In August a study by CERN physicist Draga Slavkov Hajdukovic suggested that dark matter may be an “illusion” caused by the quantum vacuum. Currently mainstream physics assumes there is only a positive gravitational charge. Hajdukovic suggests that if matter and antimatter are gravitationally repulsive, then it would mean that the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs that exist for a limited time in the quantum vacuum are gravitational dipoles.

In the most recent study described, he demonstrates the credibility of this idea by showing that the gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum can explain four cosmological observations. It has revealed the surprising possibility that the gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum can produce phenomena usually attributed to dark matter.

“I would say a theory in the early stage,” he told PhysOrg.com. “Thousands of scientists work on the development of the cold dark matter (CDM) theory and the theories of modified gravity (MOND); I am working alone in this third direction.

Well, not quite alone. Hauser and Droescher’s earliest papers on EHT in 2004 proposed using the quantum vacuum as a means for symmetry breaking. This would lead to the breaking of a photon into an attractive and repulsive gravitophoton pair that creates a gravitational dipole.