Affiliations: Oliver Lodge Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Liverpool, Oxford Street, Liverpool, L69 7ZE, UK. Tel.: +44151 794 3368; Fax: +44151 794 3362; E-mail: p.rowlands@liverpool.ac.uk
Abstract: The maximal failure of the quantum prediction of the ‘cosmological constant’ creates difficulties for a quantum theory of gravity, and for gravity as a local force, as does the failure of quantum gravity to preserve locality. The attractive nature of the gravitational force and the negative sign of its energy may be indications that it is intrinsically nonlocal and not limited to speed of light transfer. If we assume that gravity is nonlocal, a new set of equations will be needed to reconcile its effects with those observed under local measuring conditions. The cosmological redshift, microwave background radiation and arrow of time now become purely physical phenomena suggesting a totally different cosmology from the one currently generally accepted. The ‘cosmological constant’ is a necessary consequence and was predicted by this method long before it was experimentally discovered. The calculations also provide values for important astronomical constants in good agreement with measured results, and allow us to make predictions in particle physics such as the masses of the lightest neutrinos. Any cosmology that follows will be a result of fundamental physical laws and not a merely historical record of arbitrary events that just happened to take place in some inexplicable sequence.
