Meanwhile, I’m reading what I can on M-theory on the web, it is an alternative to the inflationary model suggesting an extra-dimensional shockwave as the inception of our universe. This one is appealing since it views particles as a collection of membranes, and my “sense” is that the physical realm is an ocean of wave phenomenon with particles as placemarkers and messengers.
All of this brings me to the link I’d like for you and betty boop to scan when you have a chance, since it looks at all of them. The excerpt is from the conclusions:
The Cosmological Constant – Carroll, Enrico Fermi Institute (pdf)
…the majority of the matter content must be in an unknown non-baryonic form.
Nobody would have guessed that we live in such a universe… We happen to live in that brief era, cosmologically speaking, when both matter and vacuum are of comparable magnitude. Within the matter component, there are apparently contributions from baryons and from a non-baryonic source, both of which are also comparable (although at least their ratio is independent of time.) This scenario staggers under the burden of its unnaturalness, but nevertheless crosses the finish line well ahead of any competitors by agreeing so well with the data.
Apart from confirming (or disproving) this picture, a major challenge to cosmologists and physicists in the years to come will be to understand whether these apparently distasteful aspects of our universe are simply surprising coincidences, or actually reflect a beautiful underlying structure we do not as yet comprehend. If we are fortunate, what appears unnatural at present will serve as a clue to a deeper understanding of fundamental physics.
But I am beginning to sound like a broken record ... ;-}