real what math allows. Just look at the epic failure of SUSY or read "Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray" from theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder.
"However, studies have shown that the force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe is relentlessly constant."
And there are several studies which claim that the accelerating expansion of the Universe is an illusion. I think it would be simpler(?) to explain the galactic rotation problem and/or the Bullet Cluster without dark matter with a model. And if that model also says something about the expansion of the Universe which matches the observations that would be an extra. But no model should be built upon solely on the accelerating expansion of the Universe.
"It therefore appears that a simple minus sign may solve one of the longest standing problems in physics."
I have read a study which claimed that the bending of light around a galaxy was consistent with the velocity of the stars around the galaxy. That means space-time is really curved with the right amount since there cannot be any repulsive force which bends light.
A precise extragalactic test of General Relativity
http://science.sciencemag.org/... [sciencemag.org]
Re:Physicists believe in negative mass.... (Score:4, Interesting)
because math allows it. But not everything is real what math allows. Just look at the epic failure of SUSY or read "Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray" from theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder.
True, but you can also look at anti-matter which was shown to exist mathematically but dismissed, only to be found later. I've skimmed over the original paper and it seems pretty good. The author admits that it is just a "toy model" based on the assumption that negative matter exists, but that several known constants can be derived from that model and several observations explained. They go on to list more than a half dozen experimental tests for the same model. Even if just a gedanken experiment that will later prove to be false, it seems they have done better than any of the MOND people with their theories or any of the string theorist people for that matter.
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MOND isn't a theory. It's an empirical fit to the data...a law, in other words, which is less than a theory.
Hardly. MOND is a theory, that the laws of gravitation just need to be tweaked to explain the effects attributed to dark matter, looking for an empirical fit to data. So far, it hasn't produced any math that can describe anything but the simplest case in only 2D.
Re:Physicists believe in negative mass.... (Score:4, Informative)
Hossenfelder's book is good, Lee Smolin's are better. After reading his first, I found hers to be repeating the same argument except less professionally. And she didn't even have the courage to site him seeing as his arguments predate hers by years, although at the end she does mention Lee couldn't talk her out of writing the book. My guess is he felt it would be bad for her career seeing as she doesn't have nearly the physics chops he has.
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Yes.
A similar silly conclusion based on math is the concept of a "4th dimension" (or more). Math allows this. But in the physical universe, there IS NO "one" dimension, or "two" dimensions. These do not exist in physical form, they are only abstract concepts. Nor can there be "four" dimensions, for the same reason. Any number of dimensions in the physical realm, other than three, is purely abstract.
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Cool (Score:2)
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I was thinking along these lines, but then you have the problem with negative acceleration. You could use this to balance out regular mass to make essentially weightless objects, but it would take massive energy to move them, as the applied force would have to fight the movement of the negative matter.
Yes, I'm sure there would be a ton of applications, but this is some very weird counter-intuitive stuff.
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I can't wait to get a hold of some of this stuff.
How? You reach out for it and it moves away from you. How big would your container / trap need to be?
Hey, I Needed Negative Mass for my Alcubierre... (Score:5, Informative)
There is a Mexican mathematician by the name of Miguel Alcubierre who came out with description of a theoretical method of propelling a solid object in space at extremely high speeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
His theory pencils out as internally consistent, but when you start to match it up the the observable universe, you get into things that we didn't think actually existed - like a requirement for a material with negative mass.
Fellow Slashdotters, I need a few hundred liters of this stuff for my DIY Alcubierre drive. Anybody got any advice on how I can collect a material that starts to run away faster and faster as I get closer and closer to it?
TIA!
Re:Hey, I Needed Negative Mass for my Alcubierre.. (Score:5, Funny)
Anybody got any advice on how I can collect a material that starts to run away faster and faster as I get closer and closer to it?
TIA!
It's called a woman
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I need some "negative money" where the more I spend, the more I have!
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you mean get in front of it and have someone with more mass than you chase it towards you.
Interesting but meh. (Score:2)
There needs to be a lot more supporting stuff than a speculative idea. Show me an hour long lecture on YouTube outlining the supporting evidence.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Score:2)
Why was my post with the word (Score:2)
0peeium in it (but spelled correctly) immediately deleted? As in, this is an 0peeium dream?
Dark fluid (Score:2)
Got some. Big puddle under my truck.
Crackpot index (Score:2)
Give this press release a crackpot score. [ucr.edu] E.g.: 5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann". So 20 points right there.
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Sure, he's a crackpot. A crackpot with a PhD from Cambridge (the Cavendish Laboratory) who is currently doing research at Oxford, and is on the science team for the construction of the largest radio telescope in the world, who's been published dozens of times in tier-1 peer-reviewed astrophysics journals. So, I guess I'll read what the crackpot has to say.
Simulation Theory. (Score:2)
Aku! (Score:1)
I'm coming for you.
Prior research (Score:3)
The future is incredible! (Score:2)
Unlike familiar positive mass matter, if a negative mass was pushed, it would accelerate towards you rather than away from you.
I claim a patent on using this as the sleeve for sexbot robovaginas!
Dark Fluid? What? Like Guinness Stout? (Score:2)
Like my date and her Coors.
Thank god for that.
Again, thank the gods.
More likely (Score:3)
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A photon has mass.
A photon has momentum.
unless the 'dark matter' theory is wrong (Score:1)
So dark matter and dark energy are the same thing? (Score:2)
Dark matter is considered to be "invisible" mass that makes galaxies behave the way they do by its gravitational effects. But the dark fluid stuff could be sitting between galaxies, and "push"/compress them via negative gravitation?
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hypothesis, not theory! (Score:2)
How many times does this have to be repeated?