Thanks for the suggestion Bill. I apologize that my use of the words “mass loss” is close to the term that is often used for stars. Stars, as you say, do lose mass all the time through nuclear burning but also through the stellar winds and evolutionary scenarios. Unfortunately, as Paul says, all that material and heat will just dissipate into another part of the universe and radiation and matter still contribute to the Universe’s gravity through Einstein’s general relativity theory. My idea of mass loss is a bit bonkers really. All of our notions of matter/energy are that this is a conserved quantity. You can’t just magic it away. However, in my defense I would say that we know very little about what the properties of dark matter are and so who is to say what it does. Also, in the past, theorists have had models where they consider the creation of matter as in the steady-state theory of Bondi, Gold and Hoyle (1948). So, if you can consider creating it, why not consider destroying it? Mine idea would be a big bang theory with reverse steady-state!
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