Elegantly Misguided

      My favorite part about being a science fiction writer is that I get to think of complex problems and assign eloquent and beautiful solutions without the burdensome necessity of evidence. Is just has to 'sound' cool.

That's has been what my mind has been going around and around about for the past couple weeks; I've thought of something that sounds like a cool explanation of a real problem.

      First, a simplified explanation of the complex problem. The rotational velocity of stars in galaxies are constant as they spread out from the center. According to our current understanding of how gravitational forces work, the stars should slow down as they spread out. They don't behave as predicted. In physics (and science in general) if the predictions of a theory don't match with the evidence it is a crippling offense. Or, at least it should be. It turns out that if you add a shit-ton (should shit-ton have a hyphen?) of matter to a galaxy, the math works out and everything is fine and dandy. They only problem is that we can't detect this added matter by any means we have available to us today. Because of that it is dubbed 'Dark Matter'. They only reason we believe it to exist is because we can not account for how galaxies move otherwise.

      This isn't much different than when Issac Newton couldn't account for the motion of the solar system. He couldn't account for the movements of the planets as they related to each other, so he gave it up to god.

Calling on Dark Matter seems to be the same thing to me. I think it much more likely we have something wrong than 80% of the universe is undetectable, just like Newton didn't have it exactly right.

      Dark Energy is in the same boat. The universe is not only expanding, it is speeding up. How is that happening if all the energy in the universe was caused by the Big Bang? Where is that energy coming from? Dark Energy. Some energy source that can't be detected.

      As an empirical atheist, I dislike this explanation. When the only way to make it work is by inserting an undetectable, unknowable, inexplicable force, perhaps it is simply just wrong. Or at least, not quite right.

I'm going to tackle Dark Energy first. 

     In 2000 there was an experiment where a photon was successfully frozen. Here is the part that geeked me out. When the photon was unfrozen it instantly returned to the speed of light. That blows my mind. Where did the energy to return to C (186,000 miles per second) come from? And, why can a photon travel indefinitely?

      I think that not only is the C a constant, it is THE constant. It doesn't take any energy for the photon to get up to C, because traveling at that velocity is it's natural state. A particle without mass must travel at C. An electron has a little mass and travels at a little less than C. A proton has more mass and travels even slower. The more mass the slower it goes.

      It took a considerable amount of energy to stop the photon, and when the energy was removed it went back to it's natural state, 186,000 miles per second.

      There is a great explanation of the Special Theory of Relativity in 'The Elegant Universe' by Brian Greene. In one of the examples given Dr. Greene uses two people in the vacuum of space with no stars or anything around. One space man sees the other float by at 20 miles an hour. The funny thing is that the other space-man will see the same thing. Each will feel that the other is the one traveling. That is a much simplified explanation of the 'relative' aspect of the theory. I recommend reading the book for a more thorough understanding. He also explains how mass is also relative.

      They only thing that needs to be understood for my purpose is that speed and mass is relative. (Just read Elegant Universe)

      Say I was traveling near the speed of light. Stars and planets wiz by me. I travel for so long that I can no longer see any of the stars. I will no longer have a frame of reference. Without anything to relate to, how will I know my speed? If speed is no longer relevant, neither is relative mass.

      If mass is not relevant then it can be said to not have mass. If it doesn't have relative mass then it will travel at C.

      I call this moving beyond Relativity or into NR(non-relative) space. Remember, anything without mass travels at C. In NR space, nothing has mass and everything will travel at C.

      Dark Energy is not some mysterious force that we can't detect. The universe is expanding at an accelerated rate because galaxies are expanding into NR. As they get closer to NR, their relative mass decreases, and their speed increases.

      My explanation for Dark Matter is an extension of my thoughts above. The edges of Galaxies spin faster than we thought they would, not because of a lot of matter that we can't find, but because at the edges of galaxies there is less Relative Space, which equal Less relative mass, which equals more speed.

      Ta-dah! Problem solved. This physics shit is a piece of cake when you don't have to really know what you're talking about.