Alternate cosmology

Imagine a raindrop in mid air. Now imagine that our entire three dimensional universe is just the surface of a similar raindrop in 4 dimensional space.

For conceptual purposes, we will call the 4D fluid that makes up this big raindrop "water". As we zoom way down into the tiniest details of this surface, we notice little jets of water entering at a right angle to the surface. Each jet punctures the surface tension and drags a little of the surface water into the raindrop center.

From our 3D point of view, each of those jets looks like the tiniest particle of matter. Zoom in close and they look like tiny black holes through which the very fluid of space is being lost. Because fluid is always flowing into these partcles, they are attracted to each other. That gives rise to the behaviour of gravity.


This concept was introduced to me by "the teacher" about 20 years ago (in a most undignified way). At the time I imagined explaining that as I accepted the Nobel prize. At the time I was also saying that science had too many things to change before they could begin accepting such a different explaination of the universe.

I let the subject drop, but every 5 years or so something would tantalize me. Also, a new finding (such as dark energy) would pop up and puzzle the science community because it didn't fit known theories. Reading about the puzzled scientists I would shout to myself "DUH! It's just commen sense in my theory."

Many things have changed, and now theoretical cosmologists are looking for new ideas. I don't have the mathematics horsepower to see if this hypo-theory makes sense yet. I guess I need to be introduced to somebody in physics who has the guts, intuition, and skills to check it out.