Could Dark Energy just be due to conservation of spacetime deformation?

For example, for every compression of spacetime caused by mass, perhaps we must have an equal and opposite expansion of spacetime between the masses which balances it out.

As an analogy, if you put a bowling ball on top of a waterbed, it would create a well, but the rest of the surface moves higher.

The spacetime between the stars may be expanded due to the compression of spacetime around the stars.
-- sophocles, Aug 27 2015

If so, one would expect to find energy symmetrically around massive objects and their deformations.
-- bungston, Aug 27 2015


It wouldn't have to leave evidence so close to physical accumulations. Just like, in the waterbed analogy, the whole surface rises, nearly uniformly, in response to the local impression.
-- sophocles, Aug 27 2015


but then perhaps mass wouldn't form at all.
-- FlyingToaster, Aug 27 2015


This is either a very dumb idea or a brilliant one. Sadly, if the Higgs Boson is anything to go by, you may have to wait until you're in your 70s to find out.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 27 2015


I wish I were smart and informed enough to contribute meaningfully to this conversation. [+]
-- Voice, Aug 27 2015


This Idea will probably get the MFD for being about theory, and not an invention. Alas, I am well-experienced in having that difference pointed out.
-- Vernon, Aug 27 2015


So how to test the... notion?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 27 2015


I'd be fine to delete it after 1 week of healthy discussions. This community has entertained me with many great discussions on related topics of no immediate utility.
-- sophocles, Aug 27 2015


I'm still on for the Pullman theory, that the dark matter is angels.

<returns to own dark bun research with a lion-tamer outfit and a thermos flask (for the dark matter)>
-- not_morrison_rm, Aug 28 2015


Would that make a dark cosmological constant? A value when the bowling ball is dissolved(homogenised) in the waterbed.
-- wjt, Aug 28 2015


The Milky Way becomes the Quilty Way to cover up the great water bed in the sky.
-- xenzag, Aug 28 2015


This Idea will probably get the MFD for being about theory, and not an invention. Alas, I am well-experienced in having that difference pointed out. — Vernon, Aug 27 2015

Darn, beat me to it.
-- normzone, Aug 28 2015


More theory then: If this hypothesis is true, then we might be able to measure the actual size of the universe. We could say:

"The background should rise X given the known mass of the observable universe, but it only rose 0.25X, meaning, our observable universe represents only 25% of the real volume of the universe."
-- sophocles, Aug 28 2015


The problem with the usual illustration of gravity - in which a heavy mass makes a dip in a rubber sheet into which things fall - is that it only works because real gravity makes things fall into the dip.

It's a bit like trying to explain electricity by using electricity as an analogy for electricity.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 28 2015


//No it isn't. Water is the analogy used for electricity. //

Water is a useful analogy for electricity. My point, however, was that the ball-and-rubber-sheet analogy for gravity is not good.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 28 2015


Yes, but the analogy is circular. The rubber sheet is only depressed because gravity is acting on it; and things only fall into the depression because gravity pulls them down into it. It does not help you to visualise the distortion of spacetime, nor why such distortion should cause objects to fall towards eachother.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 29 2015


2D is always simpler to visualize and explain. Isn't the model really 3 dimensional rubber and uses spongy elasticity to model gravity.
-- wjt, Aug 30 2015


//electricity as an analogy for electricity// That's a limitation on the analogy, but not a fatal flaw in it. An analogy for that analogy is that it is, I understand, perfectly possible to define XML in XML.

The only drawback is that you then have to go and read Douglas Hofstadter until your head falls off. Or Hegel.
-- pertinax, Aug 30 2015


Since most gravitational objects are spheres, give or take, and all the examples usually given are objects within a plane anyways, just nix the 3rd dimension and represent them as various sized polka dots on the distended rubber sheet.

And that's where the missing mass is, hiding in the gravitic dimension: it's further in distance in 4 dimensions (3 + gravitic) from the center of a massive object to the center of another massive object than it is in 3 dimensions, so gravitational pull is less, so it looks like there's less mass than there actually is.
-- FlyingToaster, Aug 30 2015



random, halfbakery