![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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milodonharlani says:
May 25, 2014 at 9:32 pm
. . . Dunno how you missed the BICEP results. They were in all the papers.
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OK, it seems that you are wanting to separate the hot big bang AFTER inflation so that you can claim that something came before the big bang. Yet, the BICEP2 result that you refer to supposedly offers proof of a preceding superluminal inflationary period. Leaving aside the fact that this has not been confirmed, please state what existed before about 10^-43 sec.
bones says:
May 25, 2014 at 9:40 pm
I don’t know why this is so hard to grasp. BICEP2 observed gravity waves in the early universe, not what came before the BBT. This finding has implications for what might have come before the BBT, but really is only dispositive for hypotheses about the evolution of our universe soon after the BBT.
infinity can’t expand on itself
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why not? 2 x infinity = infinity
lol i can’t believe how harsh some of the comments are on this topic. It seems that challenging the settled science is volatile no matter which “settled” theory it is. Instead of staunchly supporting current theory perhaps you could open your mind to the simple possibility that from our little rock on the edge of the our galaxy, somewhere in time, in this vast universe that we do not have enough information to actually date or decide how the entire Universe came about:P
So perhaps we should keep our minds open to the infinite possibilities instead of pigeon holing any information that refuses to conform to a rigid theory that keeps getting shot full of holes. There are any number of theories that can incorporate or expand on current physics, but not if you put blinders on to the increasing issues with the current popular theory. Einstein and more recently Hawkins have trouble getting the math to work right without the introduction of huge leaps of, for lack of a better term… faith. The recent unintended observation of the Higgs boson in accelerator experiments is just one example of such possibilities. Do we discard it, even though it has been observed, and yet to accept it would mean that current theory would have to evolve:) .
pkatt says:
May 25, 2014 at 10:54 pm
Recent Higgs Boson observations were not unintended. They were very much intended, the results of concerted, expensive searches.
The open nature of this blog means that its support of CACA skepticism gets tarred with the brush of loons commenting here who correctly challenge catastrophic man-made climate change, but also question the facts of evolution & the second law of thermodynamics.
It’s a loon on here who assumes unverifiable theories are reality.
No laws of thermodynamics allow the “big bang” hence another theory of unfounded, undiscovered and unlikely energy “dark energy”.
Then we can try and assess the other theory; gravity being stronger than it really should be. Hence “dark matter” should be 7x greater than the observations show so they invent parallel universes, Higgs Bogus particles and all sorts of daft never to be proved assertions.
So milo, I would like you to play the good scientist. Doubt everything. Keep an open mind and take no stance. Doing otherwise is lowering yourself to the level of a climate scientist.
Myself and Mr. Wilson postulated fun facts and observations over the theories which give the BB an impossible time. Quoting present day daft theories do not fix the questions.
Neurones have a body (soma) and an axon. The axon looks white because it is surrounded by layers of myelin, a fatty substance. Fats are white, unless they get oxidized and they turn yellowish. The gray matter refers to parts of the nervous system where there is an accumulation of neuronal bodies, whereas accumulations of axons look white and they are called white matter.
Try this. Sit down on a box or stool for several hours and watch an ant nest. After this, close your eyes and think about the possibility that there may just be a mind behind all this star stuff, as far above ours as ours is above ants. Hint. Unless you disturb the ant nest, the ants will go about their business seemingly oblivious to your presence. In a nutshell I don’t humans can ever know what the true big picture is because of the smallness of our existence. Make any sense?
Magic Turtle says:
May 25, 2014 at 7:33 pm
milodonharlani says:
May 25, 2014 at 7:22 pm
“The Big Bang Theory does not posit that the universe arose spontaneously out of nothing, for starters.”
Then how, and from what does the Big Bang theory propose that the universe did arise, O superior comprehending one?
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The Big Bang Theory does not need to address how the universe arose. What led up to the Big Bang is a different subject. Not knowing what happened before the Big Bang does not falsify the Big Bang.
Your answer is the worst defence. From nothing comes everything? That is in direct contravention of all laws of physics. A disturbance from nothing by nothing?
At Least Fred Hoyle had a sane presupposition about the transfer of matter and energy.
For everyone who has their panties in a twist over the concept of an infinite universe see: http://io9.com/new-survey-supports-theory-of-infinite-universe-1503361325 Note that The Big Bang might still exist, even in an infinite universe but it may have been only a ‘local event’. ‘Local’, in an infinite universe, could cover some significant area. The impact between our ‘brane’ and another has been postulated for the observed microwave background. As one post indicated, there are too many ‘bandaide’ answers to existing theory which are considered accepted science and used to explain inconsistencies between observation and theory ( dark matter and dark energy). Don’t know if this Sci-News.com article has any legs but it is great to see folks questioning existing dogma considering out of the box answers. Just as Newtonian physics needed the Einsteinian tweek, general relativity may need some adjustments for which we presently lack the technology to measure what they might be.
the talk of “multiverses” to me requires we change what words mean…….IF there is a universe that alone precludes there being any multiverses, since the universe would be all that exists, how does one find something outside of ALL?……..any other “verses” would still be part of this singular universe……….and time travel makes no sense on any level, the ONLY “time” that exists is NOW, to travel either forwards or backwards in a physical way is NOT possible, because the whole universe would have to make physical changes……the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist, you CANT travel to places that do NOT exist.
ZombieSymmetry says (May 25, 2014 at 8:01 pm):
For those with problems understanding the expansion, I’m pretty sure Carl Sagan’s old balloon analogy is the simplest way to look at it. It might be an overly simplistic model, but it helps to conceptualize things.…
It was Carl Sagan’s analogy? I should have guessed. “overly simplistic” seems a kind description of it to me. “misleading” would be nearer to my mark.
…Picture a closed two-dimensional universe as a balloon, where the surface of the balloon is “space” and the radius of the balloon is time. As the balloon inflates, it expands in the direction of time. Expansion of our universe would be identical, but with one additional dimension. As the universe expands, it isn’t expanding into some previously unoccupied “space” – the expansion is time.
It doesn’t matter how many dimensions we give the universe, the balloon-analogy is still treating time as another dimension of space (and an absolute one at that!). The balloon definitely is expanding into some previously unoccupied 3-D space and likewise, by analogy, the posited hyper-spherical universe is expanding into some previously unoccupied hyper-space, one of whose dimensions happens to be time. To suggest that it isn’t expanding in space because it’s actually expanding in time is simply wrong because the Big Bang theory maintains that expanding in space is precisely what the red shift of the galaxies implies the universe is doing.
Sagan’s balloon analogy seems to confuse more than it clarifies to me.
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REPLY: Well what’s funny is that his website (Luboš) crashed my Firefox browser when I visited it this morning. – Anth*ny
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Yeah, that’s one of the only sites that can crash my Firefox. I have to use his “simplified” site:
http://motls.blogspot.com/?m=1
With alot of manipulating of NoScript and Ghostery there, I can get to his comments, but it’s just too painful…
But of course the Universe is finite. So too are my last 100 Skyrim game save files.
Gamecock says:
May 26, 2014 at 4:25 am
The Big Bang Theory does not need to address how the universe arose. What led up to the Big Bang is a different subject. Not knowing what happened before the Big Bang does not falsify the Big Bang.
This argument merely sidesteps the issue. When the Big Bang theory was initially proposed by Georges Lemaitre, a Vatican priest, in 1927 it was proposed as an explanation for the origin of the universe including time and space. However, it did not explain what caused the Big Bang (except to “explain” it as an original, creative act of God – as a miracle, in other words). Nor did it explain what the time and space that he imagined expanding out of the dimensionless point in which all time and space were originally contained were supposedly expanding in relation to. An expansion into no-time and no-space is not merely unimaginable: it is logically absurd, tantamount to saying that the universe grows with respect to itself. Nor does the theory address the absurdity of proposing that time itself had no existence before a specific point in time! Such double-talk is inherently meaningless.
Subsequent Big Bang theorising appears never to have answered these fundamental questions either. Rather, it appears to have ignored them, restricting its scope to moments in time after the universe has already come into hypothetical existence as a dimensionless point of infinite density and temperature. In this way it has downgraded the Big Bang theory from being the proposed explanation for the origin of the universe that it originally was to something less grand and less explanatory. No doubt some would regard this as scientific progress. But the fundamental questions that arose with Lemaitre’s original proposition remain unanswered and even unaddressed.
” In addition, the light is stretched as the Universe expanded, further dimming the light.”
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Stretching the light alters it’s frequency, not it’s amplitude.
I cannot find the original article but the initial test that revealed the Higgs Boson was a test to see if they could create a black hole or prove the existence of dark matter. After about 40 years of total denial, it is now an accepted portion of the equation and may even provide insight to some of the problems that are continuing to occur with the current theory. According to Einstein and Hawkins it should not exist, and yet apparently it does. Science must be flexible to work. We dont know it all.
Andyj says:
May 26, 2014 at 3:15 am
Science is not only doubt. Skepticism is part of the method, the goal of which is understanding nature.
Of course I doubt hypotheses, but that’s just the first step. Next you test them against reality to see how well they hold up. The Steady State Theory has been falsified, while the Big Bang has been confirmed by observation. No theory is ever totally perfected. There remains much to learn.
But saying that the CMB was born red-shifted is precisely like creationists’ saying that light was created by God en route from distant stars, so that they only appear billions of years old.
Equating the methods of astrophysicists & cosmologists with those of “climate scientists” is a preposterous, scurrilous lie.
bones says:
May 25, 2014 at 9:19 pm
milodonharlani says:
May 25, 2014 at 7:22 pm
The Big Bang Theory does not posit that the universe arose spontaneously out of nothing, for starters.
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Who knew? From what did the big bang arise?
According to superstring theory, all 11 dimensions of the universe were originally internal so that the universe was the size of the Plank length, 10e-33mm (nothing can be smaller than this). Then at the big bang three of the eleven dimensions leaked out and becme spatially extended. So ab initio wasn’t ex nihilo. The universe just needed some elbow-room.
Pardon me, but that is just elegant gibberish that exactly repeats the original comment: The universe started from nothing, if nothing can be smaller be smaller than a Plank’s length. Now, where was ‘everything” before it became “nothing” at 10-34 seconds? If they were “internal” then what were they “internal” of? Because the “11 invisible (invincible ?) dimensions of invisible mathematics” say so is no more valid than “Because the Priest/Warlocks/Inquisition says so”
And less convincing actually than “Let there be light.”
Milo
Steady state theory has been falsified on a strawman basis. Not good enough.
Someone else said ” the Big Bang theory was initially proposed by Georges Lemaitre, a Vatican priest, in 1927.
I could predate that with a Jules Verne(?) short story about a man who had an accident on his bicycle and died. Eons later the universe collapsed back on itself and BOOM! Reformed in a big bang. The stars and galaxies reformed. On one tiny insignificant planet there was his man, (same name) who had an aversion to bicycles but simply didn’t know why.
Anyone know this story?
@Stephen Fisher Wilde: “One possibility is that light travelling through the universe loses some of its speed via interaction with the medium through which it passes.”
Yes! I’m glad someone said it. I don’t feel so alone now. We know that light gets bent when passing by galactic clusters, so there’s some sort of deformation of the path of the photon happening here. Would not that sap some energy? And I’ve long suspected that G is not a constant and is actually larger in intergalactic space – or anyplace far enough away from stars. If photons are bent by galactic clusters, then the molasses of >>G intergalactic space might have an effect on them too.
Magic Turtle says:
May 26, 2014 at 10:23 am
This argument merely sidesteps the issue.
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Your “issue” is invented. Unless you wish to argue there is no universe.
@ur momisugly Gamecock
“Your “issue” is invented. Unless you wish to argue there is no universe.”
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What an absurd little comment. If I posited that an unknowable miracle happened at Lourdes, and scientist worth his salt would question it. And yet, you wish to simply dismiss the cosmological question (an unknowable miracle of origin) as a non-question simply because the Universe exists. Questioning the rationality of the miracle in question is eminently scientific. And if science fails to come up with a decent rational answer, then science needs to be silent and quit say silly things like “the universe just needed more elbow room”.
Fred Hoyle DIDN”T deny that the universe is expanding. He thought more matter was spontaneously created as the universe expanded, to maintain constant density.
Simple Newtonian physics leads to a expanding universe. Either it’s expanding, thanks to a previous explosion, or gravity is going to act on all that static matter, pulling it all together in a big crunch.
Of course Hoyle did not deny the expanding universe. But this premise causes problems that cannot be adequately answered as set out before.
Seems the speed of light is not a constant in free space. Light speed may only be seen as a constant at the point it is tested.
Remember, velocity=time over distance. Time alters under gravity because it is gravity. The only way it can be unity is if distance warps accordingly.
I know they’ve measured the speed of light on the surface of the earth, but has anyone measured the speed of light in space (within the heliosphere)? Just curious.