Lutz,
That is a clear and coherent essay for those of us just observing the fields of physics and cosmology.
Some decades ago it occurred to me that the Big Bang model was nonsense, when I read that the rate of expansion is inversely proportional to gravity. Even someone with very little education in the subject would realize that if this intergalactic expansion is balanced by intergalactic contraction, there would be no additional expansion of the universe as a whole. What seemed evident is this is a modeling of a convection cycle of expanding radiation and contracting mass.
We can accept that gravity is "equivalent" to acceleration and still know the surface of the planet doesn't rush outward to keep us attached to it, so why wouldn't there be an opposite effect, where redshift is "equivalent" to recession?
One point I keep raising is that when they discovered these galaxies are redshifted such that we appear at the center, it was argued this was an expansion of space, not just in space and every point appears as the center, based on the premise of expanding spacetime. Which is total nonsense, since the time component doesn't increase! The speed of light doesn't increase in order to remain Constant to this expanding space. Of course, the Doppler effect would only work if there were more lightyears, not stretched lightyears. So we are to believe that space is expanding, based on the redshift of this intergalactic light and we can measure this expansion against a stable yardstick, based on the speed of that very same light!
Now we are the center of our view of the universe and so a compounding optical effect would explain this increasing redshift, why we appear at the center and why it goes parabolic, without needing dark energy to explain the curve in the rate.
I think one of the main problems for physics in general is that we perceive change as a sequence of events and so think of time as the point of the present moving from past to future. Which physics codifies by treating it as a measure of duration.
While the actual reality is a changing configuration of what exists, which turns future into past. To wit, the earth doesn't travel some dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.
Duration is simply the state of the present, as events form and dissolve and not a vector external to the present.
This makes time an effect of action, not the basis for it and as such, is similar to temperature. Time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude. It is just that while amplitude en masse is temperature, frequency en masse is static and so isolated actions are measured. Yet the overall effect of change is cumulative, like temperature. A faster frequency/clock simply uses energy quicker and so recedes into the past faster. The tortoise is still plodding along, long after the hare has died.
This leaves space alone and space without physical properties to define or limit it has only the two non-physical properties of being absolute and infinite.
The state of this absolute equilibrium is implicit in the speed of light in a vacuum being constant. Since a clock would stop at the speed of light, if we were to place clocks around in space, the one which ran fastest would be closest to this equilibrium of the vacuum.
Meanwhile an infinite space wouldn't be subject to entropy, since energy radiated from one area would be replaced by energy radiated in from surrounding areas.
So then we have this infinite vacuum, filled with energy fluctuations and the two main features of this wave action are frequency and amplitude, i.e.. time and temperature.
Now any energy will express form, even if it is just frequency and amplitude. As such, energy presses outward and form is the definition pressing inward, since it is based on interactions of energy thus impeding.
This form then is both physical mass and sensory information. While the energy is dynamic and conserved, the form is static and transient. So the energy goes from prior form to succeeding form, as the form comes into being and dissolves. Thus the arrow of time for energy is past to future, while the arrow of time for form is future to past.
Think of a factory, where the product goes start to finish, while the production line is going the other way, consuming material and expelling product. Life is the same. Individuals go from being in the future to being in the past, birth to death, while the species goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.
So then tie this back to the galaxies, as mass forms on the perimeters and falls inward, getting ever more dense, yet radiating out much excess energy. Just as factories and people radiate much waste. Eventually what falls into the center gets shot out the poles as cosmic jets, or quasars.
All this energy to eventually solidify into new forms and start over.
So gravity is not just a property of mass, but the process of consolidation, by which energy coalesces into mass and so is not so much a particular force, as a cumulative effect of all that is pulling inward. A vacuum, just like energy released from mass creates pressure.
So the reason we can't find gravity waves is because we are not looking for the right thing. It is light.
Einsteins's Cosmological Constant is light. The balance to the attraction of gravity.
This is my somewhat accidental theory of everything.
I've entered in a few of these contests, but knew this one would really be banging my head on the wall, so didn't get motivated enough to try.
Good luck!
Regards,
John Merryman