A fresh view about "Dark Matter"

One of my interests is theoretical physics. The current situation is quite bad. We have two theories for small and large scale interactions (i.e. Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theories for small scale, and General Relavity for large scale); these two theories don't fit together. Furthermore, with lots of "dark matter" and "dark energy", these theories also do not fit together with the observations. Actually, we have observations contradicting the current theory by such a huge factor that most of the universe (according to the standard theory) consists of matter that is only imaginated.

I don't like the "occult" part of current theories and observations, like dark matter, black holes, or spoky actions at a distance. This seems to belong more to a "Harry Potter" universe, a world where the rules follow the way humans think. I believe that this world is computable and follows rules, not wishful thinking. I leave wormholes, teleportation, faster-than-light communication and all that to science fiction.

In discussion with my father, we developed a model that seems to close the gap between QM and GR. Basically, there are two elements necessary for that: One element is how space is defined in QM terms (today, space is "just there" as an absolute space). The other element is how gravitation interaction is defined (it's special, it does not work like charge forces, in so far a QFT approach can't succeed). This is not a full theory yet, though. I'm not searching for the "holy Grail" of physics, the "Theory of Everything," since all scientific models are limited by their assumptions, but I'm searching for a more consistent model of reality, though.

For a start, I put a paper about Inertial Systems in Relation to Accelerated Masses (107k) online. The assumption that space is not "just there" but defined by the matter therein, leads to interesting consequences. This is a quite terse paper, and expects that you have read de Broglie and Mach's work (or that you read it now ;-). I've scanned, ORC'd and typeset the relevant parts of Mach's book "Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung", and put it online (Entwicklung der Prinzipien der Dynamik. (918k)) (copyright has expired). The LaTeX sources (114k) are also online.

If you like to toy around with the model galaxy, download bigFORTH, and start galaxy.m.

De Broglie started Quantum Mechanics by assuming that particles really are spread-out pulsations in space (instantaneous pulsation when at rest). Transforming this pulsation with Special Relativity leads to de Broglie's waves, and his wave mechanics was the basis of Schrödinger's equation. Apparently, nobody seems to remember de Broglie's contribution; people even think that de Broglie's contribution to QM is irrelevant. Fortunately, the Nobel price committee thought differently.

The main irritating assumption is that this wave is "spread-out" or instantaneous. However, it's easy to see that you can compose an instantaneous wave by a superposition of two waves (or rather wavelets) going in opposite direction or having opposite frequencies. This decomposition is what we do, it allows us to work with quite normal waves (which we call "elementary waves") which spread out with speed of light. Actually light corresponds to a change of a particle, and such a change also is seen on the elementary waves, so light speed is determined by the spread out speed of these elementary waves.

The next thing that's different is how we treat gravitation. A gravitation field is not the same as a charge field. Charge field accelerate particles inside their inertial system. Gravitation accelerates the inertial system itself, and by doing so, it bends space and time (it can be shown that space and time must bend if inertial systems are accelerated). Therefore, an exchange of particles (like for charge forces, described by QFT) is not sufficient to fully explain gravitation.

The question of how space and time can be bend is closely tight to the definition of flat space and time. Any reasonable relativistic model of the universe must assume that information about the state of the universe is local, and communicated over distance. Communication is limited to speed of light, and must happen through matter (no magic allowed).