Dear Daryl,
In portrayals of the Universe astronomers present as if the big bang and expanding galaxies were an established fact. But actually there is no evidence that the we are at the center of the Universe and the galaxies are all moving away from us other than the assumption that the cosmological red shift is a Doppler shift. There is a discussion of other possible causes of the red shift in http://charles_w.tripod.com/red.html . My own view is that the red shift is due to an interaction of the photons with masses passed in space. If light actually is degraded by the ether itself, It should prove impossible to establish the cause by experiment, because the affect would be so tiny.
Astronomers speak of a "young Universe". It was, of course, younger than it is now when distant stars shone. However, there is no chance at all that the Universe was as young as astronomers say when the light from those distant stars was created even if the big bang hypothesis were valid. It took the light over 13 billion years to arrive here, so it is obvious that the atoms emitting it took well over 13 billion years to get out there even given a big bang. It does not make any difference if the atoms traveled out there from a spot near here or the ether is expanding, well over 13 billion years would have had to go by, so by now the Universe could be over 30 billion years old even in the unlikely event that there was a big bang.
You may also find interesting a hypothesis that the characteristics of quasars arise because of refractive lensing by gases near a huge mass inside the quasar of the light from an opposite jet in http://charles_w.tripod.com/quasar.html .
Sincerely, Charles Weber
