The whole supernova 1A scenario is quite suspect. There are two things going on here.
1. These SN seem to be dimmer than expected from the application of Hubble's law. This has lead to the idea that the universe is accelerating in its expansion because the SN are presumably farther away than they would be if they were travelling away from us at a constant velocity. These distant objects are more distant than they "should" be from a constant velocity so they must have accelerated to get there. (Of course one could say that we are expecting (from Hubble's law) the SN to have a higher red shift for its distance and so it isn't travelling as FAST as it should be and so the universe is DECELERATING. It depends on how you look at it.)
2. These SN seem to have a longer time period of their brightness than we'd expect if they weren't moving away from us. This is somewhat consistent with an expected time dilation from a Doppler interpretation.

But the time period of SN is not exactly correlated (although the correlation is strong) with the brightness and there may well be selection effects from absorption of photons or other mechanisms which cause dimming of the SN than acceleration. It's a quite complicated analysis and many effects need to be taken into account. For example at these high red shifts, there is doppler dimming if the red shift is doppler; namely the distance between the photons should be stretched by the same amount as the red shift and the photon flux is reduced. Namely the number of photons received per unit time is less so the source appears dimmer. (This is not the case for tired light, so a tired light SN1A is observed to be brighter than a Doppler SN1A. i.e., it is intrinsically dimmer to be at the same observed brightness.) This dimming effect for the doppler mechanism is compounded if there is acceleration in addition to Hubble's law. These differences in observed brightness between the two different mechanisms affects the expected time period of the SN1A. A tired light mechanism predicts that the SN1a is intrinsically dimmer than a doppler mechanism and so has a correspondingly different expected time period. So there are different expectations for the time period of the SN1A depending on whether the red shift is velocity doppler or acceleration doppler or tired light.

It's also not at all clear that the supposed observed time dilation is not affected by selection effects. In fact, there was a paper presented at the Denver American Physical Society meeting that highly questioned the time dilation conclusions based on selection effects.

At this point I'm making no assumptions at all. We have the cosmic redshift and it could be caused by expansion or tired light. As John K. notes, there is concern about the SN data, but I'm taking the data to indicate real 'time dilation'. The question is: how can we distinguish observationally between the situation where the redshift/time dilation is caused by expansion (lengthening of the 'wires' of spacetime) from the situation where erosion of the wires causes these effects? I'm putting this out as a general query, not as something I've got all the answers on.

I guess I'm saying that, if I just look at the analogy, I don't see why we'd expect waves on wires to be affected the same way by stretching the wires as by simply having them become thinner in the first place. So you're initial assumption that the two should be indistinguishable or even similar seems flawed.

That's a bit harsh isn't it? Surely if the tired light theory is flawed it is because it can't be consistent internally and w.r.t. observations, not because some analogy doesn't seem very good. There's a big hole in the balloon analogy of an expanding universe - you gotta get the air in somehow

Maybe ExpErdMann should drop the ananolgy and just describe what he's proposing directly. Are we talking about light losing energy as it traverses static space, or are we talking about space itself somehow disintigrating over time. I thought the tired light idea was the former, but it seems to me that EEM is talking about the latter.

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There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those waiting for a bus.
If logic doesn't work, then surely it does.

Well, no, I don't think it's harsh, since all he's got at the moment is an analogy, so there's nothing more to discuss. I don't want to suggest that the whole idea of tired light fails because this particular analogy isn't good, but he did specfically ask if anyone saw any problems with the analogy.

That would be an excellent idea. If we actually have a model that can make some kind of quantitative predictions, then we can look at that model, see if the way it arrives at those predictions is reasonable, and also see if those predictions match what we see. From there we can decide if it's a possible model.

Yeah, fair point.

Looking back over the thread I just noticed that EEM has hinted that he has many more details and papageno has asked for themalready.

I was also reminded that EEM hasn't mentioned the cosmological redshift since it since it was pointed that there was nothing extraordinary about it, despite initially calling it "the weak link in the mainstream argument".

Sorry EEM, I keep talking about you in the third person. How about those details then? Not that I'm one of the practicing scientists here, but I'd like to follow the discussion

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There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those waiting for a bus.
If logic doesn't work, then surely it does.

ExpErdMann, are you trying to tie this in with the expanding earth idea that we discussed before? Not picking here, just wondering.

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

On this point I am relying on the theoretical work of others, notably Toivo Jaakkola and Andre Assis. I never derived that point myself. I could try to find some online papers by them but you can also find them yourself in the online back issues of Apeiron. I said I'd get them for you when I had a chance.

I'm happy on one hand that your interested in my model, but it's really just a work in progress. The thing I recently noticed about it is that it did not address the SN time dilation studies. That's the reason for this thread. BTW I don't have a mechanism worked out for tired light. What I do have is some evidence that gravitons are being converted to photons and vice versa. I have presented some of this in other threads.

Again, relates to Jaakkola and Assis.

Again, there are different points of view. Harrison says the Universe is losing energy (but he also says that's not a problem!)

John, I recognize that there is some muddiness in the overall picture here. I suspect that the phenomenon of SN being too dim at greater distances would disappear if they did the whole analysis from a tired light perspective. At the moment I'm leaning more to the idea that the time dilation is real, but that could change if you, Jerry and others can sort it all out.

I'm saying if the medium for light is decaying (or being recycled), then the light itself will be degraded (recycled) as well. Hence the wire analogy. Perhaps I will try to introduce some more elements of my model, if that will help.

It does connect with Earth expansion, Tensor! I've got a lot of the pieces together but I'm missing this bit on SN time dilation. BTW, hope you had a chance to read "Why Expanding Earth?". It's a fascinating book about the whole history of the idea and modern variations.

I suggest that you do not use analogies you do not understand yourself, unless you can give an appropriate reference.


What kind of evidence?
Since it is relevant to this thread, can you give some references?


You are supporting a theory, but you do not address legitimate questions about it.
This puts in serious doubt your own understanding of it.


On what basis do you choose one interpretation over another?

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papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

Another way to evaluate my proposal would be to compare how redshift mechanisms correlate with time dilation in the various situations where they are encountered.

As mentioned above, the original prediction about time dilation in SNe was based on the classical Doppler shift, using supposed recessional velocities. In this case the time dilation factor is (1 + z).

In SR, the time dilation factor is also (1 + z). Here the redshift has a term in v^2/c^2, unlike the classical Doppler, but the time dilation factor (1 + z) is the same.

For the gravitational redshift, I'm not sure if the same relation holds as far as the Shapiro effect is concerned. Would appreciate it if anyone can clarify this one.

My suggestion that the redshift could come about through weakening of spacetime is not developed enough to make this comparison as yet, but on the basis of the above I'm thinking that anywhere a redshift occurs a time dilation effect will also occur and that the former determines the magnitude of the latter.