An Interesting Theory To Consider

Y'all know this one, right?

I was listening to a report on NPR a while back about how the expansion of the universe seems to be increasing in its rate, but scientists are baffled as to why. I also happened to be sitting at a light next to a Sherwin-Williams store, at which point a light bulb lit up over my head.

It was the light turning green, but whatever.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about this, and I came up with an idea: what if the ten dimensions postulated by superstring theory are actually an incomplete set, and there is another dimension causing this?

Hear me out on this.

Back in the early 20th century, around 1930, Edwin Hubble discovered that light from distant objects was red-shifted, a phenomenon known as the Doppler effect. In addition, he discovered that, the further away an object was, the further toward the red end of the spectrum the light was shifted. Finally, after taking uncountable measurements, this was determined to be true no matter your viewpoint in the universe.

This was illustrated by Stephen Hawking in "A Brief History of Time" as being analogous to dots on a balloon that was being inflated. No matter which dot you were focusing on, all the other dots would be moving away from it ... and the further away from your positiojn the dot was, the faster it would be receding.

In the past several years, using the Hubble and Chandrasekhar telescopes, we have been able to measure the rate of expansion at different points in time. We have discovered that the rate of acceleration was actually slowing from the Big Bang until roughly five billion years ago due to the gravitational attraction of the matter in the universe, at which point it reversed vectors and began an accelerating expansion.

Scientists have postulated that this is the result of "dark energy," an unknown force that has yet to be explained.

Let's say you have a ball -- a basketball, say -- and it is sitting on the ground. There is a very weak magnet (representing gravity) embedded in the ball at the top. You also have a metal ball bearing, which you put at the top of the ball, directly over this magnet (we are also discounting all external forces -- wind, etc. -- except gravity). Theoretically, this tiny ball will sit at that north pole indefinitely.

Now let's say we give it a teensy nudge, just enough to give it enough juice to make it past the event horizon of the force emanating from the magnet. We will see that the ball bearing will decelerate until it reaches this horizon, but will start accelerating once it is past it.

This is where my theory comes in.

If you look at the Sherwin-Williams logo, the red paint is the ten-dimensional universe in which we exist. The globe is a theoretical construct to illustrate the theory, and the the dark energy hypothesized by physicists is analogous to the gravitational force implied in the logo.

In this scenario, our universe is actually a fluid on a ten-dimensional sphere, with a force similar to gravity operating in an eleventh dimension to pull the fluid evenly across the surface of the sphere. This would also imply that this force is at the center of this globe, which would put it outside of our universe.

This also begs the question: is there anything outside of our universe? If so, what?

I am not a physicist. I don't have the mathematics necessary to prove or refute any of this. It's just food for thought.

I gotta lie down.

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