I am starting to think that Johnnie Guiness' statement that there is no dark matter just might be true. The massive black holes that are at the center of galaxies and all of the many stars close in to the center would create a gravity well--This would be a hyperbolic vortex --just like the wishing well coin collectors that you see in some malls. The fact that the planets are falling into this deep well and being balanced by centrifugal force may just account for the supposed anomalies that prompt the idea of dark matter and dark energy.

About what exactly?

That is a good question. If I clarify my musing to the local vacuum ("Free Space") I suggest that we do not know all of it's properties. If I throw a bunch of grapes into the toilet (loo for you old worlders ) When I flush I have opened up a vortex which is a de facto hyperbolic gravity well in which the grapes and the medium are falling into the "Black Hole". In this case the mass and gravity of the grapes does not cause the rotation but rather the greater pull of the Earths gravity and the geometry of the "gravity well" itself.

It is said that matter pops in and out of existence in free space--therefore one might assume that it would be attracted by the intense gravity of a black hole and may just locally cause free space to swirl along with the rotating stars. It would not necessarily need to be so--the stars, planets and gasses would themselves be attracted by the black hole and balanced for a time by the centrifugal/ centripetal force.

If Newton can have his apple then allow an old man to have his grapes !! LOL

But what is it expanding into?

In a two dimensional world that is finite and unbounded there is no (2 dimensional) space outside of the surface. Think of a basketball or balloon. If I blow up the balloon or basket ball then more 2D space is created. I posit that our universe is 3 dimensional, finite and also unbounded. There is no more space at any instant until it creates more space through expansion.
This implies a cured universe that closes back in on itself----I hope that someday we would be able to verify this or falsify it.
There is no north of north.

Matter apparently creates space and matter also causes space to warp.

Matter apparently creates space and matter also causes space to warp.

Yes. And that fact is really weird.
Anyway that's our universe works.
Then are there more universes out there?
Well, to me it's seems very strange if there are not any.

This twaddle about two points on the surface of a balloon that get further apart as the balloon inflates, assumes a stretchable surface, paper isn't . Nor is space. Space is an empty void it has no substance, it can't bend, curve, compress etc. It is a half hearted attempt to explain why we observe that everything is moving away from each other and us, out in deep space. i.e. like the expanding observable universe resulting from the Big Bang.

Actually "empty" space is stretchable and there are also observable evidences of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
Even our Sun does that and proved by observations of the Mercury passages around it.

a spherical surface is unbounded in two dimensions. And the universe is said to expand --just as a balloon does.

nuff said

The other day I had a thought that I would share and ask for an explanation. I know that spacecraft are sent to the vicinities of our outer planets to get a boost in velocity. This comes about because they are falling into a gravity well and will accelerate due to the "Force" of gravity which is really a warpage of space in the vicinity of the large outer planet. Now then--wouldn't you think that all the velocity would be lost as the spacecraft climbs up the other side of the gravity well.

Please enlighten me

The other day I had a thought that I would share and ask for an explanation. I know that spacecraft are sent to the vicinities of our outer planets to get a boost in velocity. This comes about because they are falling into a gravity well and will accelerate due to the "Force" of gravity which is really a warpage of space in the vicinity of the large outer planet. Now then--wouldn't you think that all the velocity would be lost as the spacecraft climbs up the other side of the gravity well.

Please enlighten me

It is. But gravity is a force and the length of time it acts is important. So to pick up speed you come up from behind the big object so you spend more time falling in and you leave in the opposite direction so you spend less time climbing out.

I think it's more to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist

A gravity assist around a planet changes a spacecraft's velocity (relative to the Sun) by entering and leaving the gravitational sphere of influence of a planet. The spacecraft's speed increases as it approaches the planet and decreases while escaping its gravitational pull (which is approximately the same), but because the planet orbits the Sun the spacecraft is affected by this motion during the maneuver. To increase speed, the spacecraft flies with the movement of the planet (taking a small amount of the planet's orbital energy); to decrease speed, the spacecraft flies against the movement of the planet. The sum of the kinetic energies of both bodies remains constant (see elastic collision). A slingshot maneuver can therefore be used to change the spaceship's trajectory and speed relative to the Sun.

It's a three-body problem and very hard to calculate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem

The three-body problem is the problem of taking the initial positions and velocities of three point masses and solving for their subsequent motion according to Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation.[1] The three-body problem is a special case of the n-body problem. Unlike two-body problems, no closed-form solution exists for all sets of initial conditions, and numerical methods are generally required.

Two astronomers, Guido Risaliti from the University of Florence and Elisabeta Lusso of Durham University, UK, after examining the X-Ray and UV emission of about 1600 quasars with data from the Chandra X and XMM Newton X-ray telescopes, have calculated that dark energy is not a cosmological constant but has increased in time. The article appeared in "Nature Astronomy" on January 28 2019. This fact, if confirmed, can have consequences in cosmology. I read about it in the NASA site, since I don't have access to "Nature Astronomy".
Tullio
There is also a good coverage on the ESA site.

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Two astronomers, Guido Risaliti from the University of Florence and Elisabeta Lusso of Durham University, UK, after examining the X-Ray and UV emission of about 1600 quasars with data from the Chandra X and XMM Newton X-ray telescopes, have calculated that dark energy is not a cosmological constant but has increased in time. The article appeared in "Nature Astronomy" on January 28 2019. This fact, if confirmed, can have consequences in cosmology. I read about it in the NASA site, since I don't have access to "Nature Astronomy".
Tullio
There is also a good coverage on the ESA site.

The story is here on the space.com site, at a level I can understand (maybe).

ESA's Euclid mission will perhaps give further clues to this.
http://sci.esa.int/euclid/
The idea that fundamental constants could vary over time is not really new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-variation_of_fundamental_constants

The immutability of these fundamental constants is an important cornerstone of the laws of physics as currently known; the postulate of the time-independence of physical laws is tied to that of the conservation of energy (Noether theorem), so that the discovery of any variation would imply the discovery of a previously unknown law of force

Which perhaps will mean that Einstein's theory of gravity is not complete until one understand what new force it is...
And many other implications as well...

Chris, is the Universe isolated ? isolated from what?
Tullio

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There is a book, "Cosmogonie and cosmologie", by Pietro Oliva, a physicist who is professor at Cusano University, which analyzes representation of the Cosmos in environments different from the Jew-Christian view we are more familiar with. many of them, including the Taoist view of Japan, closer to your ideas. We should not confine ourselves to what mountain climber, writer and alpine photographer Fosco Maraini who spent twenty years of his life in Japan as professor of Italian, including two in a Japanese prison with his family because he was against Mussolini, called the Mediterranean broth. There are other broths.
Tullio

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Those who postulate that there are multiple universes owe us a way to prove or disprove the premise.

What are the theories of the source of the enormous amount of energy unleashed by the Big Bang.

The only explanation I can think of is the simple notion of the vast number of stars, planets, gases etc always existed and then contracted into a single black hole over eons of time. at some minimum radius the whole thing exploded into the universe we see today.
Thus: expansion and contraction have always been occurring.

Always was---eliminates the need for a creator or first cause if you think that thats just the way the entire existence works.

The only explanation I can think of is the simple notion of the vast number of stars, planets, gases etc always existed and then contracted into a single black hole over eons of time. at some minimum radius the whole thing exploded into the universe we see today.
Thus: expansion and contraction have always been occurring.

There are many scientist that think our Universe maybe is cyclic and not created out of nothing in a Big Bang.
However I don't think anyone think that stars, planets, gases etc always existed.
All matter there are in our Universe are created after the expansion of an infinitesimal small Big Bang dot of energy.
Because there is no space or room if you like in that Big Bang dot to create any particles.
The process is a bit like a reverse Black Hole where all matter that falls into it turns in to only pure energy.
But the Big Bang expanded the universe to make space for the particles when it's cooled instead.
Perhaps you could call the Big Bang dot a White Hole.

But then again you have many scientists who are also deeply religious.

Yes. John_Polkinghorne is one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Polkinghorne

Chris. Brian Cox gave essentially the same explanation in the YouTube programme mentioned on another thread https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wieRZoJSVtw
He pointed out that, from our perspective, the universe appears to be perfectly 'flat'. Of all the possible geometries, this seems extremely unlikely. Therefore, some theories suggest that the universe is actually curved, but what we see as the visible universe is but a small part of the main universe. He put it in the context that, standing on Earth and being able to view only around a square mile, you might get the impression that the surface of the Earth is flat. Only if you're able to see a much larger area do you begin to appreciate that the Earth is actually curved.

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But then again you have many scientists who are also deeply religious.

I think we need a numerical value on that many.
Probably you first have to define who qualifies as a scientist.
Then you have to find out how many are religious. Probably discounting those who claim to be religious to satisfy Pascal's Wager, and those that go to church fairly frequently because the boss is religious and you need at least to look as though you are to get promotion or in some cases keep your job.
Well before you can say how many are "deeply" religious.
As a percentage I would say few, if not very few, are in that group. But if you got them all in one place it could look like many.

It's a bit like scientists that are skeptical about global warming. They keep popping up all over the place, but when people looked they are only about 3% at the most, as several in the last year alone have changed their position.

P.S. Having looked on the web, the only numbers I could find are a bit out of date, 2009. But those numbers said that compared to the general public where 83% say they believe, scientists are only at 33%.

Galileo, Newton and Einstein were all believers, although they probably believed in different Gods. I have personally known prof.Abdus Salam, a Nobel prize and Islamic believer, although he belonged to an Islamic minority group and his tomb in Pakistan was defaced by more radical believers.
Tullio

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