Is the Universe a Type of Fluid?

[Madefornomad]

Hello, everyone I am new to the site

I was wondering if the Universe and gravity are types of fluid?

As you can read I am not a cosmologist or even a physicist but I love science

 

[jedishrfu]

Welcome to PF!

Some scientists have speculated that spacetime may be a superfluid. I've seen some articles where it was talked about but haven't found a peer reviewed source yet. These popular articles were published in 2014.

http://Earth'sky.org/space/is-spacetime-like-a-liquid

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superfluid-spacetime-relativity-quantum-physics/

Still searching and found this journal article:

http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.151301

Someone more knowledgeable at PF will have to comment on the current state of this idea though as a lot can change in two years as they dig deeper into it.

 

[PeterDonis]

I was wondering if the Universe and gravity are types of fluid?

Not in any simple sense. The links jedishrfu gave talk about models where spacetime has some properties along these lines, but the analogy is still not a simple one.

 

[Chronos]

This idea is still kicked around in some circles - e.g. ,http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.7296, Astrophysical constraints on Planck scale dissipative phenomena