We live in a bubble. Seriously.

[Rath]

ManusJustus said:

My theory:

All forces (weak, strong, electomagnetism) except gravity have a attractive and repulsive force based on distance. Its hard to push two atomic nuclei together, but get them close enough and all the sudden they are very hard to pull apart.

What if gravity is a repulsive force at a certain distance? Makes sense considering that all other forces do, and it certainly makes more sense than dark energy and living in a bubble.

 

Actually the nuclei are hard to push together due to electromagnetic force (as in normal matter nuclei are always positive) and hard to pull apart due to the weak nuclear force which only has any effect at tiny tiny distance yet at those tiny distances is far more powerful than the repulsive force.

@Tarheel. Because mass warps space-time an area of the universe with less mass will have a different effect on space-time. As light is effected by space time it could screw our measurements (which are based on the assumption that space-time is fairly well constant) up.