A REVISED HISTORY OF THE LOCAL GROUP AND A GENERALIZED-METHOD OF TIMING

Recent measurements suggest that the giant galaxies IC 342 and Maffei 1 are moving so rapidly for their distances that they were close to M31 only 4 billion years ago. If correct, the two-body approximation of Local Group Timing would not be valid. N-body simulations have been carried out to explore how the indicated configuration of four massive bodies might arise, and to study the implications for the mass of local dark matter and the age of the universe. Provided that the total systematic mass is close to 3 X 10(12) solar masses, the high speed of IC 342 and Maffei 1 and the turn around of the motion of M31 with respect to the Milky Way could be explained if IC 342 and Maffei 1 were each members of binaries which successively fell past M31, interacting with M31 strongly and ejecting one component. Because ejection speed depends upon each galaxy's rotational velocity at its edge, observations rule out masses much greater than 2 X 10(12) Solar Masses. Generalizing conventional Kahn-Woltjer timing to account for the ejections, the age of the universe consistent with a systemic mass of 3 X 10(12) solar masses is 19 +/- 4 billion years.