Wow, dude learning starts with speculation.
Theories work with the BEST available evidence and the rest is speculation.

Also, the presence of mass is not necessary to warp time space.

Not unless you're using the mass energy equivalent as a catch all phrase for mass

Gravitational waves have been confirmed. Sir

There is every possibility that they multiply and subtract each other, the same way every other wave form does.

Some of the phenomena we see might be the result of looking sideways through a rogue wave the size of the visible universe.

That speculation. But speculation based on the way we've seen waves behaving in all other systems.

@QuintKnickers nice reply. Thanks. Though I’m not sure what you mean by “the rest is speculation”. But I do appreciate the fact you replied to me

@UntangledWorld by speculation, I mean, we make many assumptions with our models. Based on the best available evidence.

In other words, the math indicates, and the behavior of the universe so far indicates that we're dealing with things such as the Higgs field.

The idea of a true vacuum is essentially been done away with. ( seems as though were back to the ether)

However We could be one breakthrough away from learning how to, actually negate or otherwise cancel, said field/s....

And once you get to the higher areas of mathematics, such as the topics under discussion here.

It becomes pretty much work for philosophers

Mathematicians discover new possibilities for the way the fields in our universe seem to work.

And theoretical physicists, along with philosophers, figure out what the implications might be.

@QuintKnickers Once again thanks for replying. I can see that you have put some considerable thought into this. I think that my original response did not attempt to venture as far down the road as you seem to be on this. I am still stumbling around at stage 1 - and you seem to be at stage 10! Way ahead of me.

The start of the thread was the poll you posted offering 3 options for us to select from as possible explanations for the source of Dark Matter. If I understand the state of our understanding of Dark Matter - at the time of writing we have absolutely no idea what it is. Indeed - calling it "Dark Matter" was done so not only to highlight that this material did not interact with light - but the word "Dark" was also used to signify that this area of knowledge was shrouded in darkness as we were clueless as to what is exactly happening here.

It could well be that Dark Matter turns out to be some new form of matter not yet observed (Wimps for example). Or indeed it may well be a result of some quantum field effect as yet not observed, However it is also possible that it could be the result of something else entirely that has not even yet been conceived of by any person anywhere.

It is fun to speculate - and I think we both agreed that speculation serves a valuable purpose in the process of discovery - but as at this time there is no scientific evidence available to help explain what is going on here - I feel that it is important to take a position of caution, and this is I said I could not vote. I believe that on many occasions through the history of science there have been innumerable examples where widely held views were shown to be wrong and the "consensus" had to change as new facts and evidence became available. For example - the Theory of Evolution, Plate tectonics. Both rejected by the scientific community when first presented - but as time progressed and evidence accumulated the consensus changed. When it comes to Dark Matter the situation to me appears to be even more uncertain as currently there is no evidence available to build any sort of consensus on.

I have been enjoying this conversation and I hope you have been to. Do you have any thoughts around Dark Energy? Or the Great Attractor? I find all three of these things to be really fascinating

@UntangledWorld nothing I like better than stimulating conversations. No need to thank me for replying.

I'm kind of in the camp. It's a field effect that has to do with gravity on large scales.

I think there's a relativistic effects occurring that people aren't taken into account

I don't mean Einstein's relativity

I mean more in the sense that relative to the size of a star system. A Galaxy or galactic cluster amplifies the effect of the combined gravitational fields together

I suspect a further component is an interplay between dark energy on galactic scales and mass warping time base on galactic scales

The model I'm working on would involve things such as the Bootes void and other such similar anomalies.

I would suspect the same would apply for the Great Attractor, but on a transfinite universal scale.

The only real analogy I could come up with for an easy explanation of what I suspect dark energy might be

It would be a consequence of eternal inflation on the timespace left behind.

I'm an eternal big bang kind of a guy

I think inflation is probably still going

Faster than the speed of light and what could reasonably be considered into the area of another universe

The idea of multiple universes sort of bothers me, I prefer one universe that's transfinite. It's got room for everything.

Including what would be traditionally called many universes

But universe is always meant everything to me, even if it turns out there's more of what we thought I don't know where they came up with the idea of multiples.

Even in the case of infinite timelines, its still occurring within the same plane of dimensional time space within a transfinite universe so it's just the universe

But that's just me

I am not sure if there is any consensus on that yet... Although it's definitely a top contender.

I suspect it has more to do with gravitational effects on large scales.

I mean, technically, it's the gravity that causes the lensing.

It occurred to me even more so recently after the confirmation of gravitational waves

That there's every possibility we might be in a trough/peak of a rogue wave or something similar to multiple troughs and peaks we're looking through.

And might entirely skewing our view of what's going on.

(Obviously on an extremely grand scale. It's just a hunch. But I get the feeling Einstein didn't go far enough with scale on special relativity I think it affects more than just how time in time space should be viewed. )