Is Cold Dark Matter a Vacuum Effect?

Current theories about the Universe based on an FLRW model conclude that it is composed of similar to 4% normal matter, similar to 28 % dark matter and similar to 68% Dark Energy which is responsible for the well-established accelerated expansion: this model works extremely well. As the Universe expands the density of normal and dark matter decreases while the proportion of Dark Energy increases. This model assumes that the amount of dark matter, whose nature at present is totally unknown, has remained constant. This is a natural assumption if dark matter is a particle of some kind - WIMP, sterile neutrino, lightest supersysmmetric particle or axion, etc. - that must have emerged from the early high temperature phase of the Big Bang. This paper proposes that dark matter is not a particle such as these but a vacuum effect, and that the proportion of dark matter in the Universe is actually increasing with time. The idea that led to this suggestion was that a quantum process (possibly the Higgs mechanism) might operate in the nilpotent vacuum that Rowlands postulates is a dual space to the real space where Standard Model fundamental fermions (and we) reside. This could produce a vacuum quantum state that has mass, which interacts gravitationally, and such states would be 'dark matter'. It is proposed that the rate of production of dark matter by this process might depend on local circumstances, such as the density of dark matter and/or normal matter. This proposal makes the testable prediction that the ratio of baryonic to dark matter varies with redshift and offers an explanation, within the framework of Rowlands' ideas, of the coincidence problem - why has cosmic acceleration started in the recent epoch at redshift z similar to 0.55 when the Dark Energy density first became equal to the matter density?. This process also offers a potential solution to the 'missing baryon' problem.