Strange

What? Why would it be closer than 1 billion light years? What do you think was outside that? The universe was uniformly full of matter - it extended equally in all directions. For 380,000 years that matter was too hot and dense (and ionised) for light to go through it. Then it cooled enough for atoms to form and became transparent. At that point light began travelling vast distances. The microwaves we see now started something like 4 billion light years away and has taken 13.8 billion light years to get here. We will continue to see the CMB as it arrives from further and further away.

I have posted this before in response to this question, I think the "surface of last screaming" analogy might help (it certainly helped me!): https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March03/Lineweaver/Lineweaver7_2.html

Because the source of the radiation was everywhere in the universe. So, after 1 billion years we would have seen background radiation from 1 billion light years away; after 2 billion years we would have seen background radiation from 2 billion light years away; after 5 billion years we would have seen background radiation from 5 billion light years away; now we see background radiation from 13.8 billion light years away. (Note, when I say "x billion light years away" I really mean "x billion years light travel time"; that was less than x billion light years when the light was emitted and much more than x billion light years now.) The universe could be finite or infinite. It makes no difference. It could be a very large "surface" (also this is just an analogy, so there is a limit to how far you ca stretch it, if you will exclude the pun). The universe could finite and bounded (like the surface of the balloon) and still be flat. It depends on the topology. For example, a torus is geometrically flat but is finite. Or it could be infinite. Not true. The Big Bang model works for an infinite universe. We don't know if the universe is finite or infinite. We don't know the topology. So that can't really be answered.

Escape velocity is given by [math]v_e = \sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}}[/math] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity) Where M is the mass of the planet (or whatever) and r is its radius. If you substitute the Schwarzschild radius ([math]r_s = \frac{2 G M}{c^2}[/math]) for r then you will find the result comes to c. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius) The equation for gravitational force is given by [math]F = G \frac{m M}{r^2}[/math]. As you can see, this decreases with r2 rather than square root of r for escape velocity. It also depends on the mass (m) of the object. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gravitation) So escape velocity and gravitational force are related but not in a direct way. The acceleration due to gravity (g) is independent of the mass of the object (because acceleration is force/mass): [math]g = G \frac{M}{r^2}[/math] If we substitute this into the equation for escape velocity, we end up with: [math]g = \frac{{v_e}^2}{2 r}[/math] p.s. I wouldn't be too surprised if someone comes along and points out that I have made a mistake there somewhere...

Why two elements? There is no reason that dark matter has to be made up of a single type of particle and there are several models where it is a "family" of particles. But why two? Where is the evidence for that? Another problem with the model occurs to me. We know there is about 5 times as much dark matter as normal matter. How could this have been produced by stars (presumably as only a small fraction of the normal matter they contain) in a reasonable time?

Belief or “making sense" has no place in science. We don't know if the universe is finite or infinite; the evidence is consistent with either. And we have no evidence for multiverses. This is meaningless. This is meaningless In every multiverse theory that I am familiar with, the universes are causally separated from one another. So the black holes could never merge. Do you have a reference that says they can? There is no theoretical upper mass for a black hole. Also, the expanding universe (Big Bang model) does not resemble an explosion.

Does that mean the title is wrong as well? Dark matter is not responsible for accelerating expansion. I can see a couple of problems with this idea. The first is that we have evidence that dark matter existed before stars (patterns in the CMB and large structure formation). https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/five-reasons-we-think-dark-matter-exists-a122bd606ba8 Secondly, While we cannot do this, we can look at all the reactions that happen in a star. We have never seen any sign of a mass deficit that could be explained by dark matter. So, we have no evidence for your idea and at least two lines of evidence against it (patterns in the CMB and large structure formation).

I'm not quite sure what your confusion is. The curvature caused by the presence of mass extends to infinity and so always has some (rapidly diminishing) effect. It will readily be overwhelmed by the local curvature caused by other masses. (And, at a sufficient distance, all those masses can be treated as one - for example at a distance the curvature caused by the entire solar system can be approximated by a single object with the mass of the sun plus all the planets.)

There is a proposal to rename Hubble's Law to ... the Hubble-Lemaître Law: https://theconversation.com/game-changing-resolution-whose-name-on-the-laws-of-physics-for-an-expanding-universe-102099

They are equivalent (in low energy contexts like this).

The effect of gravity falls off as the inverse square of distance. So, close to those planets, their effect on spacetime curvature dominates (hence their moons orbit them) but, further from the planets, the sun’s mass dominates. Hence they all orbit the sun (with slight deviations caused by the presence of the other planets).

The questions of why the universe has rules, why they are what they are, where they come from, could they be different, are they different in different parts of the universe etc. are real questions that many people, from philosophers to physicists have given thought to. There are various possible explanations. For example, there are multiverse models where different universes may have different laws - maybe we just happen to live in one with the rules we see - there is a version of this where the rules have "evolved" over multiple universes to some sort of "best" solution. Maybe the rules that exist are the only ones possible (anything else would not create a stable universe). Or maybe there is some underlying theory that the physics we see emerges from. I'm sure there are others - those are just the ones that occur to me immediately. It will be interesting to hear if you have any suggestions...

Back when people did this stuff, the standard way of storing electricity was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar

Fair comment. I apologise if I misunderstood and misrepresented what you said.

It started out as a mathematical model. I think the only problem is that you don’t understand what relativity says so you are making up your own version. And to you

Interesting. The trouble is that at the moment, there are too many interesting ideas!

I’m not sure government understands the role of government

So what. We can visualise atoms in various ways including those above, atomic force microscopes and others. Mare you suggesting that only things we can see optically are real? So are you looking for non-scientific “explanations”?

Why not present your proof here. There have been a few other threads on this recently (including your other one) so there are definitely people who can critique it for you. Did you have any comments on the answers you got before?

That brings back memories! Except *cough* 70s *cough*

Ah. Not the same one then!

I haven't seen it, but may have read the short story. Is that the one where they guy gets roped in to help a traveller form the future steal all of the most important art, etc using a device that stops time? And then at the end, in a nasty twist, he finds out why ...

This is one way of describing the universe plus one vague half-formed idea. Correct Of course it can describe movement. It wouldn't be a useful model of the real world otherwise, would it. In this diagram, the red line represents an object that is stationary at position x1. For a moving object the world-line slopes with increasing velocity. The 45º line represents the speed of light. An object moving from x2 to x3 at a steady speed is represented by the blue line.

I have never heard of a building engineer before, so it is much broader title than I imagined! More hardware than software in my case, but there is a lot of overlap nowadays.

Space-time is the model used in relativity. There is no concept of time flowing That is just human perception (and a deep philosophical problem) but nothing to do with relativity