Why I believe the 'big bang universe' never happened. See below:


The BBU is cosmogony (created out of nothing), not cosmology, which is a physical science.

It is an expansion (? - not an explosion) of space and the beginning of time.

There is no center. You appear to be in the center regardless of where you are located.

This expansion of space is uniform throughout the entire universe.

This expansion of space is the cause of the redshift. This means that light is intertwined with space.

You cannot imagine yourself being outside of the BB, because there is no space outside of it.

Observational problems: Dark Matter. No explanation of this mysterious boost in gravity.

Most recent OP: Dark Energy. No explanation for this miniscule added boost to the Hubble expansion.

Lump these all together and WHAT have you got? An IMPOSSIBILITY!

cyrek1

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aka Michael Cyrek

I like to stay out of the BB discussions, due both to a lack of complete understanding of either the BB model or any alternatives, and to a lack of total faith in any of them. But, I've got to have a couple of posts per month that aren't fluff, right?

Actually, no. The BB doesn't state what the universe was created out of. It does not go back beyond, or even to, t=0.



This is true for any infinite universe. There's no proper centre to a circle of infinite radius, either. This implies you feel the universe to be finite and bounded.

So, if the universe is finite and bounded, what's outside of it? How does one go about imagining themselves outside of the universe? Especially if one defines the universe as "all space".

And...?

I believe this is an assumption on your own part. I've never seen any reason to believe that the Hubble Constant is anything resembling a constant. This is an extension of the local universe projected onto the distant universe which may or may not be valid. Though it may be common, there's no reason to believe that it's an absolutely integral part of the BB.

I really don't have an issue with this concept. I'm intertwined with space, too. The particles within my body could easily have their wavelengths stretched due to the expansion of the universe. You seem to be knocking Quantum Mechanics instead of the Big Bang here.

Yup. These are the problems, and if there is a paradigm shift forthcoming, these will most likely be the driving forces behind it.

A rant?

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Why?

One of the current brane-theory ideas is that our 4-dimensional universe is a 4-dimensional brane wrapped around a 5-dimensional space. Our universe would be like a sphere's surface, without any center.

Of course, this p-brane stuff is theoretical... but it does look pretty promising to me. Not that I'd know, of course.

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Ut wrote

I like to stay out of the BB discussions, due both to a lack of complete understanding of either the BB model or any alternatives, and to a lack of total faith in any of them. But, I've got to have a couple of posts per month that aren't fluff, right?

cyrek1 wrote:

The BBU is cosmogony (created out of nothing), not cosmology, which is a physical science.

Ut
Actually, no. The BB doesn't state what the universe was created out of. It does not go back beyond, or even to, t=0.

Cyrek reply
Did you read any books on the BB?
From the very beginning, space and time were created, followed by energy and then matter. That was the order of the creation process.

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There is no center. You appear to be in the center regardless of where you are located.

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That is the current view. Two dimensional spherical space as portrayed on the surface of a sphere does just that. You would appear to be in the cehter regatdless of what point on that sphere you are looking from.

Ut
This is true for any infinite universe. There's no proper centre to a circle of infinite radius, either. This implies you feel the universe to be finite and bounded.

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Huh? I do not quite understand what you are saying here. Regarding the BB, it is considered finite and bounded. The latest data on the BB is that it is 13.7 billion years old which makes it finite since it would be 13.7 billion light years in size or extent radially.

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You cannot imagine yourself being outside of the BB, because there is no space outside of it.

Ut
So, if the universe is finite and bounded, what's outside of it? How does one go about imagining themselves outside of the universe? Especially if one defines the universe as "all space".

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A university professor lecturing on the BB was asked as to what shape the BB was. The reply was: You cannot imagine what shape the BB is because you cannot step outside the BB since there is no space outside of it.

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It is an expansion (? - not an explosion) of space and the beginning of time.

Ut
And...?

It started out at a very high temperature of billions of degrees. That sounds like an explosion to me.

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This expansion of space is uniform throughout the entire universe.

Ut
I believe this is an assumption on your own part. I've never seen any reason to believe that the Hubble Constant is anything resembling a constant. This is an extension of the local universe projected onto the distant universe which may or may not be valid. Though it may be common, there's no reason to believe that it's an absolutely integral part of the BB.

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Talk to the experts, they say the expansion is uniform in spite of the varying temperatures from billions of degrees at the beginning to our current temperature of 2.73 Kelvin.

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This expansion of space is the cause of the redshift. This means that light is intertwined with space.

Ut
I really don't have an issue with this concept. I'm intertwined with sace, too. The particles within my body could easily have their wavelengths stretched due to the expansion of the universe. You seem to be knocking Quantum Mechanics instead of the Big Bang here.

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You then say that your body is expanding too?
Quantum mechanics deals with EM radiation, not space. It is the medium that light uses to travel through space rather than using space as a medium.

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Observational problems: Dark Matter. No explanation of this mysterious boost in gravity.
Most recent OP: Dark Energy. No explanation for this miniscule added boost to the Hubble expansion.

Ut
Yup. These are the problems, and if there is a paradigm shift forthcoming, these will most likely be the driving forces behind it.

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I am glad there is some agreement here.

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aka Michael Cyrek

Finite in time does not imply finite in space. The latest data on the BB is that the spatial geometry of the universe is flat which means infinite and unbounded in the spatial dimensions.

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Alright... lemme take a crack at this...

Most scientists speak of space and time originating from the BB. This is mostly because once you look back to some odd billionths of a second after the big bang, the universe is so small that space and time really have no meaning, so the expansion caused that meaningless "froth" to become space and time.

But I think you're mistaken in saying that matter and energy originated from the BB. Give us some quotes from some books on the BB.

Celestial Mechanic is right in saying that the universe can be a finite age, but not necessarily finite in size. However, there's nothing wrong with an infinitely sized universe, nor a finitely sized universe, whether or not there is a center. It doesn't matter that there's no defined center. That gives absolutely no evidence for or against the BB.

Technically, you can imagine yourself outside the universe, although only in a thought experiment. The universe is either infinite in extent (meaning it's either flat or saddle shaped), or finite in extent, (meaning it's a sphere). So, the shape of the BB was either a 3D space (although you would often think of it in 2D and call it a plane) or a 4D saddle shape or a hypersphere (a 4D sphere), depending on the shape of the universe.

Umm... make up your mind... was it an explosion or an expansion?

It actually is an expansion, not an explosion. An explosion is caised by an initial outward force, and carried only by it's inertia. The universe was driven by some sort of latent energy released by the devision of forces.

Yes, you're right that the universe is quite uniform in its expansion and in its temperature. The problem with that (called the horizon problem) is that the universe has been expanding fast enough that the two "ends" of the universe would be unable to "communicate" and tell what their current temperature and expansion rate are. This was a problem recently, but has now been plausibly explained. In the past (when the universe was less than 1 second old, it expanded slower than the speed of light, allowing for communication. This let the universe be extrememly uniform in the past, leading to uniformity in the future.

If that model gives you pause, think of it using a different, but equivelant view. For instance, the receeding object will be slowed in time via relativity. This causes it to send fewer repetitions (cycles, hertz, whatever you want to call it...) per second.

An alternate view yet is that the waves appear stretched from behind and bunched up from the front, just like the Dopplar effect

Yes, these are problems in cosmology, but none of them would be solved by accepting an alternative to the BB. These problems have nothing to do with the BB. They don't disprove the BB at all.

Even if you had put forth a single valid argument, none of what you *claimed* to be true amounted to impossibility.

And, perhaps I've asked you before, but if you don't agree with the BB, what do you subscribe to? Steady state?

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What book says this and how does it say it?
The BB theory doesn't describe how things formed, but it does describe what formed when *after* the BB began. I know of nothing that says that space-time was formed before the energy. As for energy vs. matter, at such extreme temperatures, matter did exist via quantum effects, but energy was the king of the hill, so to speak.

No, we can only observe 13.7 Gly in any direction, due to the finite speed of light. The geometry of the universe now is the same as when it began. The fact that it expands is insufficient data for finding the geometry.

I don't see your point. The universe is the universe, and it is all space. "Outside the universe" is therefore meaningless, as nothing exists there. You seem to agree with this viewpoint, cyrek, or you need to explain you problem with it better.

The expansion is uniform *in space.* The rate of expansion will vary with time in almost every possible case.

Sure it is. It has dimension (its wavelength), and that dimension expands just like the dimension that separates galactic clusters.
That whole response is preposterous. Ut said no such thing--don't put words in his mouth. Further, QM deals with a lot more than radiation, but I digress. Ut's comment is accurate, if he were expanding.
Finally, light does not need to travel through a medium. Light does not need to use a medium to travel through. However, since there is something it is travelling through (whether it be vacuum, glass, or you), it is affected by that medium and influences on it.

Of course there is. There was no explanation for Brownian motion or the photoelectric effect in 19th century. There are always unsolved problems in science, new discoveries with we need to find an explanation for. The existance of these problems does not necessarily preclude anything about whether or not the hypotheses about them are correct.

IF the universe is really 13.7 billion years old, and IF it's expanding at the speed of light, and IFevery point is the "center of the universe"-
IF i get on a ship that travels at a speed of 13.7 billion times the speed of light and head out in any direction in a straight line, would i be back where i started in exactly a year? or would it take 2 years or even 4 years?
be gentle, i am a highschool dropout who just had this thought pop in my head while reading this thread.

That means that universe was already infinite when it started, right? (Because you cannot have infinite universe out of finite universe with finite expansion rate in finite period of time.) Usual story is that universe started out from a single point.

No problem. Questions are encouraged.

Anyway, it would take exactly 1 year if the universe was expanding at exactly at the speed of light, or at an average of the speed of light and if the universe was not infinite in extent. However, it looks like it's averaged more than the speed of light, so it would take a longer time.

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Hi,

Glad to see you grappling with the Big Questions. :-)

Small problem here: there are really *three* different meanings of the word "universe" (at least three, anyway), and I think you're getting them mixed up here. There's the "visible universe", which is centered on the Earth, and consists of everything we can see. That is to say, everything from which light has had time to travel to us in the 13.7 billion years since it all started. This universe changes with time, in that the edge of the universe is moving outward at the speed of light. Also, since it takes time for light to get to us, the further out we look, the further back in time we are looking. So this definition of the universe means "what we can see" more than "what is there".

The second definition of universe is more like "what is there". This definition of universe includes what we can see, but it also includes all the regions where our horizon has not got to yet. (From here on out, I will use this definition of universe, and say "visible universe", when I mean the first one.) That is to say, a galaxy 15 billion light years away from us is outside our visible universe, but still within our universe. That is, in a few billion years we should be able to see it. This universe is also expanding, but whereas the *visible* universe is increasing simply because a boundary is moving outward, *this* universe is actually increasing in size because all the space between galaxies is getting bigger. The visible universe would be getting bigger even if space were not expanding, since it is just a consequence of the finite speed of light. The visible universe is getting bigger at the speed of light, by definition, but the expansion rate of the space in the universe is different.

Finally, if you really want to start warping your brain, there's a possibility that space could consist of regions that are not connected by any path. That is to say, there may be other regions of space that you just can't get to from here, even if you had an infinite amount of time and could travel at the speed of light. If they exist, the laws of physics might be very different there from here. Obviously, we don't *know* that these spaces exist, but they are mathematically possible. If so, they don't really fit into the definitions of universe I've explained so far, but if you take "universe" to mean "all that is", then they kind of have to be included (if they exist). So sometimes "universe" can be taken in the broadest sense to mean all possible universes. Sometimes this third definition is called "multiverse".

For this conversation, I'm going to stick with the first two definitions, and I will use "visible universe" for number one, and "universe" for number two.

Well, it really doesn't make any sense to say the ship travels "at a speed of 13.7 billion times the speed of light"; it's not possible. But just for the sake of argument, if you could do that, and ignoring all the other space-warping effects that going so fast would induce, in one year, you would be at the point in space that is the edge of the visible universe now, from the point of view of the Earth. However, just like you can never actually sail over the horizon in a boat (the horizon is always defined from *your* point of view, and will move as you do), you will find yourself in a part of the universe that will look roughly like the region where the Earth is. That is, you will see galaxies, and clusters, and voids. At the absolute edge of your vision, you will be able to see what the region around the Earth looked like 13.7 billion years ago: you will see cooling radiation from a dense plasma -- the cosmic microwave background radiation. Because that's what *everything* looked like 13.7 billion years ago. {Footnote: technically, you can only look back 13.4 billion years, because before that the universe was opaque, but I thought that would only complicate the main issue.}

This is because you will still be at the center of your own "visible universe", but you will just be in another part of the "universe", which as far as we can tell is about the same in all directions. According to our best information right now, you will *never* come back to your starting point, because the space of the universe does not appear to be closed.

I hope that helps. Please let me know if I can explain anything better.

Don

Excellent post, but I suspect a problem here:

It won't take 15 billion extra years for the light to get to us, because it doesn't start sending the light once it enters the visible universe; it starts sending the light whenever it's created, and the light's entry defines the visible universe.

That is, if it's 15 billion light years away, and the universe is 13.7 billion years, then the light it started sending when it was created is already on its way, and we should see it in 1.3 billion years (plus a little because the intervening space is expanding).

I think.

Right. I was thinking about something else, and I just confused the issue. I was thinking about us seeing the moment when the galaxy crossed over the horizon. You're right, it makes much more sense to think about the photons already in route.

Thanks for pointing that out. I've deleted the offending footnote.

Yours,

Don

Didn't the most recent WMAP results indicate that the "Universe" is, right now, 158 billion ly wide? In that case, at 13.7 billion times the speed of light it would take, on a spherically bounded infinite universe, 11.532846715328467153284671532847 years... giver or take a few seconds...

No, wait. That would only get you 1/2 way! LOL! I love this stuff... It hurts my head #-o

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Hmm, I don’t think so. I think the photons are here already, but we don’t have a big enough telescope to see them yet, because they are spread so far apart.

That last Hubble shot of the most distant photographable galaxies took an extended total of an 11 hour exposure. If they went longer with the exposure, they could see more distant dots of light. If they went to more magnification and a longer exposure, they could see more distant galaxies, but the exposure time would be very long. So, what we need is a bigger (wider) telescope, so we can collect more side-by-side photons from the more distant galaxies, or a longer exposure time and a greater magnification with the Hubble.

Anyway, the galaxies weren’t 15 bly away when they emitted the light that we could now photograph. They were much closer. They are moving away from us at faster than light speed, maybe 2 to 5 times faster, and their co-moving “medium” was dragging the light away from us for a long time, before it began to move toward us.

Pure assumption, all current scientific theories break down at the time of the BB, we have no way of predicting what came before so how can you say it was created from nothing.
Arn't these the same thing, meaning you are playing with the meaning of language and classifications?
There is no definable centre, if everything is in constant motion it is impossible to ascertain any absolute model, you can only construct a relative one. Absolute non-motion cannot be observed or proved so plays no part in a model of the Universe. To translate this to your statement is again your assumption, not proved.
Errm... You've lost me here, mass and energy have always been intertwined. Why single out one observable phenomenon.
Is this a reference to Remote Viewing??? We do not know what is beyond, and since when has our lack of imagination been proof of non-existance?
Err... Well not a good chance of winning 'The Weakest Link'. So what have we got, a bunch of unrelated statements many of which rely on assumption?

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BBT Paradoxes?

It surprises me how little attention is given to obvious paradoxes inherent in an expanding universe. All of these represent 'weak links', so should be considered:

1. An expanding universe violates the speed of light constant c.

This one is most surprising of all, since the whole BBT argument originates from a light constant built into Relativity, both SR and GR, so that v = c always. However, if expansion is a fact (assuming that expanding space allows us to see light at all -- see my post "Big Bang Busted?"- 6/7/04), then light traversing space expanding of necessity becomes v' = c+z. However, if light cannot exceed is constant c, how can this be? The resulting Doppler redshift, which we accept as the reason space is expanding, then violates the most fundamental argument of what Relativity is made of, which is a paradox. If anyone has trouble visualizing why this is so, imagine the light originating here and traveling away into cosmic space where it encounters space expansion, and in doing so, it now travels above v = c as it accelerates away from us, so that of necessity v > c.

2. The second reason requires special attention, because it is even more important. Per cyrek1's quote: This is also a function of how time and space interrelate, meaning that in any direction you look, you are seeing the past, since the light reaching us originated long ago. For this reason, we always appear at the center of it all. However, there is to be considered that no center is more valid than any other, as per Tim_t7's: This fact, that there is no specific center to the universe may date back to the days of Giordano Bruno, the Italian philosopher who said that the center of infinity is everywhere. (Of course, the Church then believed that Earth was the center of the universe, so he got into a heap of trouble for his ideas, and ended his life burning at the stake in Feb. 1600 in Campo dei Fiori, Rome). So why is this point so important? Because if every point in space is a valid center for space expansion, meaning every point is the origin of the Big Bang, then expansion should be taking place in all directions equally. So?... you may ask? This means the universe should be expanding not only away from us, but also towards us, which means we should be observing both redshifted and blueshifted cosmic light. But we don't.

3. The third paradox has to do with the second, that space is expanding in all directions equally from every point. If this were so, then the blue and red shifted light would cancel, so in the end there would be a net effect of only light, without predominance of one over the other. However, since this is not what is observed, we must conclude that the cosmic redshift is from other than the Doppler effect, and at present we simply do not know what it is. (Please note the expanding balloon with pennies glued to it works only if we are at the center of a finite universe, otherwise the expansion is going every which old way from an infinity of centers.)

So why do very intelligent people entertain the idea of an expanding universe, other than as an article of faith? Mostly, it is because it is believed to reconcile quantum physics with cosmological observation, where they merge together at the point of a Big Bang singularity. But is this not a stretch to fit theory to fact? If the paradoxes shown above are true, then what are we left with? A theory of the impossible to explain what we don't really understand? It appears that way, that we are once again centered in the universe and observing cosmic light redshifting in all directions equally, since every point of infinity is its center. But that does not explain redshift, only that if there is an expanding universe, we cannot know it from observation, since it self cancels anyway.

So, if I may ask a semi-intelligent question: How is universal expansion, per the Big Bang Theory, possible? My dumb answer is: We most probably don't know, since it seems less probable than possible. The quest for answering why cosmic light redshifts must thus remain inconclusive, and we no wiser.

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No. I don't want to sound condescending here, but they're not weak links in BBT.

C is constant in local frames of reference. However spacetime is expanding, which means while the physical distance light travels is in accordance with the speed of light - spacetime itself expands, and the end measurement between start and end point of a photon of light is larger than the distance it's actually travelled. Not a paradox, but it is an interesting result that relativity predicts.

You're right we don't, and why should we? According to BBT the universe is only expanding outward. There is no contraction. This means that all points are getting further away. The universe does not expand inwards. You should be able to see expansion in all directions, regardless of your position in the universe.

We can disregard this, as above, we should not expect to see something expanding toward us. This would be a contraction, not expansion, and the evidence certainly doesn't support that.

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This expanding of ALL points further away from us outwards necessitates only ONE center, which contradicts the concept that ALL points in the universe are its center. Hence, this is why it is a paradox.
Yes, you are quite right in this, which is why I said it is theory made to fit facts. The fact that it predicts it merely circles us back to accepting the paradox, that while space is expanding, and light is traveling at v = c within its frame, it now travels at v > c in toto. Hence the paradox, though somehow this one is violently denied by relativists. One way to do denial on it is to say time slows down, which is cool, but is it real?

It really is a case of whether we want to stay married to a theory, and then try everything we can to prove it, or whether we are open to another possibility, that perhaps space is not expanding, and the need for a BB singularity to merge cosmology with quantum theory is unjustified, not to mention it is really a stretch of imagination. But then again, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, though in this case, fiction may be more strange than the truth.

Ps: did you see Venus? we missed in it California, alas, except on the teli.

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Not a paradox... Because it's not just all points away from us, it's all points away from all other points...



Very simple diagram to give you an idea why it doesn't matter where you are, the view will be the same...

Yeah I caught the start of it - 1st and 2nd contact... Then I had to go home. Still, pretty cool to witness...

The alternative is to say that light speed is physically exceeded - and that would be violently denied by relativists. Greater than c in measurement rather that reality caused by the expanding universe seems far more acceptable - and also means there is no paradox.

There is no paradox here about the speed of light. You've incorrectly expressed the constraint, and so it seems to you that the constraint has been violated. A photon emitted from a distant galaxy that arrives on the earth never moves faster than c in its local reference frame. Since space is expanding, the speed of the photon is not the distance from Earth to the galaxy of origin divided by the travel time.

The expansion of space is not constrained by the speed of light limit. Hence the theory of Inflation, which hypothesizes that the Universe underwent exponential expansion very early in its development. For any two points in space during this inflation phase, a hypothetical observer at each point would "think" that the other point was moving away faster than the speed of light, while maintaining firmly that he, himself, was not moving at all. Each observer is constrained to stay slower than c in their local reference frame, but there is no reason why the space between them can't expand as fast as it likes.

The key thing to understand here is that the expansion of space is not constrained by the speed of light. Since two observers in an expanding spacetime can be at rest in their local reference frames, the space between them can expand as fast as it likes. They only *appear* to each other to be moving faster than c.

No paradox. You've only applied a theorem to conditions where it doesn't apply.

Don

What you’ve described is generally known as a “local ether” theory. Light speed, relative to the local background medium though which it travels, is regulated to “c”. The quest is still on to identify, specifically, the nature of the medium.

I think my mind expansion is travelling too fast at the moment, the change in hat size is >c... Time to slow down.

Very interesting concepts.

So if I were standing between two galaxies that were at the edges of the universe (or as far away as I could detect) and they were both travelling at 3/4 of the speed of light we could deduce that the expansion of space exceeded c but no local measurement would exceed c. But as we only have a relative model we cannot make the assumption that we are at rest so does the model only apply from a relative viewpoint or does the model have to take into account all possibilities?
If we only have to satisfy the relative model then the first visulisation does not contradict. So we change the relative viewpoint.
I am now on one of the far galaxies looking past my old home to the other far galaxy on which my ex-wife is standing waving (the expanding universe theory fits very well with my marital status). So what do I see? I cannot follow the 'you will see the other galaxy further back in time when it was moving slower' as leaving a passage of time will counteract this assuming an expanding universe, (I believe I have heard that there is proof that the rate of expansion is increasing so the speed of expansion will also increase so how do we not violate c even eventually in a local timeframe?).
If I see redshift (a red faced ex-missus) then the light from the galaxy leaves that galaxy at a speed relative to my viewpoint, so must be aware of my viewpoint which dictates a communication that crosses space/time faster than c?? I cannot envision how things will appear in that relative frame. There is the relative shift in time which will be the same from both galaxies, and we cannot discount the effect of time over vast distances if we accept that nothing exceeds c. So everything appears to be going slower on the far galaxy, my ex-wife lives longer and has better cigarettes. Even the light emmitted will appear to travel more slowly away from the planet giving us the constant relative measurement?
If we take into account all possibilities in the model (everything is possible until the event is measured) then the maths must account for a velocity > c, or does it compute without having to?

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The speed of light has been established by the permitivity and permiability of electricity and magnetism in a vacuum.
There is no medium in a vacuum, hence the name. There is no aether, ether, or either in a vacuum for electromagnetic radiation to travel in, it doesn't need one. It propogates at, huh, the speed of light via. alternating collapsing electric and magnetic fields. This is where the whole wave-particle duality comes in. I could digress into the interferrence patterns of the two slit experiment... should I?
The balloon surface representation of universal expansion is incomplete. It is lacking a dimension. I haven't found any balloons with a 3 dimensional surface, but if someone does, put some pennies on it and inflate it. Make a motion picture record of it and post it here. The visual wouldn't be spectacular though, it wouldn't even be helpful. Go look out at the night sky. Although you'd miss those pretty little pennies...
Space is expanding. The BB did happen. There are piles of data that not only hint at the answer but whack you over the head with the answer. Seeing red shifts and assuming space expands is the EASIEST explanation at the moment with the physics we have (which were developed independantly of cosmology or astronomy by the way.)
Now, I don't know what this "we should see blue shifts too" farse is, but it has got to stop. If I've been following this thread correctly, which I don't always do, then most everyone who posted here besides a few who know who they are (because they're not confused) doesn't know how to visualize this expansion, and probably never will.
I will just be content that I know how the universe works, in the limited way we understand it, SO FAR.
Come on. Expansion and POV people.
This is why I don't drive my car, by the way. Other people are out there that can't visualize how to use a turn-signal, like it's an option when you buy a new car... "Um, yeah. I'd like it with AC, with power windows and locks, but without those pesky turn signals. I don't use `em any way."

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>~~~~<
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Exactly what is meant by “the expansion of space”??

What we see by means of the redshifts is the distant galaxies moving away from us. Up until the mid 1990s, this was called by its traditional name, i.e. “moving”. As a matter of fact, this was called “moving” in astronomy books in the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the early 1990s, but once the superluminal galaxies were discovered, there developed a cult within astrophysics that started calling this phenomenon “the expansion of space” rather than “the movement of the galaxies”. This cult seems to center around a belief in the “c limiting speed” proclamation of 1905, and the cultists will go to great extremes to keep that proclamation from being violated by observational data. This is a case where modern theory is distorted specifically so that observational facts can be avoided and twisted in a way to avoid the violation of an old superstition.

For example, here is a quote from a 1991 university astronomy textbook:


“APPENDIX 14: THE RELATIVISTIC DOPPLER EFFECT

The simple formula given in the text relating the Dop-
pler shift of an object's spectrum to its velocity is ac-
curate only when the velocity is much less than the
speed of light. That simple relation is

v = (Δ λ / λ )

where v is the object's velocity, Δ λ is the shift in wave-
length of a spectral line whose rest wavelength is λ ,
and c is the speed of light.

When v is a significant fraction of c, the correct
equation must be used. The error in determining v
caused by using the approximate formula is 1 percent
of v when Δ λ / λ is only 0.02; and the error becomes 5
percent when Δ λ / λ is 0.1. Thus failure to use the cor-
rect, relativistic formula becomes important for speeds
of only a few percent of the speed of light.

For simplicity of notation, astronomers usually use
the symbol z to represent the Doppler shift; that is,

z = Δ λ / λ .

From Einstein's theory of special relativity, it can be
shown that the correct relationship between the shift
in wavelength and the speed of the emitting object is

z = Δ λ / λ = [√(1 + v/c) / (1 – v/c)] -1

which leads to the following solution for the velocity:

v = c [(z+1)^2 – 1 / (z +1)^2 + 1]

Let us apply this to the redshifts of quasars. One of
the first quasars discovered, 3C273, has z = 0.16,
which would imply a velocity of 0.16c = 48,000 km/
sec, if we used the simple, nonrelarivistic equation. Use
of the relativistic formula leads instead to v = 0.147c
= 44,200 km/sec. In this case, use of the approximate
formula leads to an error of almost 9 percent. The
quasars with the highest known redshifts have z greater
than 4.0, which would lead to the nonsensical conclu-
sion that their speeds are more than 4 times that of
light, if the nonrelativistic equation were used. Use of
the correct equation for z = 4.0 gives v = 0.923c =
277,000 km/sec, still an enormous velocity.”

---- “The Dynamic Universe”, Fourth Edition, 1991

So, here we have the pre-“expanding space” math-hoax way of trying to get around the “violation” of the 1905 “limiting speed”. But now in the early 21st Century, the speeds of the distant galaxies are recognized in some ways as a kind of “speed”, but their speed is not attributed to “motion,” but to the so-called expansion of nothing, i.e. the “expansion of space”. So while their “speeds” now are handled mathematically as “speeds”, the conceptual part of the theory says the distant galaxies are “not really moving” but being “carried along” by expanding nothing, i.e. “expanding space”.

Local ether, unfortunately, is unsupported by the evidence. The Michaelson-Morely experiment proves that if an ether exists, the Earth can't be moving through it. Stellar aberration proves that if an ether exists, the Earth can't be at rest relative to it. If the Earth isn't at rest relative to an ether and and not moving through an ether, the only remaining possibility is that there is no ether, local or otherwise.

Right, because the earth has its own “local ether” which travels with the earth.

Right, because the earth is moving through the sun’s “local ether”.

Sam5, what's your take on the BB theory? :-k

__________________

Feynman
>~~~~<
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.