Dark matter and an electron-poor universe

This started out as a fantastic idea but quickly I realised that it just didn't stack up!  But as a physics idiot, I'll try to demonstrate here how to first set up and then destroy your own theories instead of going down the pathological science route!

Hypothesis

The universe as a whole contains far more nuclei than there are electrons.

What it explains

Dark matter - without electrons the only interactions between nuclei is via the repulsive electromagnetic field between the postitively charged nuclei and should they be travelling fast enough, the strong force.  The lack of electrons means no spectral absorption lines, no bonding means little to no clumping together of matter, and nuclei are massive enough to avoid being "hot" dark matter like neutrinos.

A bit more detail/Research needed

When Big Bang recombination occurred, the universe went from opaque - where a free electron would capture any passing photon - to transparent - where the universe had cooled enough to bind electrons to nuclei.  If there were a large excess of electrons in comparison to the number of nuclei the universe would not become transparent (it would be "foggy" whereas we see the opposite).  If the number of nuclei was the same as, or was in excess of the number of electrons around then we get transparency.  Existing theory suggests that the universe is electrically neutral [need cites] - i.e. the number of nuclei matches the number of required electrons.  [need to check if there's evidence]

The problems

Why does the local area have an excess of electrons?  (possible answer: It's related to the fact that the local area is a supernova remnant).  (Maths/reading required).

Ramifications

Early stars composed of primordial BBN materials will be electron deficient.  Whilst this doesn't affect fusion, it will affect electron degeneracy pressure at the core of stars - thus no helium flashes/carbon detonation due to the lack of free electrons.

Testable Predictions

In areas where BBN primordial abundances are observed, the amount of lithium and beryllium should be lower than the theory predicts.  This isn't because less lithium is actually produced by BBN, it's because one of lithium's electrons sits in the second shell requiring a lower temperature for the electron to bind, making it more likely that H or He would capture that electron beforehand leaving a bare lithium atom that doesn't show it's absorption lines in the CMB.

I don't think we can test the overall positive electrical charge of a galaxy (this theory suggests that anything with a lot of electron-less nuclei around then there would be a large net-positive charge) - there's not enough for it to interact with?

Decay Channels

I started looking in detail at lots of decay channels - but it's actually very simple when you consider conservation of charge.  Essentially, every proton converted to a neutron (e.g. in diproton He2 decay to deuterium H2 but other decay channels as well) would emit a positron to conserve charge - this positron would then annhilate with an electron producing gamma ray energies.  Very generally, for every neutron you get around here (i.e. earth) then a positron was created in the process that then annhilated with an electron.

Follow Up (Hypothesis goes bang)

Somebody has actually come up with exactly the same theory too but I can't see them addressing the "why is it not like that round here" problem.


This paper points to the universe being electrically neutral during BBN, and in addition to this, we would see different results in the very early universe regarding expansion - it'd be influenced more by electromagnetism rather than gravity.  We'd also probably see large scale electromagnetic effects from such a postively charged proton cloud that would wash-out any gravitational effects - and these would probably be observable.

And finally, the most important question "why is it not like that round here" has been utterly trounced - in large supernovae that would produce the elements that we see on earth, we would actually expect vast numbers of electrons to be destroyed in the process - one electron destroyed for every neutron created.  Instead, we have an excess of electrons around here.  This does lead to a further question - given that large stars and particularly type II supernovae will destroy a vast number of electrons by annhilating them with positrons - and we live in an area where a type II supernova occurred (because we have lots of elements > He around here!) - why do we still have charge balance?