baudrunner's space: expansion of the universe

"Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as 'conceptual necessities,' etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors." - Einstein

Big Bang Theory is to my mind the greatest paradigm of them all. It is virtually ingrained and chiseled into the cosmic conscious as surely as death and taxes are to life. And yet, among the more rational and sensible refutations of popular schools of thought is an idea so much more elegant and practical one wonders when the scientific community will finally admit its greatest blunder, change its mind and accept it for its logical simplicity. It would put so many deviant research spin offs to rest and save so much time and money from being spent needlessly. I am talking about the creation of the Universe, of course.

The currently held assumptions that the Universe began with a colossal explosion and that all the matter that now exists within it was created out of that moment in time are essentially flawed. I attribute that idea's popularity to man's inherent enthusiasm for blowing things up and for man's inability to appreciate or understand the full scope of infinite potential as a matter of fact. We accept that what we observe must deliver a logical conclusion, but haven't we learned from experience that things are not always as they seem? And are we not more likely to encounter that fact in fields of research which are and will likely be for all time largely speculation?

I just sent off an email to Australian astronomer Brian Schmidt, who has just won the prestigious 'Gruber Prize for Cosmology' along with half a million dollars (in it, I briefly outlined what I am stating in this blog). He led two international research teams back in the 1990's which, after confirming Edwin Hubble's 1929 observation that the Universe was expanding, discovered that the expansion was accelerating!

I should qualify that by saying that they observed that the expansion was accelerating. In effect, they studied cosmological bodies which are receding from us and recorded their positions over time. The conclusion they came to was that the farther a celestial object is away from the point of reference that is our Earth, the faster it is moving away from us. This is considered to be a great discovery and it is actually an addendum to Big Bang Theory. The idea that gravity should start pulling things closer into the center of the Universe -- that is, after first slowing the expansion of the original big bang down -- is now superseded by this discovery. Therefore it is to be presumed that the Universe will continue to expand forever and expand faster and faster while it is doing so. So much for 'Big Crunch' theory.

Here are some basic premises which should aid the reader in understanding what is actually going on in this cosmos. I believe that they represent the truth, and I urge your serious consideration:

1. Space is as much a creation as the matter which occupies it.
2. The Universe continues this process of creation at the periphery -- creating space and matter.
3. The Universe can only be observed from within.

The observation that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating is an illusion and this illusion can be demonstrated very simply. I have described the following experiment before but it bears repetition for the purpose of this discussion:

1. Snip a fat elastic band and clip it to a length of six inches.
2. Place it beside a ruler and mark off three points on it with a ballpoint pen at the following marks: 1"; 2"; and 5". Draw a circle around the 2" point to designate it as old sol, our observational frame of reference. The other two points are near and far stars.
3. Stretch the band to double its length -- 12". Observe that the far star has moved away three times as fast in the same time as the near star -- it has moved three times farther away.

This is exactly what is happening when we observe the positions of receding stars in the heavens. The Universe's expansion is not really accelerating, that is just an illusion! The farther a star is away the faster it will appear to be moving away and because the Universe is dynamic it will appear to be accelerating away from us, but I maintain that it is not. The rate of expansion/creation is constant!

The Big Bang Theory implies that there is a central point of origin in the void which we can call 'ground' zero, and that the expansion is outward from this point of origin. But that's not possible. Before there was anything there was nothing, and nothing is not something you can walk around in, or wave your hand through, or poke with a stick. It is nothing! There can be no center of the Universe because that would imply that there was a place in nothing for creation to begin and there can be no place in nothing. Space is as much a creation as the matter which occupies it. Ergo, no center. They have never found one and never will. The jury is in on that one. Furthermore, it is already established that no matter where one stands in this Universe one will experience the same observation, which is that everything is moving away from us.

The justification for the acceleration of the expanding Universe is now deemed to be 'Dark Energy', and once the paradigm has shifted toward my way of thinking dark matter will cease to exist but much time and money will have been wasted trying to discover it. Time I have plenty of, but I could sure use some of that money.

Brian Schmidt responded the next day:

This is the analogy I usually use to explain that the Universe is expanding... This is simply saying the further away you are the faster you move...this is analogous to the Hubble constant. Now as you might guess the, Universe isn't just rubber bands, and if one believes General Relativity (which given that it has never made a falsified prediction - seems reasonable) - then one can predict the expansion (your analogy above) and deceleration/etc, taking into account the dynamic nature of curved space-time. So, from my point of view, there is a vast array of things you got to get to work, bending of light around the sun, formation of gravitational waves around pulsars, the Cosmic Microwave Background, etc. And that is what the field of Cosmology has more or less been able to do over the past 80 years. But it is very complicated, and it has Dark Matter and Dark Energy in it, which we do not understand...so, could it be wrong...yep. But it does at least predict just about everything we can measure.

Brian

The greatest thinker of them all, Albert Einstein, admitted one time to "The greatest blunder of my life". In nineteen twenty-nine, the noted British Astronomer Edwin Hubble observed that the Universe was expanding, thereby rendering Einstein's Static Universe Theory obsolete. Some time before, a young student had approached him, asking him, "..but Dr. Einstein, wouldn't gravity tend to pull all the objects in a static Universe together?". That required some reformulation, so the good doctor came up with what he termed the "cosmological constant" which, when incorporated into his relativity equations, introduced an anti-gravity component, thereby satisfying the requirements for a static Universe.

There is an important lesson here. Mathematics is not the holy grail. Mathematics can prove the impossible. Therefore mathematics is a potentially misleading and dangerous tool if misused.

So string theory will always be theory and should be taken with a grain of salt (as this very entertaining slideshow demonstrates), for it is impossible to prove, completely untestable, and therefore a figment of the imagination. It falls into the category of interesting mathematical proposition. For my part, I will not even consider it, because it falls outside of the realm of logic and reason. As I've said, mathematics can prove the impossible.

We are all entitled to be wrong. I once believed that the expansion of the Universe occurs in cycles, accelerating until this expansion attains the speed of light which creates a boundary of infinite mass which explains dark matter all around, then beginning the creation process beyond this boundary once again, a different kind of colossal heartbeat.

I am certain now that this is wrong. The Universe is expanding at a constant rate. The observation that it is accelerating is but an illusion which can be proved with a simple demonstration, to wit:

Take an elastic band and snip it open and size it to exactly six inches. Draw the universal symbol for the sun, a point with a circle around it, at the two- inch mark. Draw a point to represent a near star at the one-inch mark and another to represent a far star at the five-inch mark. Now stretch the rubber band until it is twelve inches in length. You will see in the time it took the near star to move one inch farther away from the sun that the far star has moved three inches farther away. The observation is that the farther something is away from our point of reference in this Universe, the faster it is moving away, even though expansion is occurring at a constant rate. And because this Universe is dynamic - ie. it is always expanding, the illusion, based on actual observation, is that this expansion is accelerating. The scientific community currently believes in a misleading perception of what is really happening, a misconstruence if you will, but we know better don't we?

In a Universe which is expanding at a constant rate, there is no requirement and no reason to believe in a cycle of contraction and expansion. Paul Frampton is simply wrong.