The Tire Patch Universe

The Tire Patch Universe

The measurement of background microwave anisotropy from satellites has produced a great deal of controversy and confusion in the world of theoretical physics and cosmology. These results of the last few years have led to positing the existence of cold dark matter that is causing the universe expansion rate to accelerate. This result is analogous to Einstein’s infamous cosmological constant which provide a negative pressure. Agreement on the mechanism for cold dark matter and its’ effect is, to date, tenuous at best.

Perhaps the multiverse theory from quantum mechanics can come to the rescue in a novel way. Quantum mechanics allows an infinite number of universes’ to exist. Each habited by different Feynman paths of it’s’ particles or even by different physical laws than we observe in our warm and cozy one. These multiple universes (multiverse) are causally disconnected from one another.

What about a universe that from a local perspective (like ours) is like ours, with all it’s properties but due to the peculiarity of our viewpoint is not completely visible, not dark, but out of range? Our local universe would be like an inner tube sticking out through a weak spot in the enclosing tire (a bad analogy topologically). All that we can perceive due to our chance position in spacetime is the part sticking out of the tire, a local bulge. The larger tire is out of range of our view due to the age of the universe and the slow speed of light, and the rapid expansion.

If the tire was expanding to due to an inflationary behavior, so would the bulge. It would appear in the bulge that some negative gravitational pressure was the causative agent from “unseen, i.e. cold and dark” matter. When in fact we are just going along for the ride on a much larger, simply connected, genus 0 universe than the one our biased perspective allows us to observe. No cold and dark matter and negative pressure is required.

The universe is a large and strange place. The 14 billion light year diameter bulge we live in could actually be part of something bigger and unseen. The throat connecting to the larger universe (the tire) is very far away, and even possibly very small, hence not visible to us as of yet.