• [deleted]

You cite Barbour as saying "To get a handle on Mach's viewpoint, imagine a particle spinning out in space. If there were no stars forming a backdrop against which to measure the particle's motion, can we really say that the particle is moving?" This can be refuted by imagining yourself as that particle. If you are spinning, you will feel centripetal force as your arms, legs and hair are pulled outward. Regardless of what the rest of the Universe is doing, your motion and its resulting acceleration will be relative to an absolute reference grid. Other objects may also be moving, but your spin, if not your velocity can be easily measured against that grid. This proves that there is an absolute reference grid for location.

7 months later
  • [deleted]

The trouble with physics is that people have to make a living of their own, so do physicists who run the huge evil business which is supported by Vatican: Big Bang theory.

9 days later
  • [deleted]

For years I drove friends and wife crazy with my attempts to explain that time is a fabrication,of man. The Universe knows nothing of time. The universe dose not exist physically .

  • [deleted]

Right on Armrit. We don't see that which we have no knowledge of. We preceive our universe as we become conscious of it.

6 months later
  • [deleted]

I can logicly explain why space expands. In lamens terms. An if any one is intrested in what i have to say please e mail me guzmanjoseph51@gmail.com

17 days later
  • [deleted]

We know not what we see. We see not what we know. We seek the answers thats what makes us keep living. However the right questions must be asked!

6 months later
  • [deleted]

So amazing. I had my own little idea of how the universe can be expanding outwardly and also inwardly. It links with Barbour's idea of more order appearing in the universe. My idea takes advantage of the entropic fact that just as order is increasing on smaller and smaller scales, order is decreasing on larger and larger scales. Assuming there is a center of our multiverse, the entropy-inducing cosmic horizon causes all microstates on a large enough macrostate level to mix until the last two identifiable "things" mix and you are left with something so similar to the singularity you started with when the universe began to expand at the Big Bang that it functionally is that starting point. (I don't know how to explain this without a starting point.) At that point in "time," the beginning of time and the end of time are equivalent and the functions that occur given a single unit occur again, namely expansion. And therefore a new universe is created. What is the first point in time doing all that time while the universe is expanding? It's merely digging into itself, as it cannot increase itself "to the left in time" so to speak as doing so would increase entropy at that moment, making it equivalent to or larger than the entropy at those first few moments, resulting in no movement through entropy at all in the universe. As the first moment in time digs into itself, it is constantly choosing units one at different layers, for expansion into two would throw off what we know about entropic rules. In my vision, each time one unit is expanded inwardly again on smaller and smaller scales with increasing order, the inward expansion causes a new universe to be created because it is functionally equivalent to the starting point and will do what a starting point does. So I think this means whenever we see order, we are examining only one distinct time unit of the universe, usually after considering multiple units of time. When we are aware of expansion outwardly, we are aware of multiple time units and are indeed living them out. What is time then? I think time is number. Its only limitation is that as Gödel showed, time as number is incomplete and can only be a single thing in analog because the closest the number system ever gets to one true isolated number is the number one. One is an analog because in an open, incomplete system, different units of time are always both connected and broken off at different parts at the same time in order not for form a loop. This brings up some questions in my mind. When is time measured as only a single thing, totally unconnected instead of participating in both connection and disconnection in an incomplete system, the seeming opposite of an incomplete system of multiple numbers? When it is its own complete system of one and must perforce expand outward and inward. When it moves inward and toward us, and its speed is constant and serves as another isolated value that can be consistently measured as one thing, we see it as light. I'm not sure what it looks like when it moves outward. But I think time is not just one thing, such as light, except in this analog, single unit measure. More than light exists, as one value of time must coexist with multiple other values, the result of the outward expansion of all other matter and energy. (Is energy other configurations of numbers, such as negative numbers, imaginary numbers, etc.?) This is why I think time will never be discovered to be only one thing. It has multiple characteristics and can best be described as everything the number system can do. But wasn't light formed only after the expansion of the Big Bang? Can that which expands inward, considered under entropy as going back in time, also be experienced "to the right" in that outward expansion? Is light then the representation of the past and all of its single-unit content?

8 months later

Hubble Redshift in a Static Universe

"We find that the UV surface brightness of luminous disk galaxies are constant over a very wide redshift range (from z = 0.03 to z ~ 5). From this analysis we conclude that the Tolman test for surface brightness dimming is consistent with a non-expanding, Euclidean Universe with distance proportional to redshift."

What causes the (Hubble) redshift in a non-expanding universe? Vacuum friction? Why not:

NewScientist: "Vacuum has friction after all"

Paul Davies: "As pointed out by DeWitt, the quantum vacuum is in some respects reminiscent of the aether, and in what follows it may be helpful to think of space-time as filled with a type of invisible fluid medium, representing a seething background of vacuum fluctuations. Although the mechanical properties of this medium can be strange, and the image should not be pushed too far, it is sometimes helpful to envisage this "quantum aether" as possessing a type of viscosity. (...) The phenomenon is at its most striking in the case of a single atom moving parallel to, but some distance from, an imperfectly conducting plate. The atom also experiences a velocity-dependent damping force due to vacuum friction. The kinetic energy of the atom appears as heat in the plate..."

The Evolved-Vacuum Model of Redshifts, Eugene I. Shtyrkov: "There are also alternative models of redshifts which obey the redshift-distance relation and based on an idea of gradual change of light parameters due to interaction between light and matter while the light is traveling gigantic distances through space for a very long time. There are two candidate ways for such interaction to cause redshifts: gradual energy loss by the photon due to absorption during propagation of light with a constant velocity (tired-light model, see, for instance, [8]) and propagation of light with the variable velocity and without absorption in free space (variable-light-velocity models). (...) Thus we come to a very important conclusion: the induction wave, and hence the light one, must travel in vacuum with conservation of wave length even when the parameters are time dependent. (...) ...we obtain a simple differential equation for the light velocity: dc(t)/dt = -Ho.c(t) (15) (...) Although reproducing the conclusions of the tired-light model, namely, about simultaneous decreasing the electric field strength and frequency, this model has a different physical interpretation. Instead of energy loss due to absorption at constant light velocity, this mechanism is based on gradual change of the vacuum parameters that results in declining of the electric field strength. The electromagnetic wave is gradually slowing down, with conservation of the initially shifted wavelength (lambda)_shift. The frequency perceived by observers at any point on the light path depends on the light velocity at the observation time."

HYPOTHESIS: As the photon travels through space (in a STATIC universe), it bumps into vacuum particles and as a result loses speed in much the same way that a golf ball loses speed due to the resistance of the air.

On this hypothesis the resistive force (Fr) is proportional to the the velocity of the photon (V):

Fr = - KV

That is, the speed of light decreases with time in accordance with the equation:

dV/dt = - K'V

Clearly, at the end of a very long journey of photons (coming from a very distant object), the contribution to the redshift is much smaller than the contribution at the beginning of the journey. Light coming from nearer objects is less subject to this difference, that is, the increase of the redshift with distance is closer to LINEAR for short distances. For distant light sources we have:

f' = f(exp(-kt))

where f is the original and f' the measured (redshifted) frequency. (The analogy with the golf ball requires that it be assumed that the speed of light and the frequency vary while the wavelength remains unchanged.) For short distances the following approximations can be made:

f' = f(exp(-kt)) ~ f(1-kt) ~ f - kd/L

where d is the distance between the light source and the observer and L is the wavelength. The equation f'=f-kd/L is only valid for short distances and corresponds to the Hubble law whereas the equation f'=f(exp(-kt)), by showing that later contributions to the redshift are smaller than earlier ones, provides an alternative explanation, within the framework of a STATIC universe, of the observations that brought the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics to Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt. The analogy with the golf ball suggests that, at the end of a very long journey (in a STATIC universe), photons redshift much less vigorously than at the beginning of the journey.

Pentcho Valev

    Pentcho,

    This time I appreciate your style of quoting and reasoning. I am ready to learn, and I feel that experiments and very basic thoughts are more trustworthy and fertile than hierarchies of theories on possibly questionable foundations.

    It would be nice if you could already add some ideas how to further combine or even apply your picture.

    The recently most impressive to me news was the possibility to use neutrinos as a tool for looking into the inner of earth, sun, or even cosmic objects. Can neutrinos possibly interact with photons?

    Eckard

    "Olbers' Paradox: Why is the Sky Dark at Night? If the universe were infinite and filled with stars in a uniform distribution, then every line of sight would terminate on the surface of a star and should be bright. To be sure, those further away would be fainter, but there would be more of them. Careful analysis suggests that the sky should be as bright as the surface of an average star. Noting that the night sky is obviously not that bright, there are two lines of explanation. First, the universe appears to be of finite age and that light from stars at an infinite distance would not have reached us in the age of the universe. Second, we observe that the universe is expanding and that stars further away from us are receding at a faster rate. The result of this expansion is that the light from more distant stars is Doppler shifted more toward the red and beyond a certain distance would not contribute significantly in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum."

    "...the light from more distant stars is Doppler shifted more toward the red and beyond a certain distance would not contribute significantly in the visible region" but would still be detected if the speed of that light remained unchanged. A more plausible line of explanation is to assume that the light slows down as it travels through the space vacuum (in a STATIC universe). For not so distant stars this is expressed as Hubble redshift but beyond a certain distance the star light does not reach us at all.

    Pentcho Valev

    Peter as I posted, I saw Pentcho's and since part of my post was more appropriate to discuss here, I repeat...

    On the cosmology topic. Our universe's mass is said to be about 1052kg. Was this mass there from the beginning of its evolution? That is, was it always constant by means of your "Mass 'flow' is continuous" mechanism? Does your model universe have a fixed or infinite size, or was it smaller in size in the past and increasing? Or as in my opinion, was the mass of the universe and its radius both smaller in the past and both increasing, with their fixed ratio given by the parameter Omega ~ 1 from the beginning, thus making unnecessary an inflationary scenario to convert Omega >> 1 to ~ 1? Recall that the purpose of inventing inflation was for this purpose to resolve the 'flatness' problem. So, what if the universe was born already flat?

    Akinbo

    Pentcho,

    That really is asking what the nature of light really is. One basic property it expresses, is expansion, just as a basic property of mass is contraction, ie. gravity. Yet they seem to be intimately entwined.

    Now we think of light in terms of photons, or quanta of light, which is a point particle, of sorts. This is because whenever we attempt to measure it, that is what we detect. Yet the only method we have of measuring light is to interrupt it with something necessarily heavier.

    So what if light and mass are two sides of the same cycle and when we try to measure light, we are actually starting a contraction process by which it is reverting to mass like qualities, by this effort to measure it?

    Then ask yourself, if this light in its expansion state is essentially holographic and each quantum extracted is an expression of the whole, not just some atomized, digital unit, then as light progresses through space, much is lost to innumerable contacts with mass and possibly that below a certain energy level, it might just condense out as a form of cosmic ray, gas, etc.

    This might explain why the background radiation is so flat at 3.7k, as a form of dew point, below which the radiation collapses on its own. Then these quanta start binding together and eventually fall back into the gravitational vortices.

    So it is not that the light loses energy and slows, but that the energy that is light is constantly being lost to mass.

    Regards,

    John

    John M, there is a sense in which whst you propose may be true. If E = MC2, then energy is convertible to mass, and mass convertible to energy.

    For a universe starting from 'nothing', i.e. total energy = 0,

    If E = MC2 is a principle, then

    E - MC2 = 0,

    Is it possible that as gravitational potential energy, E increases, M also increases in order to obey the zero energy conservation principle?

    Hopefully, more on this later....

    Akinbo,

    Yes. That zero is a neutral state, from which E is positive and mass is negative.

    The vacuum fluctuation collapses into these galactic vortices, such that gravity is not so much a force itself, but a sum of all contraction/collapse.

    This then goes to time, as the energy expands out, leading to the future, as mass falls back, leading to the past.

    Regards,

    John

    10 months later
    • [deleted]

    I like being able to go back in time to previous articles and even comment on them. I like Barbour's approach in questioning the expansion of the universe since I too believe that it is shrinking and not expanding at all. Ironically, though, what that means is that time is actually real and space is the emergent concept. Shape and space are what seem more real to us than time, but the exact opposite is actually true.

    8 months later
    • [deleted]

    Interesting, I'd like to know more. Pls point to a one (or several) publically accessible things to read on this.

    I can't help thinking that a purely Machian universe in which time is an illusion, space is arbitrary, and motion doesn't exist, is a world in which every illusion can be proved mathematically.

    One must be reminded that Mach could not be convinced of atomic theory.

    a month later

    Static Universe With Hubble Redshift

    http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html

    "No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning"

    There is no need for any "quantum equation". Recently it has been shown that light in vacuum can be slowed, which gives strong support to both Halton Arp's "intrinsic redshift" hypothesis and "tired light" ideas:

    http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_388852_en.html

    "The work demonstrates that, after passing the light beam through a mask, photons move more slowly through space."

    If something (the mask) can decrease the speed of photons, it is reasonable to assume that something else (quantum vacuum) can also do so:

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927994.100-vacuum-has-friction-after-all.html

    NewScientist: "Vacuum has friction after all"

    http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/thz/documents/davies_2001_cha.pdf

    Paul Davies: "As pointed out by DeWitt, the quantum vacuum is in some respects reminiscent of the aether, and in what follows it may be helpful to think of space-time as filled with a type of invisible fluid medium, representing a seething background of vacuum fluctuations. Although the mechanical properties of this medium can be strange, and the image should not be pushed too far, it is sometimes helpful to envisage this "quantum aether" as possessing a type of viscosity."

    http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Quantum_Foam_999.html

    "Each photon's path would be slightly different as it maneuvered through the all-pervading myriads of tiny fluctuations frothing up space-time. And, as a result, the distance each photon travels would be different."

    http://www.nature.com/news/superfluid-spacetime-points-to-unification-of-physics-1.15437

    Nature | Scientific American: "As waves travel through a medium, they lose energy over time. This dampening effect would also happen to photons traveling through spacetime, the researchers found."

    Loss of energy/speed is the only reasonable cause for the Hubble redshift (in a static universe). Slowly but surely the Big Bang money-spinner is approaching its collapse.

    Pentcho Valev

      25 days later

      Olbers' Paradox Is Due to Slow Light

      http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/olbers.html

      "Olbers' Paradox: Why is the Sky Dark at Night? If the universe were infinite and filled with stars in a uniform distribution, then every line of sight would terminate on the surface of a star and should be bright. To be sure, those further away would be fainter, but there would be more of them. Careful analysis suggests that the sky should be as bright as the surface of an average star. Noting that the night sky is obviously not that bright, there are two lines of explanation. First, the universe appears to be of finite age and that light from stars at an infinite distance would not have reached us in the age of the universe. Second, we observe that the universe is expanding and that stars further away from us are receding at a faster rate. The result of this expansion is that the light from more distant stars is Doppler shifted more toward the red and beyond a certain distance would not contribute significantly in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum."

      A third line of explanation:

      Light slows down as it travels through the space vacuum. For not so distant stars this is expressed as Hubble redshift but beyond a certain distance the star light does not reach us at all:

      http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Quantum_Foam_999.html

      "Each photon's path would be slightly different as it maneuvered through the all-pervading myriads of tiny fluctuations frothing up space-time. And, as a result, the distance each photon travels would be different."

      http://www.nature.com/news/superfluid-spacetime-points-to-unification-of-physics-1.15437

      Nature | Scientific American: "As waves travel through a medium, they lose energy over time. This dampening effect would also happen to photons traveling through spacetime, the researchers found."

      http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927994.100-vacuum-has-friction-after-all.html

      NewScientist: "Vacuum has friction after all"

      Even the initial speed of light can be slowed down (an effect analogous to Halton Arp's "intrinsic redshift") and this has already been proved:

      http://rt.com/news/225879-light-speed-slow-photons/

      "Physicists manage to slow down light inside vacuum (...) ...even now the light is no longer in the mask, it's just the propagating in free space - the speed is still slow. (...) "This finding shows unambiguously that the propagation of light can be slowed below the commonly accepted figure of 299,792,458 metres per second, even when travelling in air or vacuum," co-author Romero explains in the University of Glasgow press release."

      http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/01/23/Scientists-slow-down-light-particles/1191422035480

      "The speed of light is a limit, not a constant - that's what researchers in Glasgow, Scotland, say. A group of them just proved that light can be slowed down, permanently."

      http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/417655/scitech/science/exclusive-this-pinay-physicist-can-slow-down-light-without-touching-it

      "Although the maximum speed of light is a cosmological constant - made famous by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and E=mc^2 - it can, in fact, be slowed down: that's what optics do."

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxJ7_tbbIsg

      "Glasgow researchers slow the speed of light"

      Science should be freed from the strangling hold of Einstein's relativity (but it may already be too late).

      Pentcho Valev