T h e   U n i v e r s e

This is a story about how the universe works, how it came to be, and why it looks the way it does. It supports expansion but rejects a begining. It postulates how matter came to be and maybe even the four forces. For now I'm calling it "The Expanding Steady State Hypothesis". Maybe I'll come up with a better name later.

In Extrasensory Perception, I described how our conventional, three dimensional, world might only be a cross section of a more extensive physical geometry. I am not the first person to suggest something like this, but I may be the first person to give it a face. Paul Davies believes that life and consciousness produce, maintain and alter the world we see. Leonard Susskind has suggested that the material world is a holographic projection from "the edge" of the universe. All of which sounds nice, but what does it mean, and how would it work?

Most research supports the idea that the universe is expanding. Recent observations suggest that it is also accelerating. It is not known how this is happening, but a consensus was reached, several years ago, which named this cause, Dark Energy. If Dark Energy exists it would need to be gravitationally repulsive and there would need to be a lot of it. It is believed to comprise 73 percent of the universe. This is not to be confused with Dark Matter, which is thought to be somewhat material in nature and exhibit gravitational attraction. If Dark Matter exists, it is invisible to us, neither emitting nor absorbing light. Dark Matter is thought to comprise 23 percent of the universe. These conclusions have been reached by observing ordinary matter, which make up the remaining 4 percent. It is believed that Dark Matter and Dark Energy both exist because we see things happening to regular matter which cannot be explained without them.