![big-bang-8[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/big-bang-81.jpg?quality=83)
New evidence, based on detailed measurements of the size and brightness of hundreds of galaxies, using The Tolman test for surface brightness, indicates that the Universe is not expanding after all. I’m betting that somewhere, some activist is trying to figure out an angle to blame climate change. (h/t to Roy Spencer)
From Sci-News.com: Universe is Not Expanding After All, Scientists Say
In their study, the scientists tested one of the striking predictions of the Big Bang theory – that ordinary geometry does not work at great distances.
In the space around us, on Earth, in the Solar System and our Milky Way Galaxy, as similar objects get farther away, they look fainter and smaller. Their surface brightness, that is the brightness per unit area, remains constant.
In contrast, the Big Bang theory tells us that in an expanding Universe objects actually should appear fainter but bigger. Thus in this theory, the surface brightness decreases with the distance. In addition, the light is stretched as the Universe expanded, further dimming the light.
So in an expanding Universe the most distant galaxies should have hundreds of times dimmer surface brightness than similar nearby galaxies, making them actually undetectable with present-day telescopes.
But that is not what observations show, as demonstrated by this new study published in the International Journal of Modern Physics D.
The scientists carefully compared the size and brightness of about a thousand nearby and extremely distant galaxies. They chose the most luminous spiral galaxies for comparisons, matching the average luminosity of the near and far samples.
Contrary to the prediction of the Big Bang theory, they found that the surface brightnesses of the near and far galaxies are identical.
Full story: http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-universe-not-expanding-01940.html
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Physicist Luboš Motl isn’t impressed:
It is quite a bold claim but not shocking for those who have the impression based on the experience that these journals published by World Scientific are not exactly prestigious – or credible, for that matter. The sloppy design of the journal website and the absence of any TEX in the paper doesn’t increase its attractiveness. The latter disadvantage strengthens your suspicion that the authors write these things because they don’t want to learn the Riemannian geometry, just like they don’t want to learn TEX or anything that requires their brain to work, for that matter.
…
The point of the paper is that the expanding Universe of modern cosmology should be abandoned because there is a simpler model one may adopt, namely the static, Euclidean universe. Their claim or their argument is that this schookid-friendly assumption is completely compatible with the observations. In particular, it is compatible with the observations of the UV surface brightness of galaxies.
Read more of what he has to say here: http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/05/claims-universe-is-not-expanding.html#more
The cartoon I published Friday might be prescient.
The paper:
UV surface brightness of galaxies from the local universe to z ~ 5
Int. J. Mod. Phys. D DOI: 10.1142/S0218271814500588
Eric J. Lerner, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc., USA Renato Falomo, INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy Riccardo Scarpa, Instituto de Astrofısica de Canarias, Spain
The Tolman test for surface brightness (SB) dimming was originally proposed as a test for the expansion of the universe. The test, which is independent of the details of the assumed cosmology, is based on comparisons of the SB of identical objects at different cosmological distances. Claims have been made that the Tolman test provides compelling evidence against a static model for the universe. In this paper we reconsider this subject by adopting a static Euclidean universe (SEU) with a linear Hubble relation at all z (which is not the standard Einstein–de Sitter model), resulting in a relation between flux and luminosity that is virtually indistinguishable from the one used for ΛCDM models. Based on the analysis of the UV SB of luminous disk galaxies from HUDF and GALEX datasets, reaching from the local universe to z ~ 5, we show that the SB remains constant as expected in a static universe.
A re-analysis of previously published data used for the Tolman test at lower redshift, when treated within the same framework, confirms the results of the present analysis by extending our claim to elliptical galaxies. We conclude that available observations of galactic SB are consistent with a SEU model.
We do not claim that the consistency of the adopted model with SB data is sufficient by itself to confirm what would be a radical transformation in our understanding of the cosmos. However, we believe this result is more than sufficient reason to examine this combination of hypotheses further.
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The Pompous Git says:
May 27, 2014 at 9:43 am
The only explanation taking all other factors into account as well.
palindrom said @ur momisugly May 27, 2014 at 4:59 am
So, you know better than, oh, let’s say physicist Robert G Brown of Duke, who is not just a member of Faculty Row, but a SuperProfessor and regularly posts here. Care to provide evidence of your expertise Mr Anonymous?
The Pompous Git says:
May 27, 2014 at 10:04 am
Not to mention Drs. Shore & Svalgaard, et al, as well as credentialed academic skeptics. IMO this award-winning site pretty much lives up to its purpose stated above.
Why yes, I do know better than Robert G. Brown.
I’m also a professor, at a comparable institution. My training is much closer to cosmology than his — I’m an astronomer, and he’s a condensed-matter theorist. Astronomy shares much more science base with climatology than condensed-matter theory. I have also published far more papers than he has in total, and — tellingly — did not stop publishing in 2006.
I am also anonymous, so you will of course not believe me. But it’s true.
REPLY: The writer does have a xxxxxxxxx.edu address, so his claim of being “a professor, at a comparable institution” is true. As for the rest of his claims…perhaps an ego-check might be in order. – Anthony
Pompous Git et al — The redshift of an individual object is the sum of parts due to the cosmological expansion, the peculiar motion relative to the local comoving frame, and the gravitational redshift intrinsic to the object itself. None of these is magic, and they are not mutually exclusive.
milodonharlani said @ur momisugly May 27, 2014 at 10:14 am
On that we are in complete agreement 🙂
Anthony — That address was not for you to share. I should have known better than to trust that you would not.
REPLY: You are overreacting.
I did not publish your email address, nor your name. Your fake phantom identity is intact.
I only verified for the reader that your claim of being a professor was valid. My view is that if you don’t have the integrity to stand up for your own words, then your opinion probably should be ignored. See the policy page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/policy/
Robert G. Brown has the integrity to publish and comment here under his own name. Why not you, especially when you are criticizing him? – Anthony
Anthony – Overreacting? It would be incredibly easy for anyone who cared to figure out who I am, given the huge hint you provided. And being anonmyous does not mean lacking integrity — there are enough crazies out there who think that scientists are The Enemy that I’d really prefer to be anonymous. Could I ask you to please nuke the reference to the institution?
REPLY: Fine I’ll nuke it, but you also have to withdraw your criticism of Dr. Brown where you cite your qualifications but are too timid to put your name to them. To me, that’s just unfair and just bogus puffed up ego. Please advise. – Anthony
P.S. most of the “crazies” seem to be on the AGW side, for example this guy
I don’t think you have anything to worry about.
The Pompous Git says:
May 27, 2014 at 1:05 am
Andyj said @ur momisugly May 27, 2014 at 12:28 am
Prof. Brian Cox on Cosmology showed the world, this famous graph on telly the other week.
“Well, you can get your “science” from the telly and I’ll get mine from the journals. I suspect that means we don’t have very much to communicate to each other…”
No we certainly do not. One is a Well renowned Professor, an Astrophysicist. The other is you.
If you could zoom a camera out far enough and speed up the playback rate fast enough, you would see a repititous bang, expand, contract, bang, expand, contract, repeated forever, going backwards and forewards. This is a super-easy concept to understand. Anti matter, different goemetry, leaky forces, parallel universes, etc, etc, etc. All typical nonsense of asstrologits. Almost every paper I read about astrophysics is utterly, almost chilishly inane, floundering about idiocy of grant/rent seeking “scientists”. Every so often, there is a valuable nugget of real information… I live for those.
Anthony — If that’s your condition, nuke the comment.
My criticisms of Dr. Brown — basically that he’s in an unrelated field and appears to have given up publishing even in his own field — stand on their merits, so I won’t say I didn’t mean it.
REPLY: Well then, the comment stands. There’s nothing wrong with devotion to teaching. – Anthony
I find it difficult to understand why they should get a different result on the expansion of the universe then the standard model of cosmology. A type 1a supernova is a standard candle so we were told in the explanation and so far as I understand it time is only used to measure the rate of increase of the distance of the supernova from us in space. I cannot see the point in saying that space-time is expanding but space is not expanding because the expansion of space is what the big bang is about .
don – – If you read their abstract, they don’t actually get a different result. All they show is that the Tolman test, one of several classic cosmological tests, is consistent with a non-expanding universe. They ignore all the other evidence for an expanding universe. Somehow this was misinterpreted as a claim that they showed the universe isn’t actually expanding.
anna v says:
May 25, 2014 at 8:47 pm
All those high energy experimental physics papers in the journals are validations of the four dimensional space and time. Of course reactors and the atomic bomb are an application. And even GPS would not work correctly if the theory were not taken into account …
Well maybe still there is a different explanation for that.
http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/gps-relativity.asp
Tom van Flanders was very much convinced that Lorentzian relativity was a better fit.
OK he had a lot of fringe theories too…
I am not so good in judging who is right, it is much above my skill level.
There are some facts I know which still make me wonder who has the right answer.
We say the universe is 13.4 billion years old (actually we know that number at 4 digits or so). However the Earth is 4.5 billion old. Even from this first comparison the universe seems very young.
And in this very young years it got to a size of visible universe of 46 billion light-years, however we understand it is about 250 times bigger then that, so more then 10000 billion years big.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/422579/cosmos-at-least-250x-bigger-than-visible-universe-say-cosmologists/
So looking at this size and at the relative young age I do not feel very comfortable we have the right answer for the age.
Also the universe appears to be flat not curved:
http://www.space.com/24207-dark-energy-galaxy-map-aas223.html
http://www.wired.com/2013/10/lux-dark-matter/
And all that dark matter and dark energy that we cannot measure making up 96% of the universe? I wonder if we do not make things up and there is a different explanation? That we (as many times before) do not see the forest because of the trees?
This is why I am happy to look at other “fringe” theories which may point us to the right direction after all:
Gravitation appears to act faster then light, the Earth moves towards where we will see the sun in 8 minutes and is not attracted by the sun as we see it.
http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html
Maybe some more studies in our own solar system can lead us to better understand the oh so fringe electricity?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere_of_Jupiter#Jupiter_as_a_pulsar
We do not yet know well how Earth magnetic field is generated, but we are so sure we know perfectly the answer how the universe came to “light”?
I completely agree that there’s nothing wrong with a devotion to teaching. I also think that there’s no contradiction between teaching well and remaining intellectually alive by contributing actively to one’s field. Indeed, one feeds on the other. I have never met a prospective student who didn’t ask whether there were research opportunities for undergraduates.
That is the mobile version of his website that Blogger creates by default if you access it from a mobile browser.
I accessed Lubos’s website with Chrome v35.0.1916.114 and Firefox v29.0.1 with extensions enabled and naked, no crashes.
Gamecock says (May 26, 2014 at 5:41 pm):
There is a universe. It appears to be expanding. A Big Bang explains the universe as we see it.
I agree that there is a universe. It may appear to be expanding to you but it does not to me. For me the universe is fundamentally incapable of increasing or decreasing its overall size simply because there can be no ulterior frame of reference outside or beyond the universe in which its absolute size could be measured. As Einstein showed there can be no absolute measures of size or distance inside the universe but all are relative. Ultimately then it seems to me that the universe has no absolute size and the notion of its size has no meaning for me. Therefore the notion of its expansion is also ultimately meaningless to me too.
“it narrows the scope of the theory arbitrarily to the time after the universe has already come into existence.”
There’s nothing arbitrary about it! That’s what the Big Bang Theory does! As I said, it has no need to explain anything other than what it explains. Do you demand that it also explain gingivitis?
It is arbitrary because the theorists were not compelled to do it but did it as an act of free will. However, the original Big Bang theory was proposed as an explanation for the absolute origin of the universe including time and space. It was not proposed just as an explanation for the imagined expansion of the universe as it is now. And I am not demanding anything at all of Big Bang theorists, as I have already said. I have accepted that the scope of the theory has been reduced to consideration of events after the alleged creation and that this new, restricted theory is what goes by the name of the “Big Bang Theory” these days.
Soledad, I think you have a valid point.
REPLY: He/she might have had, but they blew the chance of ever commenting here again by using not just fake screen names, but multiple screen names. See list below. While dissenting opinion is welcome, sockpuppetry isn’t tolerated here. So, those comments have been removed.
I find it telling that this person who rails against my discussion with “palindrom” about ethics, has none to speak of by the demonstration of multiple identity fakery on display.
Tough noogies if anyone is upset by this.
– Anthony
SNIP
SOCKPUPPETRY – YOU ARE BANNED PER OUR WUWT POLICY PAGE
“A.E. Soledad”. also goes by these screen names here, same sort of angry rants in all cases.
Norman Woods
James Rollins, Jr.
James Rollins
Bill from Nevada
Bill Wright
Steven R. Vada
Aaron C.
S.R.V.
Richard Vada
-Anthony
Earl says:
May 25, 2014 at 9:35 am
The “Red Shift” must have turned into another color!
——
It was absorbed by the CO2. ;^)
milodonharlani says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:55 pm
Gamecock says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:41 pm
This is akin to opponents of evolution who expect scientific explanations for the origin of species to explain the origin of life as well.
==================
Ha ha ha ha. I’ve been sitting on that knowledge, which I have posted here and elsewhere before.
Life preceding evolution by 2,500,000,000 years doesn’t sway their demand that evolution explain the origin of life.
Magic Turtle did say that he can accept a restricted definition of what the Big Bang Theory covers, so there is no longer a problem. In fact, Magic Turtle was rather gracious.
palindrom said @ur momisugly May 27, 2014 at 10:51 am
Nowhere have I indicated that I believe that these are magic, or that the two causes of redshift are mutually exclusive. What I have questioned is the concept that one aspect of GR plays no role in current cosmology.
My problems with BBT are philosophical. Basically BBT cosmologists claim that their theory embodies the cosmological principle. The principle includes the laws of physics being applicable at every time and place in the universes. In BBT, I am told there is a time and place where the laws of physics have yet to come into being. I am told that the laws of physics that do come into being shortly after the BB are contingent; i.e. there was no necessity that they be what I have come to know and hold in considerable affection – awe even. This smells awful like a supernatural cause to me and that means what many philosophers refer to as god.
NB I have no particular aversion to god; rather I prefer material explanations for events in the material world. I am also a hard determinist; I cannot find any reason to believe in uncaused events.
So, Anthony, you decided that my request to erase my domain would not be honored. I said “nuke the whole comment”, but I also said I still believed what I wrote, so you refused. Does that about sum it up? Does erasing the statement not count as a retraction? Do I have to say that I actually don’t believe what I wrote in order to for you to erase it?
How about “I’m deeply sorry that I wrote what I did. I guess I don’t believe it any more, because the host told me I couldn’t. All hail free thought!”
REPLY: How about you just suck it up and move on? I don’t take well to whining from people that should have the professionalism and ethics to use their own name when they criticize other university professionals. – Anthony
palindrom said @ur momisugly May 27, 2014 at 11:26 am
palindrom, you might care to contact Robert and ask him how many death threats he has received. I suspect that the number is extremely close to zero. If my experience of Big School is anything to go by, your most immediate threats are from fellow members of faculty 😉
I am glad that our esteemed host deleted the reference to your place of work since it enabled me to guess who you are with a reasonable degree of certainty. Don’t worry; you are safe. I’m not about to leap on a plane and come and get you. Rather I am still recovering from pneumonia caught from a fellow passenger on my way to New Zealand and contemplating the wisdom of ever flying again.