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Old December 7th 18, 03:09 PM posted to sci.astro
dlzc
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Default negative masses?

Dear Martin Brown:

On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 2:51:31 PM UTC-7, Martin Brown wrote:
....
It was accepted for A&A' so it has survived peer review.

I can't quite get my head round it yet but somehow the
creation of a negative mass fluid to fill an expanding
universe feels wrong somehow. But that might just be my
old school prejudice showing.

Having said that the idea seems to fit the data, has an
appealing symmetry and is a testable hypothesis so time
will tell whether or not it pans out when tested. The
author has a credible pedigree.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.07962

Is the version on Arxiv. The author is more usually
associated with observational astronomy and the square
kilometre array eg.


Not saying he is a crank. Saying "publish or perish" is not high quality Science.

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript...15/v2/download

I wouldn't be too quick to condemn it as junk.
Even if it is wrong it is still an interesting new
(actually old and revisited) take on lambdaCDM.


New is not always better. He is following a lead that is probably a mistake. But to not follow it, is NOT Science.

I have asked for opinions about it on
sci.astro.research in the thread on "dark matter
hypothesis" but it is awaiting moderator approval.


Excellent plan.

My two cents, a Velikovskian argument...
* gravity is not a force, so Dark Energy, or in this case negative energy, does no work in expanding the Universe, it only increases entropy.
* galactic superclusters have been shrinking over time. The record sized superclusters are far away / long ago, and granted our "near is now" myopia limits what of the Universe we experience, the Laniakea supercluster was at one time gravitationally bound, and is not longer. How did this stuff that is repelled by "positive stuff", manage to get in between, manage to shred the Laniakea supercluster... as it probably has all the large superclusters? It SHOULD have compressed superclusters, if this model was at all correct.
* if the second being however many clock ticks it is, can be adjusted and generate / duplicate Universal expansion (not gravitation binding, just expansion) by being 1 part in 10^18 "shorter" with each passing second, what need is there of Magic stuff, just because someone decided the Cosmological Constant was not constant, and whatever we formulated, needed to be presented as an energy term?

One problem is, another Q&A site has been suffering under a "superfluid or supersolid Dark Matter" spammer, and this will be just more gist for his mill.

Another is, the SciFi guys will thank that this negative energy can be captured and harnessed into Alcubierre drives, and we will stop looking for alternative approaches...

David A. Smith