The?largest structures?in the universe are larger than expected. Current cosmological models say there should be very little structure on scales larger than a few hundred million light-years across, due to the expansion of the universe trumping the effect of gravity.[25]?But the?Sloan Great Wall?is 1.38?billion?light-years?in length. And the largest structure currently known, the?Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, is up to 10 billion light-years in length. Are these actual structures or random density fluctuations? If they are real structures, they contradict the 'End of Greatness' hypothesis which asserts that at a scale of 300?million light-years, structures seen in smaller surveys are randomized to the extent that the smooth distribution of the universe is visually apparent. *
From the problem statement, "... due to the expansion of the universe trumping the effect of gravity." The assumption of a fundamentally attractive gravity as possibly false has been a principal theme of these Letters, and raised yet again because of the context of this problem statement in order to continue exemplifying the breadth of problems stemming from the traditional assumption.
This can be difficult to accept for a number of reasons,
- the first being to the effect "It is obvious that the Earth is keeping objects from floating away from it because of the mutual attraction quantified by F=Gmn/r^2." But it can be just as obvious that space might be pushing down on objects imbedded in it near the surface of the Earth because space is also observed to be undergoing accelerated expansion, and there is less space between an apple on a tree and the ground than between this apple and space at large, particularly if all space is expanding or has the potential to expand. ** Also, while the classical interpretation of Newtonian gravity is physically unexplained, the scale-invariant interpretation satisfies locality because as clusters of galaxies are imbedded in space and take part in the accelerated Hubble expansion, each particle within a cluster is also imbedded and in direct contact with the acceleration means.
- Particles are assumed to be gravitational sources instead of sinks. The gravitational field of a sink exists before the particle is created, and immediately connects to the particle. The field of the source moves outward at finite speed when the particle is created. Thus the hypothesis is falsifiable. The sink is imbedded in this field (equivalent to space itself according to general relativity), and consists of nothing but space and position. Moving such a particle requires work because the field would be modified, suggesting an origin of inertia, where the mass is entirely in the field extending to infinity (where it always was). The field is pointing toward the particle from large-and-small-scale space, as with the apple in the first point, and there is more of the field on the space side than on the ground side. ***
- Gravity seems to depend on the proximity of mass. However it was suggested that gravity depends exclusively on acceleration. ? Also, a gravitational wave does not depend on the proximity of mass.
- "Dark matter." The investment in this hypothesis is a decades old and ongoing search to support general relativity (modified by the cosmological constant) and the standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmology. However, dark matter, as seated in close proximity to galaxies, was shown to exist but not in the expected particulate form, rather in terms of results from a scale-invariant interpretation of mathematically unmodified Newtonian gravity -- an enhanced gravitational field form seated in a larger-scale space but pointing toward galaxies. ?Thus there would no longer be a need for this hypothesis in the proposed context to support general relativity and the standard cosmology; the proposed scale-invariant form of Newtonian gravity largely fulfills this support and is also an argument against the continuing challenge from Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) to the Newtonian Gravity / General Relativity continuum, one of the two pillars of modern physics. ? ?
- Investment in the cosmological constant, which is a physical adjunct to a mathematical theory, and a formal term for "dark energy." But dark energy is not a suitably explained physical entity, rather a label for an unknown that is causing the Universe to accelerate. If acceleration and gravity are at least equivalent, dark energy is gravity and repulsive in this case, and only apparently attractive below the scale of galactic superclusters, as discussed in previous Letters. If there is an identity rather than equivalence, it might seem to place general relativity on a firmer base, since an equivalence is weaker than an identity and can imply conditionality. But the condition in this case is a classical Newtonian worldview assumed when Einstein noted that the man falling from the roof seemed to be attracted by the Earth rather than repulsed by space. General relativity seemingly had to reduce to such a classical interpretation of Newtonian gravity, valid only near the surface of the Earth where the equivalence of acceleration and (assumed attractive) gravity was postulated. There was no thought that the equivalence had to comply as well with the scale-invariant interpretation of Newtonian gravity, where gravity and acceleration could be identical, making the cosmological constant superfluous. That is, the equivalence principle might also have related the Earth's (supposed attractive) gravity and the accelerating or potentially accelerating space on the space side of the apple or the falling man; in this case there could have been an identity instead of equivalence (dependent on proximity) and possibly an implicit "cosmological constant" in general relativity. ???
If the accelerating Universe and gravity are identical, the equivalence principle may be explained as a corollary dependent on proximity.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics#Cosmology_and_general_relativity
