Once upon a time we thought that everything circled the earth. But that led to problems, notably the motion of Mars which doesn't appear to simply circle us. Some of the time it appears to go backwards! As we were obsessed with circles we accounted for this by adding small circles called epicycles. That sort of worked but not entirely. As more and more accurate observations were made the scheme had to have more and more epicycles added, and still it wasn't perfect. The theory just got more and more complex and became almost unmanageable.
Does that ring any bells in regard to modern cosmology? The theories and models are getting more and more complex, and every new discovery rips another hole in them that requires extra complications, which still don't perfectly explain everything.
But in the old days they (Copernicus, Kepler and Netwon) came up with a brilliant idea, to whit, throw out the old ways of thinking and start again! In particular Kepler built on the work of Copernicus and gave us simple elliptical orbits around the sun for all the planets. And suddenly the mind numbing complications of epicycles were replaced by the simple equation of an ellipse! Wouldn't it be nice if we could do that to cosmology?
Sorry, no, I have no idea how to do that! But I can throw a few heretical ideas out there just in case it triggers someone else's ideas!
What is the basic mantra repeated ad nauseum that leads us to the big bang theory? It's "Everything is moving away from everything else". Really? Colliding galaxies aren't moving away from each other are they? We all know about those, and yet no one questions the basic mantra. Is it not basic simple English that moving away does not lead to colliding?
Am I suggesting throwing away the Big Bang? If we want to go back to the Steady State Theory then yes, but if we want some creation event then we need to admit that we weren't there, so how it worked is not something we can know as fact. Whatever we suggest is speculation and if it leads to ever more mind numbing complexities then maybe we should think "epicycles" and try again.
Before any of you can do that though we need to have a look at the current big problems.
We came up with that idea because it appears that the content of galaxies should just be flung out into deep space thus destroying the galaxy because there is not enough mass in the galaxy to hold it together.
But we can't detect dark matter!
What is the simplest explanation for something being undetectable? That is that it doesn't exist! So what keeps the galaxies intact if not dark matter? Well, we've been into space which is as we expected pretty empty. Have we been to intergalactic space? No. So we assume that it is like galactic space mainly empty. But what if that is not true? First a question about the universe. What is the universe? It's that which contains all that is in it. So nothing contains all the galaxies? Does that conform to any normal experience? No, normal experience is that to be contained there has to be something there to do the containing. Where could that which is containing the galaxies be? Intergalactic space.
What is the nature of intergalactic space? As an analogy let's consider one of those cheeses with lots of holes. Now make the cheese transparent and fluid like. That makes intergalactic space full of "the stuff of the universe", and galaxies then exist in the equivalent of the holes in the cheese. What keeps the galaxies in place? Having been created from "the stuff of the universe" they consist of normal matter which, to be distinguishable from "the stuff of the universe" must be in some way different from "the stuff of the universe". The most fundamental property of matter is gravity, so "the stuff of the universe" must therefore possess anti-gravity which surrounds and repels matter thus keeping the matter of galaxies in place.
So how do galaxies move? I said "the stuff of the universe" is "fluid like" and not "a fluid" as a fluid is made of normal matter which has been created from "the stuff of the universe". That fluid like property allows the holes, or bubbles if you like, in which galaxies exist to move. I also said fluid like because a fluid is made of particles, which are matter, but in this scheme matter only exists by having separated from "the stuff of the universe". That in turn implies that "the stuff of the universe" is not made of particles, it is some contiguous stuff, it is just "the universe".
The consequence of this is that we can never see "the stuff of the universe" because all we can ever see is that which is made of particles, i.e. normal matter which is no longer part of "the universe" stuff.
If all that sounds too weird to be true, consider that quantum mechanics predicts the spontaneous creation from nothing of paired matter and anti-matter particles. How weird is that? But once we propose that all particles come from some perturbation of "the universe" stuff then these pairs no longer come from nothing, which is less weird! It would be necessary to confine such events to the intergalactic/galactic boundary in any new theory.
We currently only need the concept of dark energy because of our current flakey models. There is a simpler explanation and that is that the creation event was not something that happened suddenly a long time ago but is a process that is still happening! Therefore we wouldn't need that concept.
It seems that super massive black holes are a problem for current models as according to those models super massive black holes shouldn't exist. Once again, rather than saying well that blows up that theory, the lesson of epicycles is forgotten. So let's try an analogy from something we actually know about.
If one takes a lump of a sandstone and stresses it by hitting it seriously hard with a sledge hammer what happens? You end up with sand but in the sand are lumps of sandstone most of which are small but the odd few that are bigger. So might putting the original "stuff of the universe" under extreme stress have left some bigger lumps? Remember, when we think of The Big Bang, that is only a guess, we were not there to act as witnesses, so some other catastrophic event may be to blame.
Relativity predicted black holes. We have found them. Yay! We have photographed them. Yay! But mathematically, that division by zero which caused their prediction still looks uncomfortable doesn't it? Is there no turning back now that we have evidence?
There are two things here. The first is to use our eyes. Look at those photos. If nobody told you about black holes what would you say you were seeing? You would say you were seeing a black sphere, not a singularity. That is just an effect of the event horizon you say. Yes, but does what lies behind the event horizon have to be a singularity rather than a sphere of "stuff of the universe" in it's original form? That question makes no sense if we accept the maths. But...
The second thing is, is there not something being overlooked here? Thick about all those other equations where we don't change the equation but add some constraint to prevent it being applied to invalid cases. OK, so some clever person will have to come up with a suitable constraint, but why shouldn't there be one? The result would be the prediction of some new to us super dense state of matter but which in the light of what else is said here should not be regarded as matter but "stuff of the unuverse". Hence the mathematically embarrassing division by zero would be avoided.
The concept of symmetrical creation indicates that equal quantities of matter and anti-matter should have been initially created. So where is all the anti-matter? What happened to it? Nobody knows.
As I'm suggesting starting again, why do we need to start with the same assumptions that are, after all, merely assumptions. The anti-matter problem can be solved by not including symmetrical creation in any new theory.
If we want to avoid returning to the Steady State Theory, we have to have some form of creation event, but if not the big bang then what? Well let's start with the super massive black hole to end all black holes. From what I've said above, it does not contain a singularity but a massive amount of the stuff of the universe, which being non particulate, we can never hope to understand. Something about it must be unstable (as must a big bang style singularity) and that instability causes it to start to fracture and expand. This would be an extremely violent event, but not a "everything has to be energy" level of violence. Being less violent we might think it would be slower and therefore might actually still be happening and hence the expansion of the universe is still accelerating.
As the expansion starts it has two effects on the stuff of the universe. Because of the stress involved (c.f. the sandstone) some fragments are formed. These are what we call black holes all the way up to the size "super". These are not transparent, they are black. The remainder becomes stretched out so thin that it becomes transparent. As it stretches, huge tears appear creating the bubbles in which galaxies will form. This tearing is so violent that much universe stuff is converted into massive amounts of particles from which galaxies will form.
My first year at university was in 67 to 68. All the science courses were lumped together in a common first year. During that time the scientists in my social group came up with a silly idea. One of our number said "what if everything was formed from micro miniature rubber bands". The justification was that the concept accounted for mass, energy and vibration. Over some time and many coffees, not to mention alcoholic beverages, we talked this up to explain everything using a series of statements of the form "well if that was the case we could explain ???? by saying ????". Eventually, one of our number, in a tutorial, said all this to our Atomic Physics professor (who had been on the Manhattan Project). He appreciated the joke, laughed, and said "Well I know that is a load of rubbish, but I can't prove it!".
Many years passed and suddenly people, with no connection to our little group, were winning Nobel Prizes for String Theory. If you read the English text description of Strings, but cut and paste "micro miniature rubber bands" in place of "strings" it would be pretty much the same as our starting point all those years ago! And we thought we were joking so did no maths! Mind you at that age we still didn't know enough maths to have made much progress.
Go on then! Reread this page but keeping in mind the salutary tale of the micro miniature rubber bands!