2006
Selected for Honorable Mention in the Gravity Research Foundation 2006 Awards for Essays on Gravitation.
To appear in the December 2006 issue of International Journal of Modern Physics D: Gravitation, Astrophysics & Cosmology.
This essay, slightly revised from the original to improve clarity, shows how by denying Einstein’s unjustified assumption that inertial–passive mass and therefore energy generate gravity one can arrive at field equations whose cosmological solutions naturally model cosmic acceleration and inflation. The author’s ‘drainholes’, introduced in 1973 in Ether Flow Through a Drainhole: A Particle Model in General Relativity, are proposed as the unseen but inferred particles of dark matter holding galaxies and galactic clusters together. Their back sides, which gravitationally repel more strongly than their front sides attract, then serve in place of the ‘cosmological constant’ as the so-called ‘dark energy’ that drives the cosmic acceleration.