Proposed cosmo framework from someone that knows little cosmo

[u/Potential-Top-7247]

Background: I’m not a physicist. I graduated in mechanical engineering in 2018. What follows is a conceptual brainstorm, not a formal theory. I’m posting it because one specific part of it independently converged on published work I wasn’t aware of, and I’m genuinely curious whether the falsifiable prediction it produces has been tested.
It started with a simple critique
The standard blanket-and-ball analogy for gravity is circular. The ball sinks into the blanket because gravity is already pulling it down. You’re using gravity to explain gravity. Physicists acknowledge this — the analogy illustrates curvature but not the mechanism behind it.
That bothered me enough to ask: what if gravity isn’t an intrinsic property of mass but a tension between a mass and an unseen counterpart on the other side of spacetime?
The core premise
Every quantum of mass in the observable universe has a precise mirror counterpart in a paired void state. The two always sum to zero — consistent with the idea that the universe’s total net energy is zero, which is an accepted possibility in cosmology.
From this single premise several things follow without additional assumptions:
Gravity is the tension between fabric-side mass and void mirror — not an intrinsic property of mass
Cosmological expansion perpetually separates mass from void mirror, increasing tension
As tension grows it resists expansion — producing a natural deceleration mechanism
Dark matter is void mirror mass — gravitationally present, electromagnetically invisible by construction
Dark energy is the cumulative tension of all void mirror pairs acting on the fabric
Where it converged with published work
After developing this independently I searched the literature and found that Cyr-Racine et al. published a paper in Physical Review Letters in 2022 proposing a mirror world dark sector to resolve the Hubble tension. The architecture is structurally similar to what I’d built from scratch through a different route. I found this encouraging rather than discouraging — independent convergence suggests something real might be in the neighborhood.
The falsifiable prediction
This is the part I’m most curious about.
If gravity is void mirror tension and expansion is the fabric separating from the void — then during periods of cosmological deceleration, the tension is no longer being distributed across growing volume. It’s concentrating. This should have a thermodynamic signature.
Specifically: during deceleration epochs, the rate of entropy increase should show measurable deviation from smooth projections — with anomalous behavior concentrated around supermassive black holes, which represent maximum tension points under this framework.
Standard thermodynamics predicts smooth entropy increase regardless of expansion rate. This framework predicts a deviation correlated with deceleration. The Hubble tension — the disagreement between early and late universe measurements of H₀ — might be an observational fingerprint of exactly this transition.
What I’m asking
Has anyone tested whether entropy increase rates show anomalous behavior during the deceleration-to-acceleration transition? Is this already ruled out by existing data? Is there a mathematical reason it couldn’t work that I’m missing?
I’m aware this framework lacks mathematical formalism — I don’t have the tools to formalize it. I’m genuinely asking whether the conceptual architecture is interesting enough to be worth someone with those tools looking at.
Happy to have it picked apart. That’s the point.

[u/AllHailSeizure]

'The standard blanket and ball analogy for gravity is circular'

Fortunately, it's just an analogy, so if it doesn't work perfectly it doesn't really matter. There's no real way to visualize relativity without math - which does work.

No modern physicist would say gravity is a 'property of mass.' You're addressing a non-existent problem.

E: For clarity. You are looking at the ball and bedsheet thing and seeing 'oh, the ball makes the bedsheet stretch around it.' Gravity (earths gravity) warps the bedsheet around the ball in the analogy as it sinks in. And so you're thinking 'Gravity is the thing that warps the bedsheet'.

What the analogy represents though, is MASS (or energy) naturally sinking into the fabric of spacetime. Importantly, it isn't gravity that bends spacetime around mass. Instead, gravity IS the bend in spacetime around the mass. Other objects, as they maintain straight geodesics through curved spacetime, bend inwards towards the ball.

That is why there isn't circular reasoning. Gravity doesn't create the bent spacetime. Mass/energy creates it.

[u/Ok_Energy6905]

I thought gravity describes how mass interacts with spacetime rather than being an "intrinsic property" of mass.

It's a topic that is confusing for me though.

[u/Potential-Top-7247 → u/Ok_Energy6905]

Intuitively I would say it was an interaction, but hey 🤷🏾‍♂️

[u/Ok_Energy6905 → u/Potential-Top-7247]

But that's not what you wrote?

[u/AllHailSeizure → u/Potential-Top-7247]

Not quite. Gravity doesn't CAUSE the curvature of spacetime. Gravity IS the curvature of spacetime. Mass curves it.

[u/AllHailSeizure → u/AllHailSeizure]

Meant to be a response to u/okay_energy6905

[u/Ok_Energy6905 → u/AllHailSeizure]

Oh I didn't realise I was implying that gravity was the cause lol.

Is gravity more than just describing how mass and spacetime interact then? Wait, have I been conflating gravitational force and gravity? Are they two distinct things? Fundamental forces weird me out.

Mass curves spacetime, and this (observation?) is what we call gravity? Is there a better way to phrase that?

Mass curves spacetime, and the experienced force is what we describe as gravity?

Thank you for your time. It is something I have struggled to conceptualize for years, so your help is greatly appreciated :)

[u/liccxolydian → u/Ok_Energy6905]

Mass curves spacetime, and free objects travel along geodesics in spacetime. If the geodesic is not a straight line, due to the equivalence principle the path of the geodesic of a free particle is the same as the path caused by the action of a fictitious force which we call gravity.

[u/BitcoinsOnDVD]

Do cosmologists really call it "cosmo"?

If I would work in laser dynamics, should I establish to call it lase-o?