Total newbie here but just pondering things. (and sorry if already debated to no end)

Its my understanding the most of the expansion theories are based upon the concept of an expanding universe per the witnessed redshift effect.

From what i understand we know now the impact of photons passing through molecular hydrogen have the displayed the same redshift as photons portraying a Doppler effect - couldn't the redshift more so quantify the mass of molecular hydrogen vs sustain the expansion theory? (or a little bit of both?)

Could it simply be that redshift quantifies the abundance of life giving molecular hydrogen and prove that you're seeing the photons as they were emitted 14 billion years ago from very hydrogen rich galaxies in a very young universe?

Just thinking out loud i guess. Occums Razor seems to come to mind when it try and fathom dark energy/dark matter/WIMPs and other theoretical energies when there could be something as simple as hydrogens abundance to explain it.

again, i'm a total computer nerd.. i only know astronomy from what i read and obviously there is bad astronomy out there so you can't beleive everything you read

Where did you read this? This is not true, but we sometimes see this from some of our ATM (not Mainstream) members. If you want to pursue this please visit the ATM section of our forum.

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Forming opinions as we speak

I was researching star formation when i finally came across molecular hydrogen. Not knowing the differences i googled it and came across some papers published a while ago that described dense clouds of hydrogen had similar redshifts as the doppler interpretation.


A New Non-Doppler Redshift
Paul Marmet, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics
National Research Council, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1A 0R6

Updated from: Physics Essays, Vol. 1, No: 1, p. 24-32, 1988

Have no idea how trusted that resource is.

mods, if this is an ATM thread, please move. thanks!

There is a great deal of material on the internet, on astronomy and on physics (and on any other subject under the sun).

Unfortunately, there is no certain way to tell by looking at any particular material you might come across whether it is crackpot material, illucid, fringe science, pseudo-science, good science, or anything in between.

You can find several 'crackpot' detectors online - webpages that give a few, quick guidelines (lack of math, equations, numbers; lack of references to papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journals; invoking Galileo; and so on) - and they are often quite good at making a first cut.

The case of Marmet: the material is most certainly ATM (Against The Mainstream).

Another question on expansion of the universe.

I can't wrap my head around this generalized statement. "If we were to detect deviations from flatness in the observable universe, then it would provide evidence against inflation. "

What does that mean? to me expansion/inflation would suggest a non flat observable universe. I can't wrap my mind around a concept that to me makes it sound like the expansion is linear vs the "loaf of bread" concept where space is increasing regardless.

You must remember that inflation and expansion are two different things... there is believed to have been a sort of inflationary stage, where the universe grow exponentially in a relatively short amount of time, while most all astronomers/physicists believe that the universe is still expanding and has been doing so ever since the big bang...

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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~

LOL.Sorry, but Earth expanding?

Space is expanding only on the galaxy supercluster scale where the gravity between things is lower than the expansion force.

Actually, explaining the apparent flatness is one of the unintended but happy consequences of inflation. The analogy is, blow up a spherical balloon to have a diameter of 100 billion lightyears or so, and the region around any point on the surface is going to look pretty flat. One might expect small deviations, but not large ones if inflation is to hold.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

In reply to Cougar's comment:
"Inflation" is a theory place holder. The current known physical forces and energy sources could not cause "inflation" and could not stop "inflation". The laws of physics must be temporary changed and turned off during the "inflation" period. Inertia and kinetic energy must be turned off during the "inflation" period. Faster than light movement is permitted during the "inflation" period.

"Inflation" was proposed to explain the lack of variation in the CMB. Less than 1/100000.

Why make uninformed statements? This contains almost no valid information, and I'm being generous. Why not try reading what the models actually say, here (and references therein) for starters.

Actually, the CMB fluctuation spectrum was a prediction of the inflationary model.

Yes, not to be rude, but William has made several "uniformed" statements in different threads... as Spaceman suggested you might want to read up on the topics before you post.

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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~

Since the "current known physical forces" don't exist during the inflationary period this is hardly an argument against inflation theory.

????
Newton's rules of reasoning are the preface to The Principia:

This is a valid argument against any theory that relies upon hypothetical forces, of which there is no local analog. If you ignore Newton's rules of reasoning, you are on shaky ground. You have to be very careful with the 'as far as possible' qualifier. You can propose unknown physics for the inflationary period, but you better have a way to test this hypothesis - some observation in which to ground the speculation. You should also be aware that the CMB has severely constrained the list of possible mechanisms.

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

Newton was great. Why did he stop posting (what was it? 281 years ago)?

Anyway I agree with your point that loglo and others should be a little more careful to not speak of the details of the inflationary period as fact. It is, however reasonable to cite mainstream speculation about this period... and for goodness sake, when new discoveries are made that either confirm or refute mainstream notions of this period, PLEASE post the link.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Inflation is, like dark matter and dark energy, a "place holder". Not quite "here be dragons", but "something is here we haven't figured out yet, but we're working on it".

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

In reply to Spaceman Spiff's comment:

I read Alan Guth's book which is a promotion of his superseded theory.

If I understand the jest of the inflation theory something suddenly expands the entire universe, at many, many times greater than the speed of light, for a very, very short period of time. This is sort of like a super, super, afterburner. Suddenly something stops this rapid expansion. Is that physically what is hypothesized to have happened?

Are you saying "inflation" is not a place holder?

Are you saying that this problem is solved? I am saying this next comment from Wikipedia is not science. The problem with the "inflation" theory is if it did not happen, is it allows fantasy scientific theories to be promoted.

Is our universe one bubble? Why not a rectangle or a triangle?

When we discuss the MECO hypothesis Vs the Hairless Black Hole hypothesis that is science. There are observations, there are two theories with a connection to standard physics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Linde

Calling inflation a superseded theory requires a citation. Last I heard it was still the bedrock of modern cosmology.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

In reply to Kaptain K.'s comment:

Your comment is correct, I believe it is a fact that, without "inflation" or some other explanation the big bang theory has a paradox and is a theory in crisis. What inflation is lacking is a physical mechanism. As string/bane theories have no limits and anything is possible, they are not yet theories this is a flexible area if approached from strings/banes.

There is old inflation (Alan Guth's mechanism) which was superseded by Linde et al.'s mechanism which is now called new inflation. I believe new inflation hypothesis a new type field which has the special properties required to make new inflation work.

The following is from Wikipedia: