[Alamo-Girl]

Er, I wish to comment on your remark in post 121 to betty boop. You said:

Well, we live in a just so inverse cubed not an inverse quad universe. Think about that.

I have thought about it. Force (e.g. electromagnetic, gravity, strong and weak atomic) vary with the inverse of the square of the distance (F=1/d^2) If there were four spatial dimension objects, they would vary with the inverse of the cube of the distance (F=1/d^3) which basically means that matter could not form!

I believe this is why super string theory asserts compactification of the extra dimensions. I do not however believe compactification is necessarily required: 5D Space-Time-Matter Consortium

Because the accelerating universe suggests a fluctuating (albeit over huge time intervals) ratio between dark energy and dark matter (cosmological constant (pdf)) - which significantly alters our concept of the age of the universe - I have become quite interested in yet another theory, the ekpyrotic model.

IMHO, the real quandary is why the dark energy we deduce from observation (astronomy) is not manifest in quantum mechanics!

[unspun]

Yeah, that's just what my barber said too. ;-`

[betty boop]

Alamo-Girl, thank you so much for the information here. I've downloaded, printed, and bound the PDF on the cosmological constant. Have only glossed the first couple pages thus far, but it looks fascinating. Hope to get a chance to read it through very soon. Thank you so much for the link!