The existence of negative matter had previously been ruled out as it was thought this material would become less dense as the Universe expands, which runs contrary to our observations that show dark energy does not thin out over time. However, Dr Farnes’ research applies a ‘creation tensor’, which allows for negative masses to be continuously created. It demonstrates that when more and more negative masses are continually bursting into existence, this negative mass fluid does not dilute during the expansion of the cosmos. In fact, the fluid appears to be identical to dark energy.

This sounds an awful lot like Fred Hoyle’s “Steady State” cosmology, in which new matter was being constantly created to exactly counteract the thinning of matter as the universe expanded. New stars and galaxies would form from this new matter and fill up the void as fast as it grew so that the geography of deep space-time would always look roughly the same, for as far as we could see.

The Steady State cosmos had no beginning, no end, constant mass density and always looked the same in all directions for all time. It had the philosophical advantage of the minimum number of a priori assumptions: the Perfect Cosmological Principle! Hoyle’s work in thermonuclear stellar nucleogenesis (which turned out to be correct) took care of the other objection, the creation of the rest of the Periodic Table.

Eventually, the observational evidence for the Big Bang (the 3 degree microwave background) put the Steady State to rest, but the idea was an elegant response to the philosophically cumbersome concept of an evolving universe, finite in time and perhaps even in space. Lets face it, even our concept of God demands he has always been here. The idea He was created suddenly, 14 billion years ago out of nothingness, somehow seems arbitrary and made up. We like our gods to be eternal, so we would like our universes to be the same.

Hoyle calculated that the spontaneous and continuous creation of matter (about one atom of hydrogen per cubic meter of space per century) would be enough to maintain the average density of the universe constant, but it woul be impossible to confirm it observationally or experimentally; the rate of matter creation is just too slow and too tiny to measure in the lab. As it turns out, the slow and continuous creation of matter is not a totally unreasonable conjecture, in fact, it makes a lot more sense than what current evolutionary theory demands. The Big Bang requires all of the matter of the universe to be created at once, simultaneously, in one temporal and spatial singularity. One Hydrogen atom per M^3 per century is a lot easier to swallow, and it it only requires one ad hoc assumption.

Of course, we must all keep in mind, that when our theories get to the point where there is no way to prove or disprove them, even in principle, they are no longer very useful. Even if they are true, we can never know for sure. An untestable hypothesis is worthless.

That is starting to sound a lot more like religion or philosophy than science.

We demand omnipotence in our gods because without it they wouldn’t be able to do anything for us. And we demand they be omniscient because without that they wouldn’t even know we were here. But most of all we expect our gods to be immortal, because that would mean that maybe we too can live forever.

Science isn’t much help here; it can’t even reassure us the universe will last forever.