The BA locked the last Lyndon Ashmore thread because he disagreed with the idea of tired light:
While not a fan of Lyndon's argument, I have to take issue with the BA's conclusion. The supernova time dilation is generally interpreted as evidence of expansion. It is supposedly due to the stretching of spacetime as a result of universal expansion. From a static cosmology standpoint, what the supernovae show is that the fabric of spacetime, whatever that is, is itself undergoing a redshift or weakening effect. This would be consistent with the notions that spacetime, gravitons and photons are all comprised of the same fundamental thing, most likely em waves. We thus see redshifts in all of these things. The graviton redshift is important, as it limits the distance of gravitational attraction. This stabilizes the universe in a static model.

In other threads it became quite clear that the mechanism for the cosmological redshift of light in the Big Bang model is not well defined. Why should photons stretch just because 'spacetime' stretches? And I haven't spelled out any better redshift mechanism here. What I'm saying is, if spacetime stretching can cause the redshift of light and time dilation, then any mechanism of that spacetime stretching (or 'tiring') should be capable of causing these effects.

How does this work?
Redshift in electromagnetic waves does not limit the range of EM interaction.


What makes you think that cosmological redshift is interpreted as photons "stretching"?

According to my understanding (I have to thank Grey for this), there is no frame of reference that covers cosmological distances.
And the observed energy of a particle depends on the frame of reference (and this happens even in classical mechanics).


What exactly do you mean?

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That's not the reason the thread was closed. Here's the rest of what the BA said:

As your quote indicates, the BA said he would have closed it sooner if he had realized it was a tired light theory. I believe it's unfair to say he closed the thread because he "disagreed" with the idea.

How does that account for the apparent change in the rate of decay for supernovae at various distances?

See: Errors in Tired Light Cosmology

For the sake of accuracy, here is the rest of the BA's post...

Looks like he banned him for non-responsiveness.

Darn it! That's what I was "trying" to say and you beat me to it.

I've gotta learn to type faster.

"After a hard day's work of shining on Mrs. Applebee's begonias, even the most hardy of us photons get tired and need a day off."

"For that, us older photons use Geritol--nothing like it for putting that spring in your step after those tedious optics tests and all the other hoops those white coats put us through (you try bouncing off mirrors all day and see if you don't get tired.)"

"And don't get me started on those scab photons that won't join our union."

Tired Light = Tired Concept

Let us consider the case with light. True, there could still be some tiny portion of the photon's original energy left no matter what distance, but at some point that energy will become indistinguishable from the CMBR.


That is how I take the argument. Where do you find error? The argument is something like: spacetime expands, photons are pegged to spacetime, therefore photons expand.

Maybe at the end of the thread I'll be able to state this better. For the moment, I'm trying to discover if there is anything wrong about my statement.

I was going to say that great minds think alike.

Fair enough, it should have been locked sooner.

Maybe an analogy could help. Suppose that spacetime is in the form of thin wires connecting all the atoms of the universe. In Big Bang cosmology, expansion of the wire network would cause redshifting of any wave energy embedded in the wires. But I can also imagine that the wires are just rusting out over time, while new wires at the same time are being formed elsewhere. We would still see a frequency shift in the waves travelling on the wires. Now this doesn't quite account for distant objects having greater redshifts than nearby ones. For that we have to add that the wires themselves are moving, they are themselves waves. In em parlance, the spacetime 'wave' could be a carrier wave for the other em waves. I think de Broglie's matter wave theory can be incorporated here.

Have seen it before. Partially useful, but he tries to eliminate the whole tired light concept on the basis of a few mechanisms that have been proposed. Let it be said, we don't have a complete tired light mechanism yet. But that does not rule out the effect as being a real one.

Actually, you're not addressing the time dilation of supernovae. Specifically:
How does tired light account for this observation?

I think you're missing my line of argument.

No, I don't think I am.

My question has nothing to do with red shift. I'm asking what mechanism does "tired light" propose to account for the observation that supernovae appear to decay more slowly the further away they are?

I'm just saying that the stretching of spacetime can be mimicked by an intrinsic weakening process. If a redshift of light can be attached to the former, then why not also to the latter?

Looking again at my analogy, is there any way to distinguish (as far as wave effects are concerned) between the situation of the wires being made thinner ('stretched') through expansion and the situation where the wires are getting thinner through some sort of erosion?

Forget redshift for a moment. I'm not talking about redshift. I'm talking about an entirely separate observation: That supernovae (specifically Type Ia supernovae) are observed to apparently take longer to decay, the farther away they are.

I'm referring specifically to this observation:
In other words, Type Ia supernovae that happen very close to us might take 20 days to decay (for example). An identical Type Ia supernova that happens to take place much, much further way appears to take 40 days to decay (again, for example).

I'm asking why, according to "tired light", would a supernova appear to take longer to decay, just because it is far away? I've never seen a "tired light" theory that could explain this observation.

Happy I could be of some use.

Let's back up and consider what is the conventional reason for time dilation in supernova light curves. In practice the time dilation is seen as being due to a relativistic Doppler shift stemming from supposed galactic recession. That is, if one uses the redshift to measure the galaxies' velocities in this way, one can then use the velocities to determine what the time dilation factor should be. This procedure seems to work. In theory, however, it is incorrect to use the special relativistic Doppler shift in this way. Nor can one use the gravitational redshift of GR. The redshift instead is called "cosmological"; it is thought to arise from a stretching of spacetime due to universal expansion. That is the weak link in the mainstream argument. For if spacetime can be viewed as thinning due to expansion, it can also be viewed as thinning due to an erosion effect (tiring). In this case, time dilation could be attached just as easily to the latter effect as the former.

Actually, no, we aren't talking about SR time dilation.

This may be an oversimplification, and someone more knowledgeable should feel free to swoop in and save me, but the BB model predicts that events happening very far away from us will appear to be occurring in "slow motion" because the space in between us and the event is expanding. Because of this expansion, each photon emitted has a longer distance to travel to reach us than the one emitted before it. It follows then that the further away a supernova occurs, the longer it will appear to take to decay.

"Tired Light" theories do not predict this "slow motion" effect, since they say that space is not expanding and therefore each photon travels the same distance.

Or, as the article I linked puts it:
I believe that "tired light" was at least in the realm of possibilities before the supernova time dilation observation, but since then, it's pretty much dead. The problem it faces is that the Big Bang theory not only explains the redshift of distant objects and predicts the time dilation effect, but it further says that the two are caused by the same mechanism (the expansion of space). BB predicted the amount of time dilation that should be observed based on the redshift and when distant Type Ia supernovae were observed, that prediction turned out to be correct.

As far as I know, "tired light" cannot explain the time dilation effect at all, let alone link it to the observed redshift like the BB does.

How does this imply that electromagnetic interaction has a limited range because of redshift?
How exactly do you get from redshift to limited range?
Please give us the whole reasoning you followed.


Where did you get this argument?
What do you mean with "pegged" in a physical sense?
What expands in a photon?

By the way:Once you accept the absence of global frame of reference, cosmological redshift is no more exotic than the different kinetic energy of a bullet observed in different frames of reference.