Editor's Choice: The Illusion of the Expanding Universe

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

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.

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.

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

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

Pentcho,

"a similar slowing could well be created in sound waves"?? Even if Padgett was correct, this didn't imply that phonons and photons behave according to emission theory. Padgett's effect is only claimed for slowing and only in the near field. You are persistently wrong.

I abstain from commenting on the putative evidence for BB and the idea of a finite universe.

++++

"Vacuum has friction after all. In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle says we can never be sure that an apparent vacuum is truly empty. Instead, space is fizzing with photons that are constantly popping into and out of existence before they can be measured directly. Even though they appear only fleetingly, these "virtual" photons exert the same electromagnetic forces on the objects they encounter as normal photons do. Now, Alejandro Manjavacas and F. Javier García de Abajo of the Institute of Optics at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid say these forces should slow down spinning objects."

Could these forces slow down photons coming from distant galaxies, thus causing the Hubble redshift? If not, why not? Cosmologists would suffer?

Pentcho Valev

Barbour is one of the specials...what marks him out for me the most is the simple sequence of reason at the core of each view he holds, proportionate with the size of his investment.