A new understanding of time dilation and mass increase
E.L. Meijer
Summary
What is dark energy? And dark matter? Why do we measure different values of the Hubble constant at different locations in the universe? How can we explain what we see happening in the young universe with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)?
We can answer these and other questions in a surprisingly simple way, and possibly even definitively. For this we do not have to discover new quantum particles or assume, for example, the existence of primordial black holes. And we certainly do not have to doubt whether the theory of relativity adequately explains all kinds of processes in the universe. On the contrary, we can connect and use laws from special relativity in particular to actually understand the data we measure in the universe. All that is required for this is a new understanding of the nature of those laws. This paper tells about this new understanding.
We are used to viewing the universe from the center. The regions of cosmic background radiation and the Big Bang are located far away, extremely stretched on the outside of the observable universe. A complete understanding, and - relatedly - a ‘correction’ of our distorted picture, lead to a new, simple model of the universe. We can even figure out the workings of observation itself (without going down the, in scientific terms, dead-end path of the anthropic principle). It becomes clear how closely linked it is to our view of the universe.
Introduction: an other approach
We may suppose that our view of the universe is distorted. Because we ourselves cannot leave the universe, nor is space conceivable outside it, we are unable to view it from the outside, whereas we can with the earth, for example. Just as the path travelled by the planets Mars and Jupiter was once 'strange', because we did not then assume that they orbited the sun, so today we still look strangely at, for example, an accelerated expanding universe or large amounts of 'extra' mass in galaxies.
In the following treatise, the phenomenon of time dilation plays a leading role. Here it is important to distinguish between gravitational and velocity-related time dilation. The former we relate to massive objects such as black holes and - the ultimate example - the very beginning of the universe. At the time of the Big Bang, we see an extreme accumulation of mass, and with it an extreme density and high temperature. This suggests that there must have been a gravitational singularity, but that assumption does not hold up in the first chapter of this treatise. And that gravitational time dilation would have played a leading role immediately after the Big Bang is true only if we look back (literally) one-sided, effectively coinciding with velocity-related time dilation.
The Lorentz transformation is the formula by which we can calculate relativistic mass gain, length contraction and velocity-related time dilation. This report shows that we can use it to unravel the greatest current ‘mysteries’ of the universe: dark energy, dark matter and the Hubble tension. Although it will become clear that they are not energy, matter or a constant, we continue to use the corresponding expressions here; other designations would make the story less accessible. The same goes for the terms Big Bang and cosmic inflation, although it will become apparent that it concerns an explosive growth only from our own position as observers.