Yesterday my wife came back from the barn and informed me that 25kg sacks somehow weigh more now than they did three years ago.
Naturally I po-poo'ed that along with a lesson in the difference between weight and mass and women's inability to recognise weight gain even with the bathroom scales. And indeed the general flaws women have regarding anything to do with size. the upshot was a quiet night undisturbed by snoring
Today after drenching our pet sheep I pointed out some new fungi halfway up middle field hill. Wife then informed me that she is sure that's a lot further to walk than it was three years ago.......
So this got me to thinking how to prove or disprove that.
I mean she may have a point. The universe is expanding and it may well be that our globe is expanding too. And naturally any conventional measuring device would also expand and effectively measure the same. If indeed the globe has expanded then that in itself wouldn't explian the sheep nuts weighing more unless there was a change in gravity affecting their mass.
Of course now that we have discovered dark matter one might speculate that the interstices of the expanding globe have become infused with dark matter which would indeed make the earth weigh more and increase gravity. Now I can test that easily enough. Gravity is also measured by it's acceleration but however many times I've thrown the wife off the house roof this morning I can't get any measure above the 32ft/sec^2 (for us aged imperialists). Which is interesting becaue if it had increased then time would obviously slow - but then again I do seem to have been married an awfully long time and my lunch shows no sign of being ready...
My alternative hypothesis has to do with an influx of Higgs bosons. Now that should be a massless particle but by acting against the higgs field it produces the effect of mass. Which make sme wonder why it took so long for physicists to prove the existence of the Higgs boson when you can now buy it as a supplement in bags of sheep nuts.....