[extropy-chat] [COSMO-ASTRO] Weighing the Universe

[The Avantguardian]

      I am curious, does anyone have a reliable
estimate of the mass of the universe in kilograms
including baryonic matter, EM radiation, dark matter,
dark energy, and neutrinos? The reason I am asking is
because I have been doing some calculations and have
reached some interesting results. These results are
based on 4 assumptions:

1. Gravitational effects always travel faster than
light because they travel at the speed of quantum
information (i.e. the velocity of spread of the QM
wave function). The velocity of quantum information
seems to range from infinite for a stationary particle
to just larger than c for a particle moving at very
high relativistic speeds.

2. Inflation allows galaxies to apparently receed from
each other at faster than c. I say apparently because
the galaxies themselves are not actually moving that
fast, but new space is constantly being created
between them to give them the appearence that they are
moving at superluminal velocities.

3. The universe is a 4-D hypersphere where expanding
light cones trace geodesic lines that follow the
curvature of the surface space of the hypersphere at
the constant velocity c.

4. There is a universal reference frame for time but
not space, as measured from the Big Bang and "clocked"
by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). 

Based on these postulates, my calculations seem to
indicate that there is a cutoff for the mass of the
universe at about 10^53 kg. If the universe has more
mass than that, then we should only be able to SEE a
small portion of that mass because the universe is
expanding faster than the light cones generated by the
matter that's in it. The more matter there is, the
smaller the fraction of it we would see that is if it
is evenly distributed on large scales. We should still
be able to FEEL it though because the gravity effects
would be noticable to us due to postulate 2. My
equations seem to indicate that depending on exactly
how much matter there is in the universe, the light
cone may or may not eventually catch up to us. That is
there may be a point in the far future that we will be
able to see all the matter in the universe but until
then it will gravitationally affect us without us
being able to see it. 
      This would imply that dark matter is not some
exotic "spooky" form of matter but is instead just
normal baryonic matter that we just can't see yet
because the light from it is still trying to catch up
to us. Interestingly enough my results seem to
indicate that the "present" Hubble Constant is around
15x10^-18 1/sec instead of the 18x10^-18 1/sec that is
commonly accepted. The reason seems to be that the
Hubble constant is getting smaller as the universe
gets older so that the commonly accepted Hubble
constant is the "past" value the constant had when the
light left the distant galaxies all those billions of
years ago. What I am still trying to figure out is
what this implies for the rotation-speed problem for
galaxies. 
      I am not a professional astrophysicist but my
math seems pretty suggestive in this regard. Any
thoughts from the pros?

  



The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson

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