# How the Universe Stopped Making Sense

From Space.com

We’re getting something wrong about the universe.

We’re getting something wrong about the universe.

It might be something small: a measurement issue that makes certain stars looks closer or farther away than they are, something astrophysicists could fix with a few tweaks to how they measure distances across space. It might be something big: an error — or series of errors — in  cosmology, or our understanding of the universe’s origin and evolution. If that’s the case, our entire history of space and time may be messed up. But whatever the issue is, it’s making key observations of the universe disagree with each other: Measured one way, the universe appears to be expanding at a certain rate; measured another way, the universe appears to be expanding at a different rate. And, as a new paper shows, those discrepancies have gotten larger in recent years, even as the measurements have gotten more precise.

“We think that if our understanding of cosmology is correct, then all of these different measurements should be giving us the same answer,” said Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and co-author of the new paper.

The two most famous measurements work very differently from one another. The first relies on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB): the microwave radiation leftover from the first moments after the Big Bang. Cosmologists have built theoretical models of the entire history of the universe on a CMB foundation — models they’re very confident in, and that would require an all-new physics to break. And taken together, Mack said, they produce a reasonably precise number for the Hubble constant, or H0, which governs how fast the universe is currently expanding.

The second measurement uses supernovas and flashing stars in nearby galaxies, known as Cepheids. By gauging how far those galaxies are from our own, and how fast they’re moving away from us, astronomers have gotten what they believe is a very precise measurement of the Hubble constant. And that method offers a different H0.

“If we’re getting different answers that means that there’s something that we don’t know,” Mack told Live Science. “So this is really about not just understanding the current expansion rate of the universe — which is something we’re interested in — but understanding how the universe has evolved, how the expansion has evolved, and what space-time has been doing all this time.”

Weikang Lin, also a cosmologist at NCSU and lead author of the paper, said that to develop a full picture of the problem, the team decided to round up all the different ways of “constraining” H0 in one place. The paper has not yet been formally peer reviewed or published, and is available on the preprint server arXiv.

Here’s what “constraining” means: Measurements in physics rarely turn up exact answers. Instead, they put limits on the range of possible answers. And by looking at these constraints together, you can learn a lot about something you’re studying. Looking through one telescope, for example, you might learn that a point of light in space is either red, yellow or orange. Another might tell you it’s brighter than most other lights in space but less bright than the sun. Another might tell you it’s moving across the sky as fast a planet. None of those constraints would tell you much on their own, but taken together they suggest you’re looking at Mars.

Full article here.

HT/KcTaz

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markl
October 17, 2019 8:18 pm

The more we learn the less we know.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  markl
October 17, 2019 9:35 pm

Maybe we don’t simplify the sum of our findings by applying Occam’s razor?

Patrick
Reply to  Pop Piasa
October 18, 2019 3:59 am

Occam’s Razor doesn’t make the round peg / square hole problem better.

If H0 for one case is right, then the measurements for the second make no sense. The reverse is also applicable.

David L. Hagen
Reply to  Patrick
October 18, 2019 1:21 pm

Better Einstein’s Razor: “Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler”
Current cosmology appears to have assumptions that are “too simple”. aka TypeB errors.
Any presupposition that one must ignore revelation can further compound the issue.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Patrick
October 23, 2019 10:51 am

And what if neither one is right?

Chris Hanley
Reply to  markl
October 17, 2019 10:12 pm

“The more we learn the less we know …”.
Are we learning more and more about less and less until we know absolutely everything about nothing, or less and less about more and more until we know nothing about absolutely everything⸮

Greg
Reply to  Chris Hanley
October 17, 2019 11:42 pm

Yes, something to do Heisenberg.

Even the value of “big G” has been changing by more the claimed measurement uncertainty during the 20th century. Good luck with the assumption that it has not changed anywhere in the universe for the last 13.5 billion years.

I think that is called unwarranted extrapolation.

Physicists have got around this problem by making it constant by definition now. Nicely sweeps that problem under the rug. This means that other measurements will now vary but “big G” is safely protected from experimental verification.

Phil
Reply to  Greg
October 18, 2019 3:39 am

“Measurements may vary but big G is safely protected from experimental verification …

Now what does that remind me of?

Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
Reply to  Greg
October 18, 2019 6:43 pm

But we have verified the predictions of quantum mechanics to 15 significant digits. So why the big whoop about G?

Greg
Reply to  Chris Hanley
October 18, 2019 1:44 am

I just had a look at the origin of that article. Space.com is total bunk. Firstly no identification of this pretty image. Seems totally unrelated to the article, just a random Hubble for visual effect.

Most of these articles seem to be written by “journalists” with no science background whatsoever, which probably explains their incoherent garbage.

One called Adam Mann has a headline article saying black energy and black matter account for 25% of the universe, it links to another of his articles last year where he claimed it was 60%. The usual amount of dark fairy dust is that it is 95%, and the observable matter is just 5%: ie our understanding is off by a factor of 20.

He reports that we “see” black matter throughout the universe but goes on the explain in detail that we cannot detect it and have zero experimental proof it exists.

Please don’t bother wasting our time with such worthless sources. Cosmology is flawed enough even when reported by people who understand the subject and don’t misreport everything through total ignorance of the subject matter.

Philo
Reply to  Greg
October 20, 2019 8:14 am

You’ve got a critical constant measured 2 ways with significantly different results. That is a significant result no matter where you read about it.

Just shows we still have a lot to learn.

Guy
Reply to  Chris Hanley
October 18, 2019 10:23 am

Was it Halton Arp who lost his telescope time because his observations were totally inconsistent with the idea that you could measure how far away and fast things were by measuring their “red shift”. He came up with the concept of “intrinsic red shift” which I believe can be called in plain English “red”.

Hashbang
Reply to  Guy
October 18, 2019 4:54 pm

Yes. He wrote a book called “Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies” on that subject. I know this because the book used to be in my local library.

Went there last week for the first time in many years and was disgusted at how it had been dumbed down. There was probably only about 1/20th of the books that were there in the 80’s and most of those were very superficial, not much more than picture books. Had a look in the meteorology area. Not one book on the general circulation, atmospheric physics etc. but plenty on “saving the planet” and ways to mitigate climate change. To rub salt into the wound within the library was a children’s play area with an assortment of screaming toddlers. What ever happened to the idea that a library should be a quiet place reading and study?

Kenneth Hunter
Reply to  Hashbang
October 18, 2019 6:06 pm

Personal computers have all but eliminated the need for public libraries for most kinds of research. Where have you been since the turn of the century?

Reply to  Hashbang
October 18, 2019 6:48 pm

My wife works in a public library. You have no idea how bad it’s gotten.

sycomputing
Reply to  Hashbang
October 18, 2019 8:35 pm

You have no idea how bad it’s gotten.

Prime example:

Personal computers have all but eliminated the need for public libraries for most kinds of research.

Sigh . . .

Reply to  Hashbang
October 19, 2019 7:43 pm

There are a lot of people still today without access to the internet, and public libraries are where they go.

There’s a scene in the animated TV series “Family Guy,” where Peter Griffin, the family patriarch takes his teen-aged son Chris into a library for some reason. Never having been before, Chris asks, “What’s a library, Dad?” Peter replies, “It’s where homeless people go for BM.”

That is not far off the mark. The things the librarians and circulation personnel find in the restrooms beggar the imagination.

Ed Zuiderwijk
Reply to  markl
October 18, 2019 1:48 am

No. The more we learn the more we know the things we don’t know. But the assembled knowledge increases.

wadelightly
Reply to  Ed Zuiderwijk
October 18, 2019 5:58 am

Agree. “It’s not what we don’t know that gets us into trouble, it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so” – Mark Twain.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Ed Zuiderwijk
October 18, 2019 10:04 am

+10

Df
Reply to  markl
October 18, 2019 3:00 am

The more we learn, the more we realise there’s so much more to learn.

old white guy
Reply to  markl
October 18, 2019 4:35 am

We are here at this point in time. Worrying about the past is, well, pointless. Predicting the future will not be changed, or more accurate no matter how many million light years away another planet, star or solar system might be.

Charles Higley
Reply to  markl
October 18, 2019 5:11 am

The biggest problem is that redshifting of starlight is used to describe the expanding Universe, with the highest redshifts being the objects farthest away because they are receding the fastest, per their high redshifts. The assumption that the Universe is expanding is spurious as it ignores other sources of redshift, until, of course, they talk about black holes and suddenly gravity causes huge redshifts.

There are two other ways that light is redshifted. First, is simply light climbing out of the gravity well of its star source or galaxy. This would reflect the mass of the light source. Second is the observation that light from stars must pass tangentially through the gravitational fields of many other stars and galaxies before it gets to us, being incrementally redshifted during its long trip from a very distant star, thus having the highest redshift. So, reshifting indicates distance traveled and not speed away from us.

There is no reason for a Big Bang and all the black physics that has been imagined (made up) to make it work. There are multiple models for black holes because none of them match the real universe when examined closely. Even Einstein and Oppenheimer said black holes cannot exist.

The Steady State Universe was the model before the Big Bang was adopted, by illogically ignoring Occam’s Razor, and, when elaborated by the aspects of a Plasma Universe, all of the Big Bang black physics becomes irrelevant along with the expanding Universe. We suddenly can explain almost everything we detect or see and can put away the illogical idea that most of the Universe is invisible and undetectable.

As Big Bang research is pretty much a billion dollar industry, they are not going to abandon the Big Bang any time soon, but eventually the Steady State Plasma Universe will prove more productive. Locally, we are interpreting our solar system increasingly in terms of plasma physics, which is a good start. Once we start seeing other stars the same way, it should start making real inroads.

Robert of Ottawa
Reply to  Charles Higley
October 18, 2019 2:14 pm

I differ slightly. Gravity I think causes the red shift. If a laser was pointed up to the space station from the surface of the Earth, it would be red shiffted because it lost energy, therefore wavelength, due to the increase in potential energy as it climbed out of the gravitational hole. dE/dR is -ve.

But what happens if that same laser is pointed towards the centre of the Earth? Would an observer at the centre see it be be red shifted or blue shifted? One would at first say “blue shifted”, perhaps, because it would have gained energy as it “fell” to the centre of the Earth.

But in both directions, the gravity gradient is of the same sign, -ve or decreasing gravitational potential. At the end of both trajectories, the photon has zero net gravitational pull upon it from the Earth.

Now expand the radius of the Earth to effective infinty, or the size of the universe if that is your preference. There are two possibilities:

1. Any emitted photon is effectively emitted from a zero gravitational potential, on a cosmic scale and therefore is “climbing uphill” as it approaches us.

2. We, being an observer at the centre of a VERY LARGE Earth, AKA the universe, would see that photon blue-shifted as it “fell downhill” towards us and gained energy.

And NO, I do not know, but the question is cogent I believe. I also believe we could test this experimentally.

Understand that if you accept that the laser will be blue shifted from the earth’s surface to the centre, then we should be seeing blue shift, not red.

mcswell
Reply to  Robert of Ottawa
October 18, 2019 4:28 pm

Much to disagree with here, but let’s start with this: “Any emitted photon is effectively emitted from a zero gravitational potential” No. The photons that we see which were emitted elsewhere in the universe started in a gravitational well at the surface of a star, which well is much deeper than Earth’s.

Reply to  Robert of Ottawa
October 18, 2019 7:00 pm

I’ve always wondered what the result would be if one mounted a laser so that it could swing throughout a complete circle, then turned it on and started rotating it at 1 rpm.

At a distance of 100,000 km, the wavefront of the laser would be completing a 314,159 km circle in 1 second, apparently violating the speed of light. What would an observer out there see, watching for the laser swing past him once a second?

The laser light is physical; it’s either a stream of photons or an electromagnetic wavefront, but either way, it can’t go FTL What would the observer see?

Gordon Dressler
Reply to  James Schrumpf
October 20, 2019 10:59 am

JS,
First, we need to assume that the observer is located in an inertial frame-of-reference relative to the LOCATION of the rotating laser (i.e., neither the observer or LOCATION of the laser are rotating with respect to each other). Next, we assume there is a negligible gravitational gradient between the laser source and the observer. And finally, we assume that sufficient time has passed for the laser photons, traveling at constant speed-of-light “c,” to have reached the observer.

The observer, at a fixed location looking toward the laser location with sufficient optical detection capability, would see busts of photons every second with the photons having the frequency of the source laser. These represent photons that are propagating RADIALLY away from the laser. In all cases, however, the photons would appear to the observer to be coming directly from the laser location . . . they would NOT change in velocity vector or frequency as a result of being spontaneously (effectively, instantaneously) transmitted from a laser that was was rotating (such as the hypothetical 1 rpm). That is, the laser photons would travel on a space-time geodesics, although being spread over the 360 degrees of the laser’s rotational plane.

It is, effectively and pardon the pun, an optical illusion to say that the “wavefront” of the laser emissions are sweeping across space faster than c if one is sufficiently far removed from the source of the rotating laser.

John Tillman
Reply to  Charles Higley
October 18, 2019 3:35 pm

When and if an hypothesis superior to the Big Bang comes along, cosmologists will embrace it. Cosmology isn’t like “climate science” (TM). It is real science.

The so-called Steady State Plasma Universe has produced nothing. Alfven hatched it for non-scientific reasons. To him, the Big Bang smacked of creation. He wasn’t a cosmologist, but a plasma physicist with an ideological ax to grind.

Based upon all available evidence, the Big Bang still holds up well. But as with all genuine science, aspects of the theory well remain subject to further hypothesis and experiment. The disagreement between the two methods of measuring the universe’s expansion rate is liable to be adjudicated by further observations and theoretical developments without overthrowing the Big Bang. The authors of the paper summarized in the Space.com suggest that the local measurement is probably preferable, but only future work can resolve the discrepancy. A new physics is less likely than a solution through improved instruments, techniques, observation and experiment.

Charles Higley
Reply to  markl
October 18, 2019 5:27 am

I forgot. One reason the above article describes disparities in the rate of the expanding Universe is because it is not real science and thus the underpinning of their science is fluid and ill-defined. Just as with the ill-fated greenhouse effect invented by Arrhenius, there are many ways to show that CO2 cannot do what they claim and the greenhouse effect by gases is nonfunctional.

Occam’s Razor says that the simplest model should be disproven before a more complicated model is adopted. If one looks at the absorption/emission spectrum of CO2, one finds that it simply cannot absorb and emit IR in the manner claimed, only emitting one wavelength at night, equivalent to a blackbody temperature of -80ºC and incapable of warming the surface at any time, as the surface everywhere is warmer than this.

CO2’s two other absorption peaks are equivalent to 800 and 400ºC, which would only be triggered by direct sunlight and thus only absorb and emit during the day, such that this activity would serve to lessen/dissipate solar input to the surface and thus decrease the climate temperature if CO2 increased.

In other words, before you take a car on a test drive or buy a car, it is important to look under the hood. Looking under the hood of CO2 is of paramount importance. The recent claim of SF6 being the world’s most powerful greenhouse gas fails when you look under the hood and see that SF6 has really only one very narrow absorption band equivalent to 0ºC. Not only is it incredibly low in atmospheric concentration, but it could only warm surfaces colder than zero, which will have little effect on anything any human or lifeform cares about. If the winter is a tiny hair, an undetectable hair, warmer, the world will not care or react.

Phil.
Reply to  Charles Higley
October 18, 2019 7:12 am

If one looks at the absorption/emission spectrum of CO2, one finds that it simply cannot absorb and emit IR in the manner claimed, only emitting one wavelength at night, equivalent to a blackbody temperature of -80ºC and incapable of warming the surface at any time, as the surface everywhere is warmer than this.

CO2’s two other absorption peaks are equivalent to 800 and 400ºC, which would only be triggered by direct sunlight and thus only absorb and emit during the day, such that this activity would serve to lessen/dissipate solar input to the surface and thus decrease the climate temperature if CO2 increased.

Absolute garbage! Your equivalency of temperature with absorption bands is ‘fake science’.

Editor
Reply to  Phil.
October 18, 2019 7:54 am

Agreed. This is poor understanding of the mechanisms by which CO2 effects the atmospheric temperature.

Further, I think it’s logically absurd to posit an object with no start (the universe) as the plasma theory suggests. But…the real problem is that Charles has “picked a winner” and now will bend all evidence to fit that theory. This is pretty much what the climate alarmists have done, and doesn’t engender any confidence in any conclusions produced.

rip

Charles Higley
Reply to  Phil.
October 18, 2019 10:50 am

Wien’s equation lets the wave number of wave length be converted into the equivalent blackbody temperature. It is not fake science, but you r dismissal of it is truly fake intellect.

Their science says that CO2 absorbs IR from the surface and sends it back to the the surface, thus warming the surface, as a greenhouse effect. As CO2 has only three absorption bands and two of them are too hi energy yo be activated by surface-emitted IR, only one bacd would be functional and it is active all the time anyhow.

Buy a dog and build a fenced in yard for it with just one post. It does not work. You simply do not understand spectroscopy.

Phoenix44
Reply to  markl
October 18, 2019 8:59 am

The more we know the more we see that we don’t know.

Or the answer to every question in science raises twenty new questions.

Colin
October 17, 2019 8:24 pm

Expansion deniers! The science is settled!

bonbon
Reply to  Colin
October 18, 2019 2:12 am

LOL!

ironargonaut
Reply to  Colin
October 18, 2019 5:17 am

My money is on the second one. The big bang theory has become a religion. Proof in point when two separate (but both wrong) studies said universe was shrinking. Big bang wasn’t said to be wrong even though the science pointed us in that direction. no, the theory miraculously changed to allow a shrinking and expanding universe. And, therefore removed one proof that could have showed it wrong. People say if it can’t be proven its religion, conclusion it’s now a religion and won’t be changed significantly anytime soon. No matter the evidence.

whiten
Reply to  ironargonaut
October 19, 2019 10:18 am

ironargonaut
October 18, 2019 at 5:17 am

“the theory miraculously changed to allow a shrinking and expanding universe. ”
————————–

“the theory”, does collapse under the weight of the “expanding universe”, as non compatible at all with such as a condition.

After a lot of work to make that condition mend with “the theory”, when quite obvious at some point that it could not,
in the end the ‘shrinking” was considered and served as balancing out the expanding problem there. (at least mathematically)
Some “brilliant solution” directly sought out from the “Holistic Scientific Bible” of
“But that is what plants crave for !!!”.

The moment the age of universe is considered, and some number put to it, in whatever way possible employed or thought or sought,
at that moment the “Big Bang” collapses like a house of cards. (the hypothesis I mean)…. completely non compatible… and forcefully backwards,
like the Big Bang consisting more as a “theory” of the shrinking of the universe.

The catch 22 that the Bigy Bangy can not survive… no matter what.

cheers

Kyle in Upstate NY
Reply to  ironargonaut
October 25, 2019 5:02 pm

The Big Bang is one of the most well-supported theories in science. It is not any religion.

RoHa
October 17, 2019 8:31 pm

Stopped? Any proof that the Universe ever did make sense?

Rhoda R
Reply to  RoHa
October 17, 2019 8:59 pm

I gave up after dark matter and strings. And don’t get me going on ‘flavors’ of something or another.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Rhoda R
October 17, 2019 9:44 pm

How about interaction with parallel universes? 😵 This all seems more subjective than objective to me.

Greg
Reply to  Rhoda R
October 17, 2019 11:53 pm

Yep dark matter was when they really admitted they had no idea. If you need to say you made factor of 20 error in the amount of matter in the universe, the rest is joke.

Saying that there is an invisible, undetectable, omnipresent force holding the universe together is not a discovery. Most other religions have been saying the same thing for millennia.

What is the most parsimonious explanation?

View from the Solent
Reply to  Greg
October 18, 2019 1:49 am
Kyle in Upstate NY
Reply to  Greg
October 25, 2019 4:58 pm

Dark matter is not religion, it is that either the current understanding of gravity is wrong (which thus far thousands of experiments have shown it is not) or there is a type of particle in the universe that accounts for most of the matter in the universe that is not detectable by light.

ironargonaut
Reply to  Rhoda R
October 18, 2019 5:22 am

You ever notice how the “force” from Star Wars and dark matter are pretty much the same. Both unseen and mysteriously spread throughout the galaxy controlling things.

John Endicott
Reply to  ironargonaut
October 18, 2019 8:56 am

All we need now is to “discover” the midichlorians that allow “force users” to manipulate the Dark Matter the way the Jedi do the Force.

Kyle in Upstate NY
Reply to  ironargonaut
October 25, 2019 5:00 pm

They are not even remotely close. Dark matter is not a “force,” it is just matter that we cannot see or detect in conventional ways right now, but we know it is there because of its gravity. The “Force” in Star Wars, by contrast, is energy that flows through every single living thing. It is not matter.

Urederra
Reply to  RoHa
October 18, 2019 9:10 am

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

Douglas Adams, HHGG

John Sandhofner
October 17, 2019 8:43 pm

As a Christian there are some of us who believe in a young earth existence. There is growing evidence that present geological conditions could be the results of massive flooding and erosion as a result of a worldwide flood. Prior to the flood the nature of the atmosphere was different than it is today. Much of the dinosaur fossils are found in positions suggesting rapid burial by water. Much of science assume that all constants we use today have been the same forever. Again there is evidence that a catastrophic event could impacted these constants. Carbon dating is not reliable and could have been altered by such a catastropic event. If a supreme being created this universe it was more than capable of having light that normally takes millions of light years to reach us to be present at creation. How might that affect measurements we make now about the universe that don’t seem to be consistant? Science orginally started when men realized that this supreme creator used logic and created scientific principles that could be studied and understood. Today we have decided we don’t need God and are trying our hardest to prove he doesn’t exist. However the more we learn the more we realize no amount of time could allow for all of this to happen by chance. Too complex for that. Science needs to return to its original mindset.

Stephen Wilde
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 17, 2019 9:03 pm

Sadly, not helpful.

Chris Hoff
Reply to  Stephen Wilde
October 17, 2019 9:33 pm

We also know just this year from the Juno spacecraft that a proto-planet ten times the mass of the earth had a direct hit on Jupiter’s core, the time given is 4.5 Billion years ago. Velikovsky suggested just such an event as being responsible for an ejection of Venus from Jupiter. He proposed this based on ancient mythology and religious beliefs, and he did it 50 years ago. It goes without saying he also predicted radio noises from Jupiter plus not a few other things.

Greg
Reply to  Chris Hoff
October 17, 2019 11:59 pm

So you think we can tell what happened 4.5 billion years ago by looking at the swirling atmosphere of Jupiter?

I just love the certainty that we “know” such things based on rabid speculation and untested hypotheses.

Nicholas McGinley
Reply to  Greg
October 18, 2019 12:36 am

“Know” is strong language in science, or in logic.
I “know” no such thing can be “known”, given the evidence for it.
Some people apparently think every time someone writes a paper or has a new idea, it overturns all that came prior.

Greg
Reply to  Greg
October 18, 2019 1:53 am

Since I am not even aware that we have worked out whether Jupiter has a solid core, or what it is made of since we can’t penetrate far into its dense atmosphere.

They where totally gobsmacked by what Juno sensors revealed about Jupiter and openly admitted they had it, not just a bit wrong, but totally wrong.

Speculation about an event which happened to that planet 4.5 billion year ago is stupid beyond belief.

IIRC Velikovsky had Venus erupting from Saturn , not Jupiter.

MarkW
Reply to  Chris Hoff
October 18, 2019 7:31 am

Chris, we know of no such thing.
For ancient mythology to have recorded this event that allegedly happened 4.5 billion years ago, there would have to have been people around 4.5 billion years ago.
Your own claims are self refuting.
The idea that Venus was ejected from Jupiter is insane.
Anything ejected from Jupiter would be mostly gas. Venus isn’t.
How did Venus get into a stable orbit between Earth and Mercury if it had been ejected from Jupiter?

John Endicott
Reply to  MarkW
October 18, 2019 9:19 am

While I agree that the idea is speculative nonsense with no evidentiary basis, my inner devil’s advocate can’t help but tackle a few points:

Anything ejected from Jupiter would be mostly gas. Venus isn’t.

No necessarily. Remember, in the given scenario, the “impact” involved two large objects, which means two sources of matter for the proposed ejection IE what could have been “ejected” could have been a large chunk of the “x10 the size of earth proto-planet” that allegedly collided with Jupiter 4.5 billion years ago.

How did Venus get into a stable orbit between Earth and Mercury if it had been ejected from Jupiter?

That would rather depend on the geometry of where Jupiter is in it’s orbit around the sun in relation to what angle the incoming “proto-planet” collided with Jupiter and the resulting angle of the ejection. Given the right positioning and angles, it’s not entirely impossible (but also not all that likely) that the resulting ejection could have travelled in an arc that took it into Orbit round the sun that over the course of billions of years would stabilize into what we know as Venus’s orbit. Things would have had to of lined up just right for it to happen, you’d have better odds playing mega-millions.

Wesley Warren
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 17, 2019 9:09 pm

Said so well yet such simplicity seems implausible to many.

JimA
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 17, 2019 9:37 pm

How about when Jesus said ‘place no stone in the path of the believer.’ ?
That is EXACTLY what YEC does.

Reply to  JimA
October 18, 2019 12:29 am

That is a mistranslation. It should be:

“Never get in the path of a stoned believer.”

Reply to  M Simon
October 18, 2019 7:09 pm

How did I end up in talk.origins again?

Kozlowski
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 17, 2019 10:06 pm

Not with you on this one compadre. Pretty overwhelming evidence shows that evolution is true, even if some aspects are not well understood. The earth is not young. Too many verifiable methods to disprove it. And conjecture about God is beyond the realm of science. Properly so.

Dergy
Reply to  Kozlowski
October 20, 2019 12:57 pm

Radioactive decay is not a clock. Not reliable at all. Spontaneous, random.

There is no ability to reconcile a fully formed 4.5 billion year old planet, into a 5 billion year old high-metallicity (requiring multiple generations of stellar novas in the first place) Sun, into a 13.5 billion Universe.

We could be more likely 20 million years old, than 4 billion.

And speaking of erosion- got enough water, you can watch half a mountain disappear in one rainstorm. Certainly not a ‘slow’ process.

Kone Wone
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 17, 2019 10:08 pm

The only phrase in that which makes any sense is : “……….we don’t need God…..”

Richard S Courtney
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 17, 2019 11:31 pm

John Sandhofner,

Most Christians (including me) reject mistaken ideas that say the Bible is a physics textbook.

Richard

Nicholas McGinley
Reply to  Richard S Courtney
October 18, 2019 12:38 am

Thank you Richard.
Personally, I would never step onto an airplane if I had such beliefs as those who reject science.

David
Reply to  Nicholas McGinley
October 18, 2019 5:00 am

Drive a car over a bridge
Step on the brakes
Take medicine
Use electrical devices
etc

Crispin in Waterloo but really in Beijing
Reply to  Richard S Courtney
October 18, 2019 4:04 am

Richard

It seems that at least some of those who read the Bible have not taken to heart that the Book is filled with parables. Parables are not history lessons, they are stories filled with meanings and insights capable for communicating spiritual insights at different levels to people of differing capacities.

I always thought it odd that Jesus said He speaks in parables and listeners take that to mean the whole Bible is to be taken literally. Allusions and abstruse texts are for the thinkers among us. There are many such great Works. Read and enjoy.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Crispin in Waterloo but really in Beijing
October 18, 2019 5:13 am

Apart from the fact the “Bible” was written some 75 years after Jesus died. And is littered with contradiction.

MarkW
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 18, 2019 7:35 am

We don’t know when most of the New Testament was written, the earliest fragment found is from early in the 2nd century, but there is no evidence that this fragment was the first written.
The letters of Paul were written during the life of Paul and Paul was alive when Jesus was.
The contradictions are mostly in the minds of those who take it on faith that they must prove the Bible to be wrong.

Steve Reddish
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 18, 2019 12:01 pm

Furthermore, copies of the New Testament dating from 2nd and 3rd centuries have been found that were written in Syriac and Sahidic (Egyptian) languages, that confirm the Greek versions.

SR

John Tillman
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 18, 2019 2:01 pm

Paul’s genuine letters (about half of them) were written in the First Century, but the forgeries in the 2nd or even 3rd, as with the fake Timothys and Titus.

It’s unclear when the Gospels were written. Mark probably dates from the mid-1st Century, while Luke and Acts from its end. Matthew and John could be latest 1st to early 2nd Century. The final of three forms of John is almost certainly 2nd Century. I and II Peter were most likely not composed by Peter, so are probably from after their putative late 1st Century date.

The rest of the NT is indeed of later origin. It took centuries for various churches to decide which books to include in the canon and which to exclude. Different denominations still disagree.

Even Martin Luther wanted to exclude some NT books accepted by the Roman Catholic Church.

Daniel
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 17, 2019 11:57 pm

John. Your comment is spot on.

David Hartley
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 18, 2019 12:15 am

0.o Wrong site mate.

GregK
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 18, 2019 1:49 am

A very capricious supreme being that makes stuff look old when it’s not.
What sort of sense of humour is that? Maybe it was done to relieve boredom.

And no one is trying to prove that god/gods don’t exist…there is just no evidence that it/they do.

MarkW
Reply to  GregK
October 18, 2019 7:37 am

As my archaeologist friends like to say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

sycomputing
Reply to  MarkW
October 18, 2019 12:03 pm

With my urbanite friends, I enjoy daily the evidence of YHWH all around me, so I like to say, “Absence of testable evidence is no excuse for absense.”

Dergy
Reply to  sycomputing
October 20, 2019 1:02 pm

Do you believe in extra-solar life?

Think carefully how you answer this in relation to “do you believe in god(s)?

sycomputing
Reply to  sycomputing
October 20, 2019 7:06 pm

Hi Dergy:

I don’t always think carefully, but when I do, I prefer unbelief in ET.

Stay rational, my friend!

Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 18, 2019 5:06 am

It’s equally true that the description of the six days of creation in Genesis follows pretty much the pattern we have come to accept as the evolutionary process. We just need to accept that God’s concept of a ‘day’ is slightly different from ours (by several millennia!)

As a Christian I see no point in that debate. Whether the world was created in six days 6,000 years ago and in such a way as to make us think it was a lot older (why would He bother?) or set in train several millennia earlier by a snap of the Almighty fingers (with a set of Laws of Physics which we have very slowly learnt to comprehend) and then broadly left to develop along His pre-determined lines is not relevant.

Certainly not compared with our relationship with that Creator (assuming we believe He exists).

Brian
Reply to  Newminster
October 18, 2019 6:49 am

No opinion on a creator other than we would be less than amoebas in comparison. But, could “year” in this case mean the length of time for Sol to orbit the center of the galaxy?

sycomputing
Reply to  Newminster
October 18, 2019 7:38 am

Whether the world was created in six days 6,000 years ago and in such a way as to make us think it was a lot older . . . is not relevant.

It is relevant, because if that is true, then YHWH is a liar. If YHWH is a liar, about what else has he lied? How and why should I continue to trust him?

Wade
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 18, 2019 5:17 am

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The first words of the Bible. It also shows that the earth existed before the 6 creative days that were described next. Which also helps us to understand that the 6 creative days were not 24 hour days. When you say “in my day” you mean a period of time when you were younger; you do not mean one single day. And the last book of the Bible, Revelation, says that it takes place in the Lord’s day and it goes on to describe symbolic events that clearly cannot take place in a single 24 hour day.

The point of all this is simple: you cannot infer how old the universe or the earth is from the Bible. The only day you can calculate is when Adam was created, and that can only be calculated to the year. The Bible does not describe how the universe came to be because it is not focused on that. The closest it comes to telling us about the universe is when it tells us the earth hangs on nothing (Job 26:7) and that the earth is round (Isaiah 40:22).

Christopher Paino
Reply to  Wade
October 18, 2019 7:32 am

“and that the earth is round (Isaiah 40:22).”

Yep. Round and flat.

Reply to  Christopher Paino
October 19, 2019 1:06 am

>>
Round and flat
<<

With four corners.

Jim

MarkW
Reply to  Wade
October 18, 2019 7:43 am

When the Bible mentions that so and so’s father was so and so, they don’t always mean direct parent. Father in ancient Hebrew can also refer to direct ancestor.
Age in the ancient middle east was also associated with authority and wisdom, so exaggerated ages were assigned to those who were revered. (This isn’t just a Hebrew custom, other cultures in the same area and time did it as well.)

Trying to draw chronologies from Biblical texts isn’t possible.

William Abbott
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 18, 2019 5:33 am

Science’s original mindset? I assume you mean strictly limit scientific inquiry to the scientific method: Hypnosis, null hypothesis, experiment, observations, measurements, repeatability. Draw no conclusions. Let the experiment speak for itself.

This article is explaining what happens when you limit inquiry by the perimeters of the scientific method. You find so many contradictory observations and measurements all the grand theories of origins are rendered meaningless. We can’t make testable origin theories because we can’t observe or measure the past.

All we can do is conduct experiments in the present. Origin theories will never be proven through the scientific method.

MarkW
Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 18, 2019 7:27 am

Bad science used to support a religious view, does not help either science or religion.
While there exist evidence of localized floods, there is no evidence of a worldwide flood occurring everywhere simultaneously.
Where is your evidence that the atmosphere used to be different from today.
Most fossils aren’t even found intact, you can’t make any assumptions about how they died.
Do you have any evidence that the constants change?
Outside the Missoula flood which only affected the American Pacific coast region and the Black Sea flood which affected the Black Sea, where is the evidence for a world wide flood?
How does flooding impact carbon dating?
It’s also possible that the world was created 10 minutes ago, and all of us were created with memories of a life we never led. Prove otherwise.

sycomputing
Reply to  MarkW
October 18, 2019 10:44 am

This is OT (no double entendre intended, but I wish there were because that would’ve been clever) so I won’t go too far for fear of suffering the sure and certain severity of a prodded MOD.

While there exist evidence of localized floods, there is no evidence of a worldwide flood occurring everywhere simultaneously.

Nor does there necessarily have to be evidence for a worldwide flood in order for the history of the Noahic event to be true. The Hebrew word used for “earth” starting in Gen 7:10ff is eretz. With the definite article “the,” it’s haaretz, i.e., “the earth.” The semantic domain of this Hebrew word includes at least: “ground,” “earth,” “piece of ground,” “territory,” “country,” “region,” and even “underworld.” (1)

By “semantic domain” I mean the same word may be translated as any of the several words I just gave you above, depending on context. Examples include: Gen 23:15, Exod 23:10; Gen 47:13, Amos 7:12 and numerous others throughout the Hebrew text. Unfortunately, with the Hebrew language often context is one’s only friend in translation. Furthermore, like the rest of us, translators are slaves to the human’s Being, and all the blech that goes along with that.

Therefore, it seems to me a translation that: 1) better matches the capabilities of the stated purpose of the vessel described in the text; and 2) better matches the available geological evidence with regard to a worldwide flood is, “region” or “territory.”

(1) Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, trans. M.E.J. Richardson (Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1996), 1:90-91.

Dergy
Reply to  MarkW
October 20, 2019 1:08 pm

Global flood is found based on global flood myths. Oral history isn’t to be taken likely. Homo floresiensis extinct 10k years ago. Tiny hominids. Oh, why the islanders a myth of small people- ebu gogo.

Lake Agassiz draining. The flooding of Doggerland. The 200 sunken cities in the Mediterranean ALONE. Sunken cites off Japan, India. Physical evidences of global flooding.

No, no, no, no- all these disparate cultures just happened to share the same mythology of global flooding and it’s just a coincidence there’s physical evidence.

Max
Reply to  MarkW
October 20, 2019 8:53 pm

“Where is the evidence for a worldwide flood”

Do not confuse old ignorance and tradition with the better evidence of science and geological history. Reread the old stories knowing information that they did not have.
The earth has been covered with water not once but several Ice Ages. Leave it to a desert dweller writing the Bible not to have a word for the solid form of water. Nowhere does it say that Noah’s Ark was a boat. In fact it describes a thick walled shelter on the side of a mountain filled with supplies until the snow melted.
Methuselah was near 1000 years old and yet they had no seasons and could not see the stars. Only the sun by day and sometimes a light at night marking the lunar cycle. If time was measured in lunar years, the Methuselah was a normal 80-year-old man.
1000 is never used literally as a number but as a symbol. I think it was proverbs 50; verse 10 ” speaking how God was ruler of everything including “all the cattle on a thousand hills”. Or you get the number going to heaven of 144,000 in revelations by adding 12,000 Jews (Old covenant) and 12,000 Christians.(New covenant) that’s not math, but symbolism.
One day to God is 1000 years to man. Hebrew has no number system, so the 10th letter alphabet is the number 10. (just like Greek) so the letter written three times is the equivalent of 10×10×10. The 10th letter of the alphabet has other meanings and a name. The most relevant to which means “complete” or “finished”or “Whole” like 10 fingers, or a completed cycle like a snake eating its own tail. But it does not mean infinity. When said in threes it has special meaning or importance. Just like 666 being a representation of a cardinal beast like person, (The natural man) versus 777 being Christlike. (The mark is placed in your hands signifying the things you “do” or your head for the things you “think and say”.We mark ourselves, “by their fruits you shall know them”)
The point is there are alternative meanings especially with the numbers which are letters which are symbols are involved.
Another example, have you ever wondered what the secret of the sphinx is? A mason once told me, but I never verified it, that the letters in Hebrew that represent the head of a man, body of a lion, tail of an ox, when placed together spell in physical form, the forbidden name of the most high God…
Add wings or a bird Image and you have the four headed Griffin, or a representation of gods messenger or angel. In Greek it would be mercury with the wings on his hat and boots.
As for the speed of a photon, that cannot change but resistance will alter its frequency or color. Not only is time distortion from gravity capable of changing photons frequency making it redder, magnetism as well will change the color of light. There are galaxies that are red on one side and blue on the other. I doubt that the speed of rotation is a factor.

Reply to  John Sandhofner
October 18, 2019 8:53 am

A total load of hogwash where gross conclusions are dependent upon isolated occurrences that do not represent all of the evidence available.

One small portion of the well known National Monument, ‘Dinosaur National Monument’ has 140 million year old fossils deposited in a river channel in NE Utah.
Ignored are tens of millions of square miles where dinosaur fossils are found where the animal died.
e.g.; ‘Dinosaur State Park’ in Connecticut where 200 million year old dinosaur tracks are abundant. Tracks along water edges or in swamps that would be destroyed by floods

Why not try the ‘Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument’ in Colorado? The fossils there are only 34 million years old and are deposited in a lake formed by the Guffey volcano. Or view the petrified trees and wildlife/plant remains covered by Guffey’s mudflows prior to formation of the lake.
The only semblance of a flood are the pyroclastic flows from the volcano; much like Pompeii in Italy.

Perhaps visit the Trilobite fossil beds in central Utah? Where trilobite and other fossils are abundantly found and reliably dated between 570 to 540 million years ago. These fossils are found in shallow slow moving waterways.
Trilobites are water dwelling and unaffected by floods. Moving water, like floods, would destroy their fragile remains, as many other trilobite fossil locations amply demonstrate; West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Your claim that carbon dating is unreliable is completely false. Ages and timeframes provided by carbon dating have been refined and improved over decades. Only fools assume that a process of improved age estimation makes the process “not reliable”.

Your entire screed is either misleading or completely false.

Johann Wundersamer
Reply to  ATheoK
October 28, 2019 1:02 pm

ATheoK October 18, 2019 at 8:53 am

“The only semblance of a flood are the pyroclastic flows from the volcano; much like Pompeii in Italy.”

Why is Iceland called Iceland?

It’s all too easy for the cavalier traveller to assume that Iceland (Ísland in Icelandic) was named after it’s icy landscapes. … The settlers’ entire livestock died and Flóki angrily renamed the land Ísland (Iceland), with some saying he was inspired by seeing a fjord filled with icebergs.

brians356
October 17, 2019 8:47 pm

Science is never “settled”. Science is for the most part about challenging assumptions. When it becomes unchallengeable and reliable enough, it transitions to engineering.

Nicholas McGinley
Reply to  brians356
October 18, 2019 12:33 am

I think the part about the Earth being billions rather than millions or thousands of years old, is on solid evidentiary ground.
“Much of the dinosaur fossils are found in positions suggesting rapid burial by water. ”
Wait, what?
There are fossils in strata that are deep inside the Earth, on layers of rock that have been tilted, then eroded, then had igneous intrusive events, then were folded, eroded some more, covered with more layers of sediment…
Take a few years of geology classes and explain it all some way which is not simply dismissive of vast amounts of converging lines of evidence, and you will get my attention.
I could think of a dozen things that anyone can go look at that represent processes that take vast amounts of time.
Radioisotope evidence alone would have to simply be dismissed without evidence for why it should be, although one cannot simply go look at it, like one can go to Yosemite park and imagine vast intrusive emplacement of magma which slowly cooled and crystalized into the granite we see. And all the events and time that brought these bodies of rock to the surface and uplifted them, then the various intervals of glaciation, melting, erosion, etc, that gave rise to what we see today.
Multiple separate lines of evidence all converge to give consistent answer to every question that can be asked about the relative positions and timing of events in rock sequences, including questions of logic regarding which events can be seen to have plainly happened either before or after other events, and dating the layers radio-isotopically and via other means.
Noting that “some dinosaur fossils show evidence of rapid” blah blah blah stacked up against centuries of accumulated findings in geology is simply inane.
There are miles deep layers of sedimentary rock, every grain of which eroded from some other rock or precipitated from sea water etc, and was transported, deposited, buried by subsequent deposition, lithified into solid rock, etc.
And then water from a river cut into the rock for over a mile, etc.
And the whole plateau is so far above sea level even the bottom of the canyon allows for water to flow in rapids for hundred and hundreds of miles before reaching the ocean.

http://catcountry105.com/geology-relative-dating-exercise.php

There are huge problems in our understanding of many things, but positing a young Earth solves none of them.
It hand waves them away.
Whatever the nature of God, if you believe He created everything, you must also understand that he designed all of the complexity we see in biology and the vastness of space and the immensity of the energy and the unimaginable spans of time.
I suppose you can decide only a cartoon I Dream of Jeannie version of God (who snapped his fingers and made everything appear as is, pre-formed to look old) is reconcilable with the Bible and you have to be evil to doubt one literal world of that book.
In the movie Conan the Barbarian, Conan and his crew argued about which of them had the most powerful God.
Which is a more powerful God, a cartoon God who snaps his fingers, or one who threw a cloud of stuff into an empty void and put just the right English on it to make everything science has shown to have occurred…happen over billions of years and light years of space time?
Me, I do not try to decide on matters of faith using science, or matters of science using faith.
We have ears, eyes, brain, ability to reason logically…from whence came these gifts?
Not very polite to accept a gift but not the spirit in which it is given.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Nicholas McGinley
October 18, 2019 1:48 am

Darwin, a strong believer in God, after his studies and observations came to the conclusion the Earth *MUST* be much older than accepted at that time. And, of course, he was right.

David
Reply to  Nicholas McGinley
October 18, 2019 5:08 am

The idea that God made the Universe look older than it really is
sounds like deception.

I thought deception was That Other Guy’s job.

sycomputing
Reply to  David
October 18, 2019 12:21 pm

I thought deception was That Other Guy’s job.

You’ve done a scholastically big, bang-up effort describing the situation there Dave.

Steve Reddish
Reply to  David
October 18, 2019 2:17 pm

I agree that deception is not in God’s nature, but the other guy’s.
I see atheists telling us the opposite of whatever the Bible tells us, then scientific evidence revealing the claims contrary to the Bible are the incorrect claims.

Bible tells us God created the heavens and the Earth in the beginning.
Men countered with claim universe had no beginning (steady state theory latest version).
Scientific evidence revealed universe had to have had a beginning.
Men countered with: OK, but that beginning was billions of years ago, not thousands.
(Big Bang Theory is protected from failure the same way CAGW is.)

Bible tells us Earth was transformed by a world-wide catastrophic flood.
Men countered with claim: No catastrophes, just slow changes like we see today.
Scientific evidence revealed there have been great catastrophes (meteor impacts, ice
sheets, very large floods)
Men countered with: OK, but none were world-wide disasters…except that 1 meteor,
and a few ice ages…but no world-wide flood – definitely not!
(Evidence of very large floods that have potential for confirming Noah’s flood is blocked
unless/until a more acceptable explanation can be found – see Missoula flood.)

Bible tells us God created living creatures in the beginning.
Men countered with: Life generates spontaneously all the time.
Scientific evidence revealed life does not spontaneously generate.
Men countered with: OK, maybe not recently, but we see life changing minutely, so life
today must be result of an accumulation of tiny changes to a start made long ago.
Christians say: Evidence life changes doesn’t prove life started spontaneously.
Men counter: We know it must have, we’re working on the how.
(Evolution Theory is non-falsifiable, same as BBT and CAGW.)

Donald Kasper
October 17, 2019 8:49 pm

Every time they use red-shift data, everything goes to crap and they have to invent a dark constant to make the math work. Galactic spin from red-shift requires dark matter to keep them from flying apart. Star red-shift showing expansion requires dark-energy. The nature of the problem is red-shift itself is caused by more than light source motion.

Greg
Reply to  Donald Kasper
October 18, 2019 12:12 am

This is what Dr. Paul Laviolette has been saying for decades. I got him solidly banned from posting any of his work on arxiv, despite support from a Nobel lauriet. Yet more orthodoxy gate-keeping by our dearly “objective” high priests of science.

Nicholas McGinley
Reply to  Donald Kasper
October 18, 2019 12:42 am

It is not adding up, that is for sure, and different estimates for the Hubble Constant is hardly the first think which does not comport.
There are plenty of reasons to reject ad hoc explanations for every mystery or finding.
One relatively recent one is the angular extent of distant galaxies.
They subtend far to large of an angle to be as distant as red shift suggests.

fthoma
Reply to  Donald Kasper
October 18, 2019 2:40 am

A possible explanation for the red shift problem is explored in https://principia-scientific.org/new-paper-our-redshift-environment/

GTB
October 17, 2019 8:51 pm

They make assumptions then jump to conclusions.

n.n
Reply to  GTB
October 17, 2019 11:29 pm

Liberal assumptions/assertions, then infer (i.e. creative logic) conclusions outside of a limited frame of reference. Welcome to the age of post-normal, where mortal gods (e.g. experts) divine reality beyond near space and time, beyond the observable and reproducible. Ostensibly, because people are impatient for discovery.

n.n
October 17, 2019 8:53 pm

Inference from signals of unknown fidelity from beyond the near-domain. With a little patience, and a lot of development, we may, one day, learn the facts of what lies beyond our most distant close observation at the edge of our solar system.

Rhoda R
Reply to  n.n
October 17, 2019 9:06 pm

Or we may find out that the aliens at the edge of our solar system are deliberately screwing up our reading to keep us confined to one planet – or at least one star system.

n.n
Reply to  Rhoda R
October 17, 2019 11:35 pm

Or we’re caught in an eddy of space and time that distorts our perspective beyond the near frame. With a little patience, and a lot of development, we may, one day, expand our close observations, reduce the uncertainty, and reach conclusions that are compliant with reality without injections of brown matter, dark matter and energy, and other fillers.

RockyRoad
Reply to  n.n
October 18, 2019 4:44 pm

Yes, at this point it seems the “fillers” are the rule rather than the exception!

Greg
Reply to  Rhoda R
October 18, 2019 12:17 am

Anyone watching us is probably sitting there splitting their sides laughing. We are perfectly capable of totally confusing ourselves, we do not need to invent anyone else to blame.

But if you find that comforting , why not.

noaaprogrammer
October 17, 2019 8:55 pm

Perhaps there is a fifth fundamental force weaker than gravity, operating over clumps of galaxies.

Kozlowski
Reply to  noaaprogrammer
October 17, 2019 10:10 pm

Or gravity is bleeding over from adjacent branes. Some small %, enough to be noticeable on a large scale like galaxies.

Joel O'Bryan
Reply to  Kozlowski
October 17, 2019 10:46 pm

Recent Gravitational Wave (GW) measurements from distant binary black hole merger events shows that the GW energy arriving at Earth and our 3 dimensions of spatial reality does NOT allow for any significant leakage of GW energy to other “curled-up” dimensions. That puts hard limits on any tiny extra-dimensions that only gravity can penetrate. The string theorists touting small curled up dimensions have been mightily disappointed by those negative results.

Tom
Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
October 18, 2019 3:37 am

Right on Joel! When I read about that GW results from LIGO I thought, “Well there goes the multiverse.”

Tommyboy
October 17, 2019 8:59 pm

We live in an inconstant universe, imagine that!

Stephen Wilde
October 17, 2019 9:00 pm

I’ve been unhappy about the red shift interpretation for many years.
It seems more likely that some undiscovered characteristic of the universe attenuates the wavelength of light with distance.
As with the current farrago over the radiative climate change theory the answer probably lies with non radiative energy transfers being inadequately accounted for within astrophysics.
Current contortions involving dark matter and energy are becoming ever more implausible.

October 17, 2019 9:05 pm

Year’s ago I thought that the red shift could be explained by light getting old, so slows down.

The older I get, the more I think I might have been right.

: )

Bill Murphy
Reply to  Thomas
October 17, 2019 11:39 pm

The “Tired Photon” theory. I first heard this one back in 1992 while following a usenet thread by the renegade astronomer, Dr. Tom Van Flandern. The theory has a LOT of problems but also a few loyal off-mainstream followers. Van Flandern did do some brilliant and respected work in his career, but also took a lot of abuse for supporting ideas that were well outside of the mainstream views. While I don’t buy into the idea, you couldn’t really blame a photon for getting a little weary after a few million parsec trip, although since it does the trip at C, from it’s perspective it gets here at the same time it started so what’s there to be tired about?

GTB
October 17, 2019 9:14 pm

Redshift quantization, also referred to as redshift periodicity,[1] redshift discretization,[2] preferred redshifts[3] and redshift-magnitude bands,[4][5] is the hypothesis that the redshifts of cosmologically distant objects (in particular galaxies and quasars) tend to cluster around multiples of some particular value.

In standard inflationary cosmological models, the redshift of cosmological bodies is ascribed to the expansion of the universe, with greater redshift indicating greater cosmic distance from the Earth (see Hubble’s Law). This is referred to as cosmological redshift. Ruling out errors in measurement or analysis, quantized redshift of cosmological objects would either indicate that they are physically arranged in a quantized pattern around the Earth, or that there is an unknown mechanism for redshift unrelated to cosmic expansion, referred to as “intrinsic redshift” or “non-cosmological redshift”. From Wikipedia.

Roland
Reply to  GTB
October 18, 2019 1:17 am

O haven’t come across this clustering or quantization of red shifts, but will do some research tonight…may shed light on my questions (no pun intended).

If a neutrino can change flavors and masses during travel, why would anyone bat an eye at quantum decay of a photon?

Roland

Patrick MJD
October 17, 2019 9:15 pm

My question would be does it have to make sense? It’s like asking someone who climbed a never before climbed mountain why they did it? The usual answer is “Because its there.”

The universe does not have to make sense, it just is.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 17, 2019 10:27 pm

I had a conversation with an old friend yesterday. He is suffering an existential crisis. He wants to understand where he comes from, who he is, and where he is going. In short he wants to know what his purpose is. He does this all the time, has done for years.

I pointed out that when confronted by a pint of beer, I could ponder how it was made, why it was made, what it is made of, and what will happen to it after I drink it. Or, I could just drink it and enjoy it.

I prefer the latter, and this is pretty much my entire philosophy of life. I don’t believe that philosophies need to be complex or detailed 🙂

I’m fairly sure I’m happier than him, although I am sad for him and try to cheer him up (for example with a pint of beer and helpful philosophy) whenever we meet.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
October 18, 2019 5:19 am

Damn that 13th pint!

Barbara
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
October 18, 2019 3:31 pm

Off topic, but existential crises may occur at any age.

At the age of 5, my grandson was contemplating a picture of his older brother sitting on his grandfather’s lap, and wondered why there were no pictures of him on “Papa’s” lap. His mother explained that Papa had died just a few months before he was born. So, he thought on this, and said, “so…Papa was here, but I wasn’t…then, I was here, but Papa wasn’t…What was I before this, a grain of sand or something?”

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Barbara
October 18, 2019 10:06 pm

I was similarly a very young philosopher. When my mother tried to explain “the birds and the bees” to me at a young age (5 or 6 maybe), on being told that I was essentially made from my parents combined genes, my only question was; if I hadn’t been born to my parents, would I have been born to another set of parents?

While completely missing the point, I opened a huge can of philosophical worms. I really did want to know (and still do). My mother was a bit nonplussed!

TonyL
October 17, 2019 9:15 pm

We know there is something wrong with our understanding of everything. Einstein tried, and failed to unify the theories of Gravity and Quantum Mechanics. Ever since, physicists have sought a GUT, a Grand Unified theory and failed. So far, all quantum theories of gravity have not done well.
Quantum Mechanics by itself has issues. Work the calculations, and infinities crop up. Usually, this means your calculation is done for. In QM, you just add in another infinity(!). The infinities cancel out, and the calculations work. The process of adding and canceling infinities is called “normalization” or “renormalization”.

How I survived that course is beyond me, it may have been due to a quantum fluctuation. In short, the whole course may well have been an exercise in Schrodinger’s Cat. Many of us lived, many died.

Gary Pearse
October 17, 2019 9:17 pm

A simple experiment into the nature of the gravitational effect on light done at Boston College (I think) in the 1970s, involved shining a beam of light of a given frequency straight down a stairwell of several floors. They knew that the speed of light didn’t change but determined that its wavelength did! To me, this should take the wind out of the sails of the red shift notion. The red shift could be due to gravitational effects rather than departure velocity. Don’t they know this?

Roland
Reply to  Gary Pearse
October 18, 2019 1:09 am

That red shit is different than the red shift blamed on expansion…it is a force changing momentum of the photon, this the wavelength. I still don’t fully understand how a photon has momentum if it is massless…but that’s a different issue.

Other forms of “redshift are doppler and “frame dragging, which also make sense to me more or less…magical expansion does not 🤷

Roland

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Roland
October 18, 2019 9:22 am

Roland all those mechanisms are F=ma in one form or another. And yes the “massless” photon is an enigma. Perhaps what we call mass is in need of rethinking to clean up all that dark matter we felt we needed to sprinkle liberally about. We may be due for another 200+ IQ physicist to come along, although if it is possible for him to get a decent education when he arrives is a bigger concern than cleaning up the physics mess.

Robert of Texas
October 17, 2019 9:19 pm

I have known the astrophysics rate of expansion is messed up for some time. The Universe is not expanding more rapidly over time or someone had better identify a real cause – not a made-up one. Dark Energy is made up… it doesn’t come from anything except from the errors in measurement and people’s inability to grasp where they went wrong. Accuracy and error are far greater than the physicists imagine, simple because they cannot go out and actually perform real measurements – instead we use proxies…sound familiar?

Dark matter doesn’t need to be exotic either. one has to just accept that we do not understand the makeup of the universe as well as we claim to. It really is a failure of imagination – we can’t imagine how matter can hide from us to we invent stuff to account for it.

Expansion *might* be constant, or it’s slowing down. There is absolutely no evidence except proxies that say it is increasing, and proxies are almost always wrong to a larger degree than expected.

If I were to guess…. Matter+energy = gravity so the rate is constant over enough volume measured. It could be different in different volumes of course.

Stephen Wilde
October 17, 2019 9:24 pm

My guess would be that rather than expanding uniformly the universe contains convection cells whereby the matter in one half is convecting away from the centre and the matter in the other half is convecting back towards the centre.
We happen to be placed within an area containing matter which is moving away from the centre so that the movement converts KE to PE which causes a shift towards the red.
In regions where matter is convecting back towards the centre there would be a blue shift with conversion of PE back to KE.
Any ball of fluid with a higher temperature in the centre must inevitably develop convection due to temperature irregularities in the lateral plane.
A structure comprising mainly gases will always show fluid characteristics due to the weak bonds between molecules.
Has anyone else ever proposed a convecting ball of fluid material as a model for the universe?

Editor
Reply to  Stephen Wilde
October 18, 2019 2:31 am

Stephen Wilde hypothesises: “We happen to be placed within an area containing matter which is moving away from the centre“. How far can we see? Is it possible that even though we are seeing what seems to be an immensely long way, that it still wouldn’t necessarily be far enough to let us see into an area with different characteristics? Or are some discrepancies because we can? Do we know how big the universe is anyway, or is everything ultimately based on circular logic? I’m not disagreeing, BTW, just asking questions. Your idea is intriguing. It sounds much more fun than a big bang – I assume your idea doesn’t still need a big bang?

In any case, it looks like resolution of the reported discrepancy might be a test of the big bang theory itself.

Stephen Wilde
Reply to  Mike Jonas
October 18, 2019 6:10 am

A steady state scenario is just fine for a convecting universe but that leaves open the question of creation in the first place.
I would expect that all the apparent discrepancies could be resolved by changes in the behaviour of light between areas with differing convective characteristics.
Conservation of energy is conserved by switching to and fro between KE and PE just as for non radiative energy exchanges within an atmosphere. At the theoretical centre of the universe it would all be KE (heat) and at the theoretical outer boundary it would all be PE (not heat) and the relative proportions of KE and PE in any given region would affect the local wavelength of light.
One would need to overlay the effects of convection on top of existing theory to account for the discrepancies.
We see discrepancies because we are able to ‘see’ into regions where the status of the convective effects is different from our locality.
I was first prompted into this hypothesis back in the 1960s when I read an Isaac Asimov essay which detailed the different visible characteristics of first an expanding and second a contracting universe.
So I thought about the possibility that you could have both regions of expansion and regions of contraction within a single non expanding universe. That idea was prompted by my interest in meteorology at the time.
Both an atmosphere around a planet and matter floating around the gravitational centre of a universe would show fluid characteristics and so should have features in common.
An interesting aspect is that where matter is moving away from the centre the expansion would initially increase in speed with distance from the centre because of the exponential increase in volume of spherical geometry. Likewise a contracting region would show an increasing speed of contraction as one moves closer to the centre because of the exponential decrease in volume.
We do seem to observe an increasing rate of expansion over time in our region of space which fits with the convective scenario.
If no one else has ever suggested it maybe we should call it ‘The Wilde Convective Universe’. 🙂

Editor
Reply to  Stephen Wilde
October 18, 2019 6:55 pm

Wilde-Asimov Steady State (Wilde-ASS).
Just joking.
BTW the question of creation in the first place is still open anyway. No matter where you start, the question is still open on what was there before that. Something’s got to give before you can get to the start – maybe time itself starts, maybe the laws of conservation have to change – it seems unresolvable. The Big Bang solves nothing – under the current laws of physics you can’t have a big bang without there being something that can go bang.

MarkW
Reply to  Stephen Wilde
October 18, 2019 7:51 am

If we were moving, and the universe not;
1) Wouldn’t all red shifts be the same?
2) Wouldn’t there be a blue shift in the direction that we were moving?

John
October 17, 2019 9:29 pm

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre an inexplicable.

There is a second which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams

A Crooks
October 17, 2019 9:31 pm

I still can’t work out if there’s a cat in the box.
At lunch today some suggested there might be more than one.
All that time at university and I still know nothing!

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  A Crooks
October 17, 2019 10:30 pm

I believe they’re is no cat in the box. It got fed up of being repeatedly based and hopped it.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
October 18, 2019 12:17 am

*based = gassed.

Sigh…

sycomputing
Reply to  A Crooks
October 18, 2019 7:15 am

I still can’t work out if there’s a cat in the box.

Take the scientific approach. Open the box.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  sycomputing
October 18, 2019 8:58 am

sycomputing
And, if the cat is dead, do an autopsy to try to determine the time of death.

sycomputing
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
October 18, 2019 11:08 am

Clyde:

Two birds with one cat!

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  sycomputing
October 18, 2019 3:19 pm

Take the scientific approach. Open the box.

the problem is that the act of observation actually affects the result. this is the essence of the thought experiment.

real science would find a way to determine the results without observation, or some other approach, in order to to discover why This is the case. that would help us work out quantum physics. so far we have no idea.

I’m simplifying the experiment, but not by much.

sycomputing
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
October 18, 2019 4:41 pm

. . . real science would find a way to determine the results without observation . . .

Oh you’re looking for *that* side of the “scientific” room (wink-wink). Here, I can help: https://www.michaelmann.net/blog

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  sycomputing
October 18, 2019 10:08 pm

ha ha!

fantastic response, thank you!

Nick Werner
October 17, 2019 9:32 pm

“If we’re getting different answers that means that there’s something that we don’t know.”

Apparently astrophysicists could take a lesson from climate modelers, where the more different answers they get the more they pretend to know. Just take an ensemble average for all the estimates of H0 and label anyone who objects a ‘science denier’.

And instead of troubling themselves about ‘missing heat’, climate scientists could reciprocate with the concept of “dark energy”: energy that can not be observed or measured but can be quantified because their models predict that CO2 prevents it from leaving the atmosphere.

n.n
Reply to  Nick Werner
October 17, 2019 11:16 pm

Whereas climate modelers inject brown matter to force compliance, astrophysicists inject dark matter and energy to force compliance, and probably brown matter, too. Thou shalt not deny the consensus.

Greg
Reply to  Nick Werner
October 18, 2019 12:48 am

Well spotted. Dark matter is where all the missing heat is hiding.

Terry
October 17, 2019 9:39 pm

42

JRF in Pensacola
October 17, 2019 9:48 pm

So we have actual data, but the measurements disagree, indicating that we don’t know something (ignorance). I’m guessing that any “uncertainty” analysis would reflect that level of ignorance. (Thank you, Dr. Pat Frank!)

jmorpuss
October 17, 2019 9:49 pm

“It is generally not known that an alternative Electric Sun model was proposed in 1979 by the engineer Ralph Juergens. It explains simply the critical longevity of all electric lights — it is plugged into a galactic circuit. And galactic circuits are the basis of Plasma Cosmology, which is ignored by astrophysicists but was developed by experimental plasma scientists and engineers in the 20th century. Plasma Cosmology is simply explanative and has proven to be predictive — quite unlike mathematical big bang cosmology.

Only in the last few years have the circumstances arisen to enable the more recent Electric Sun model to be tested. Called the SAFIRE Project, the cutting edge engineering firm Aurtas International Inc. was contracted by The International Science Foundation to experimentally test the Electric Sun Model. Aurtas International Inc. is an independent body, which has no affiliation with The Electric Universe or The Thunderbolts Project. Recently, the SAFIRE team shared an extraordinary update on their results to date.

In part one of this two-part presentation, our chief science advisor, physicist Wal Thornhill, discusses the SAFIRE experiment, its results and its promise for the future.”

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  jmorpuss
October 17, 2019 10:32 pm

… and we are all waiting in terror for the bill to arrive!

theTU
Reply to  jmorpuss
October 17, 2019 11:54 pm

finally this theory is getting more traction! It makes so much sense…

David Hartley
Reply to  theTU
October 18, 2019 7:21 am

You may like this then, I personally found it fascinating, a Youtube channel called the Thunderbolts project points to the Valles Marianeris on mars being the result of a Plasma strike. Very plausible.

https://youtu.be/tRV1e5_tB6Y

I’ve only watched the relevant part of the experiment they did in forming the hypothesis so haven’t delved into any of their other work on the Electric Universe which I always thought electro-magnetic.

Jack Okie
Reply to  David Hartley
October 18, 2019 9:11 am

Here is a discussion of plasma-related cratering:

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Jack Okie
October 18, 2019 3:21 pm

I initially read that as ‘catering’. plasma cuisine sounds interesting…

David Hartley
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
October 19, 2019 12:34 am

Heston Blumenthal’snext project?

October 17, 2019 10:00 pm

And here we have yet another proof that yet another part of science is not ‘settled’… let alone Climate Science.

Richard
October 17, 2019 10:49 pm

What happened to ‘consensus’? It has proven to be such a useful tool in at least one other scientific field. The Hubble Constant could be settled tomorrow, I’m 97% sure. And damn the deniers.

October 17, 2019 10:52 pm

While I enjoy the beautiful photos of the visible universe, I do not regard the rest of research of any real importance. When thy start to use words such as strings and dark matter, they are just word for unknowns.

Logically the “”Big Bang”” is impossible, so that leaves Fred Holes “”Steady State””.

The only thing which justifies further research is Gravity, in the hope that a anti gravity drive will be found, that would be of great use. If we were vert rich then pure research is justified, but curtesy of the likes of CC we are not.

The rest is just a considerable drain on the taxpayers money. Just as is the magic molecule CO2, but that of course is a far bigger drain on the public purse.

MJE VK5ELL

Weylan McAnally
Reply to  Michael
October 18, 2019 12:25 pm

I agree that gravity research should be a focus for funding. An anti-gravity drive would be a revolutionary technology for humans and the planet.

I told my 12 year old son that he would be the most famous person to ever live if he solved the problem of gravity. He is smart enough to figure it out. Cross your fingers.

Max
Reply to  Michael
October 20, 2019 9:32 pm

If antigravity occurs in nature, then man can find a way to reproduce it.
Directly under the new moon is the high tide. the moon and sun is lifting the ocean up away from the gravity of the earth.
But have you noticed the high tide on the opposite side of the earth lifting up against the combined gravity of the sun moon and earth? The difference between the two tides is 3%. Antigravity? This is not logical, it should be low tide.
Perhaps in there is an increase in gravity at 90° (just like magnetism when electricity flows through a wire occurring at 90° of the flow) causing low tide at the sunrise/sunset around the world and like squeezing a water balloon resulting high tide at both ends? The most powerful earthquakes have occurred when the sun is on the horizon during a new moon. Low tide.
Has anyone looked for a small change in gravity and barometric pressure that corresponds to the tides?

Roland
Reply to  Max
October 20, 2019 10:18 pm

Tides are more complicated than just bulging towards the moon and sun, the moon is actually pulling the oceans horizontally (think about it, is easier for a force to pull water sideways than up). Plenty of research has gone in to tides, and they are very well understood, feel free to Google it.

As for atmospheric tides, they do exist, and is a lot of research out there on that as well.

Roland

Reply to  Max
October 23, 2019 5:04 pm

>>
But have you noticed the high tide on the opposite side of the earth lifting up against the combined gravity of the sun moon and earth? The difference between the two tides is 3%. Antigravity? This is not logical, it should be low tide.
<<

It is logical, because of the inverse square law. The Moon pulls on the near side of the Earth harder than it pulls on the center of the Earth, and it pulls on the center of the Earth harder than it pulls on the far side of the Earth. This causes a stretching/tidal force on the Earth as a whole.

We can calculate this effect using Newton’s gravitational force law:

$\displaystyle F=G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{1}}\cdot {{m}_{2}}}{{{r}^{2}}}$

The force on the center of the Earth is:

$\displaystyle {{F}_{0}}=G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}}$

Where $\displaystyle {{F}_{0}}$ is the force, $\displaystyle G$ is Newton’s gravitational constant, $\displaystyle {{m}_{E}}$ is the mass of the Earth, $\displaystyle {{m}_{M}}$ is the mass of the Moon, and $\displaystyle {{r}_{EM}}$ is the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

The force of the Moon on the near side of the Earth is:

$\displaystyle {{F}_{near}}=G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}-{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}$

where $\displaystyle {{r}_{E}}$ is the radius of the Earth. The force on the far side of the Earth is:

$\displaystyle {{F}_{far}}=G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}+{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}$

We now calculate the tidal forces on the Earth with respect to the Earth. We do that by subtracting $\displaystyle {{F}_{0}}$ from the other forces:

$\displaystyle {{T}_{0}}={{F}_{0}}-{{F}_{0}}=0$

$\displaystyle {{T}_{near}}={{F}_{near}}-{{F}_{0}}=G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}-{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}-G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}}$

$\displaystyle {{T}_{far}}={{F}_{far}}-{{F}_{0}}=G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}+{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}-G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}}$

Where $\displaystyle {{T}_{0}}$ is the tidal force on the center of the Earth, $\displaystyle {{T}_{near}}$ is the tidal force on the near side of the Earth, and $\displaystyle {{T}_{far}}$ is the tidal force on the far side of the Earth. Combining terms we get:

$\displaystyle {{T}_{near}}=G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}}\cdot \frac{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}-{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}-{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}-{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}={{F}_{0}}\cdot \frac{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}-{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}-{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}-{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}$

and

$\displaystyle {{T}_{far}}=G\cdot \frac{{{m}_{E}}\cdot {{m}_{M}}}{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}}\cdot \frac{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}-{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}+{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}+{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}={{F}_{0}}\cdot \frac{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}-{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}+{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}+{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}$

Notice that the leading term is just $\displaystyle {{F}_{0}}$. Expanding the numerators, we get:

$\displaystyle {{T}_{near}}=\frac{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}-{{r}_{EM}}^{2}+2\cdot {{r}_{EM}}\cdot {{r}_{E}}-{{r}_{E}}^{2}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}-{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}\cdot {{F}_{0}}=\frac{2\cdot {{r}_{EM}}\cdot {{r}_{E}}-{{r}_{E}}^{2}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}-{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}\cdot {{F}_{0}}$

and

$\displaystyle {{T}_{far}}=\frac{{{r}_{EM}}^{2}-{{r}_{EM}}^{2}-2\cdot {{r}_{EM}}\cdot {{r}_{E}}-{{r}_{E}}^{2}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}+{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}\cdot {{F}_{0}}=\frac{-2\cdot {{r}_{EM}}\cdot {{r}_{E}}-{{r}_{E}}^{2}}{{{\left( {{r}_{EM}}+{{r}_{E}} \right)}^{2}}}\cdot {{F}_{0}}$

The sign on $\displaystyle {{T}_{far}}$ is negative. That means the force (with respect to the Earth) is pointing away from the Moon.

We can calculate the relative magnitude of the tidal forces (without actually calculating $\displaystyle {{F}_{0}}$). If we set $\displaystyle {{r}_{EM}}$ equal to 384,402 kilometers and $\displaystyle {{r}_{E}}$ equal to 6,371 kilometers we get:

$\displaystyle {{T}_{near}}=0.03399\cdot {{F}_{0}}$

and

$\displaystyle {{T}_{far}}=-0.03234\cdot {{F}_{0}}$

The ratios of the two forces are:

$\displaystyle {{T}_{near}}:{{T}_{far}}=1:-0.9515$

The far side of the Earth has a tidal force that is about 5% less due to the Moon. The Sun has a similar tidal force on the Earth, but its effect is about half that of the Moon.

Jim

Kyle in Upstate NY
Reply to  Michael
October 25, 2019 5:24 pm

The Big Bang is not impossible. Remember, Big Bang theory doesn’t address who or what created the universe, just that about 13 billion Earth years ago, the universe was in a very compressed state, from which it then suddenly expanded outward. Most all of the observational evidence shows this.

anna v
October 17, 2019 11:00 pm

“If we’re getting different answers that means that there’s something that we don’t know,”

Sure, I have just been looking on a question of the matter antimatter asymmetry in our present universe, and that is something that we do not know, it would affect CMB interpretations, and not galaxy etc motions at our level. Our present observations look at the universe after baryon number violation, except for the CMB view.

I have just been looking at Sakharov’s conditions for baryon asymmetry https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sakharov_condition#targetText=Noun&targetText=(physics)%20Any%20of%20the%20three,interactions%20out%20of%20thermal%20equilibrium. namely the third “nteractions out of thermal equilibrium.” Those would affect the CMB intepretation.

Roland
October 17, 2019 11:08 pm

I know I don’t comment often, and usually when I do, it is on this topic, but I have yet to get a real response from someone with the knowledge to answer these questions…and I don’t really many other science sites that actually allow comments…but this begs the question again…

How do we know that redshift due to expansion is actually due to expansion and not some property of light at vast distances of travel? Is the photon losing energy because of some magic expansion more likely than some other possible form of decay? Don’t cite conservation of energy, because the redshifted photon IS losing energy, everyone just assumed expansion is why, I just don’t understand where that energy goes either.

I read a recent article about neutrinos, and how scientists say they must have a non-zero mass or they would have not slowed down enough to fit the current model of the big bang…why would having mass slow them down? I don’t know. If having mass can slow down neutrinos, at hundreds of thousandths the mass of an electron, would a photon, if it really was not massless, but another order of magnitude lighter than a neutrino, also slow down?

Seriously, this is driving me nuts, and the more I read the worse it gets… any help would be appreciated. At the very least, if anyone knows someone I could discuss this with, would love the help

Roland

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  Roland
October 18, 2019 12:30 am

A QI moment. Nobody knows! IMHO.

anna v
Reply to  Roland
October 18, 2019 1:12 am

One does not rely on cosmology to study the photon. The photon has been studied since last century when black body radiation could not be explained by Maxwell’s clasisical electrodynamics, i.e. the LABORATORY measurements and observations disagreed with the classical theory, and for this reason, among others, quantum mechanics gradually emerged as the underlying framework of all nature. That is what mainstream physics is now. The model is continually validated in laboratory experiments. Cosmic observations rely on this validation.

The quantum electrodynamic model uses mathematics and specific postulates , laws and principles that allow to pick those solutions of the differential equations that fit the data. The velocity of light being constant is a result of both classical and quantum electrodynamics, the change in frequency with respect to the observer’s non inertial frame also. Everything is fitted with mathematical solutions and is continually validated by laboratory experiments and observations.

A cosmological model for the photon that would give it different properties than the ones in our present framework is a scenario that is not consistent with the scientific method,UNLESS it is written up in strict mathematical terms, and fits the data we have in the laboratory at our framework. This is not a reasonable choice of research matter, imo .

Energy is conserved within a given inertial frame. Again mathematics enters on how different inertial frames behave with respect to energy. Expansion is consecutive inertial frames , not the same, and there are mathematical models on how motion affects the photons, with the Doppler effect
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Relativ/reldop2.html , also checked in the laboratory. In our present cosmological models all the energy/mass of the universe comes from the Big Bang.

Unless you put a lot of elbow grease to delve into the mathematics you will not be able to clear up your questions.

Roland
Reply to  anna v
October 18, 2019 1:44 am

Thank you for your reply! I will read up from the link you provided tonight. However…some quick thoughts…

All known research on photon properties has been at tiny scales compared to the millions of light-year distances and times required for red shift. Even at those distances the shift is not really large.

In the same vein, my understanding is that even if it was caused by expansion, we wouldn’t be able to prove that here on Earth either, because we are in a gravitationally bound system. So we are back to two possible solutions that cannot be proven or disproven at this point that I know of. One is definitely more elegant than the other…

I understand Doppler shifts and frame shifts, and frame dragging (more or less, conceptually at least)…and how some describe expansion as universal frame dragging in all directions…But that sounds like some sort of magical non-answer to me.

I am not a cosmologist, or an astrophysicist, I am just and engineer…I don’t have the skill set to check if any of my thoughts are legitimate…but if they are not, am hoping it is because there is some firm evidence, rather than just “because”.

The universe should be based on physics, not metaphysics…otherwise we are still in the world of the ether and corpuscular mediums.

Thanks,
Roland

anna v
Reply to  Roland
October 18, 2019 10:54 am

Physics theories are based on observations and they are always open to falsification by new observations. As we have a more or less “simple” theory in the standard model, it is only a falsification that will make a change in the theory imperative.

For example we went with Maxwell’s electrodynamics until it was falsified in a certain phase space, and we had to introduce quantum electrodynamics. BUT it can be shown that the classical emerges from the quantum mathematics. New theories and their laws and postulates should naturally blend with the old ones, because the old ones were based on the then observations which are still valid.

Roland
Reply to  anna v
October 20, 2019 7:21 am

That’s fine and good, but much like Einstein and his hatred of his cosmological constant, which had no meaning other than to make the math work, I am not a fan of things that people just invent and say it must be there because it makes my math work.

Dark matter is just “something” as is dark energy, and the standard model really doesn’t have a place for either of them, theyre just used to make the math work….

Alan Tomalty
October 18, 2019 12:05 am

The Big Bang, cosmic background radiation ,string theory, black holes, dark energy, dark matter, gravitational waves, theory of relativity general and special, Higgs boson, 100% gaseous stars. They are all figments of cosmologists imagination.
Astrophysics and cosmology is a bigger farce than climate science.

Mark - Helsinki
Reply to  Alan Tomalty
October 18, 2019 1:48 am

Sadly, there is more truth in what you have just said than most would admit.

I’ve been trying to explain this for 10 years, often on here on the space articles.
Dogmatic interpretations.

Even when you try explain that in fact no one has ever detected the Higgs boson, they don’t even understand that, they think we have detected it even though by definition the alleged particle doesn’t survive long enough to be detected. A signal, that could have come from the equipment, software, or some other reason, was interpreted as the higgs boson just like a signal was interpreted as gravitational waves by the LIGO team.

Let me quote BICEPII team when they claimed they found gravitational waves.
“It’s not that we were wrong, its that we over interpreted the results”.
Even in rare cases when we can prove them wrong, they won’t admit it.

The problem with humans is admitting defeat after 5 years and millions or billions spent, is extremely difficult, and the willingness to avoid the humiliation will lead to all sorts of fantastical self delusions

tc
Reply to  Alan Tomalty
October 18, 2019 1:49 am

Agreed but at least they’re not doing too much harm – in contrast with the climatology cult which is going to cost us the Earth (no pun intended)

Kyle in Upstate NY
Reply to  Alan Tomalty
October 25, 2019 5:29 pm

Why do you say they are all figments of the imagination? Most of them are incredibly well-supported by solid science. String theory is not as that isn’t really science, but things like the Big Bang, black holes, general relativity, etc…are incredibly well-supported. In fact, general relativity itself is one of THE most well-supported things in all of science.

tc
October 18, 2019 1:30 am

Physicists should refer this issue to a climate scientist, particularly one of those well practised in manipulating the data to get the answer required.

flynn
October 18, 2019 2:14 am

blame CO2.

bonbon
October 18, 2019 2:38 am

The more they check, the more Halton Arp was right. Quasars with very different redshifts than coupled galaxies, showing a stepped values are well documented in “Seeing Red”.
The new James Webb infrared telescope will definitely shake up things!
Even Hubble originally did not attribute redshift to Doppler.
The entire big bang theatric, “cosmic egg” comes from Lemaitre, a Belgian Jesuit. A good friend of Einstein, who remarked it was the best creation story he ever heard, but the physics was questionable.
So some here who claim the big bang somehow refutes the Bible, are being disingenuous.

I take Einstein’s comment, who got the Nobel for the photoelectric effect, that anyone who says they understand the photon is mistaken, seriously.

As far as I can see the climate crowd have taken their cue from the big-bangers.

bonbon
October 18, 2019 3:24 am

I know Einsteins most famous quote : The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is it’s comprehensibility”. Why is it built is such fashion that we can, confusedly, even begin to understand?

This kind of thing happened before when Eddington measured gravitational light aberration.
The New York Times headline was: “Lights All Askew in the heavens. Men of Science More or Less Agog over Results of Eclipse Observations. Stars Not Where They Seemed or Calculated To Be, but Nobody Need Worry. A Book for Twelve Wise Men. No more in all the world could comprehend it said Einstein, when his daring publishers accepted it.”

Unfortunately this time Physics has no Einstein to comprehend what is going on.

Sara
October 18, 2019 3:59 am

Oh, come on, you guys! There’s a massive amount we don’t know about our own planet. WE didn’t know about sprites and jets and other odd Earth-born discharges until the astronauts photographed them from the space station, so what’s the Big Deal here, huh?

Every time we think we’ve found all the answers, more questions pop up, and something else is “discovered” and we’re off again. We don’t even know if the Universe is One, or One Of Many, or Just How Big this Universe really is, because the most distant light a telescope can pick up is some red shift blobs that are 13.5 billion light years away.

What’s the big deal here, anyway?

M__ S__
October 18, 2019 4:06 am

I’ll believe a direct measurement over a model every time. Cepheids offer a MORE direct measurement, although everything depends on one assumption or another.

Holly T
October 18, 2019 4:31 am

This is all because 5 times 9 is not 42.

JeffH
October 18, 2019 5:06 am

Science: If it’s ever “settled”, then you’re doing it wrong.

Patrick MJD
October 18, 2019 5:10 am

I think this calls for another Monty Python moment;

Leitwolf
October 18, 2019 6:08 am

Aristoteles: I know that I know nothing

Science today: is it possible there is something we dont know?

Frank Baginski
October 18, 2019 6:24 am

Arp was right. Once they got the red shift wrong then a whole series of dominos fell in the wrong direction. Even our understanding of light is completely wrong. Go back to Maxwell, Faraday, Heaviside, Tesla, and Steinmetz and start over. I have read their books and we turn a bad turn because of Einstein.

bonbon
Reply to  Frank Baginski
October 18, 2019 6:48 am

Planck changed everything in 1901. Then Einstein solved the photolectric effect in 1905, go a Nobel .
But Einstein remarked that anyone who claims to understand the photon is posturing.

Planck and Einstein solved 2 huge problems with Maxwell. The Hubble redshift being doppler is now leaking.

There’s more to the Photon than meets the eye! (even if it takes 2 photons to elicit a retina signal(.

Frank Baginski
Reply to  bonbon
October 18, 2019 11:31 pm

The wrong turn was to dismiss a medium in which electromagnetic effects seem to cause action at a distance. Our lack of understanding of gravity is a clear indication that at some foundational level we have it all wrong. To truly know how things work means you can explain what we see in simple terms. QM is an indication that we don’t know much at all. To post that we have now found another meaningless particle is an exercise of the ego and does nothing to advance science. It is a sad thing to watch as billions are thrown down a rat hole.

bonbon
Reply to  bonbon
October 19, 2019 4:45 am

Maxwell wrote in a letter he would never accept “continental” geometry, meaning Riemann.
Einstein took up exactly that and revolutionized physics.
Spacetime and gravity were shown to be essentially the same, energy and mass also, waves and particles too.
Suddenly all the sense-certainty settled-science is thrown out the window.
Nostalgia, anyone?
No wonder the hapless search for certainty, with the science-is-settled mantra of climate and big-bang.

I see the entire climate circus as aftershock, post traumatic stress syndrome.

Science is indeed a mortal threat to any empire based on sense-certainty. That empire has PTSD, is reeling just as its finance implodes. And Bank of England Green Finance Initiative Mark Carney is some kind of banking shaman?

Severian
October 18, 2019 6:44 am

“And, as a new paper shows, those discrepancies have gotten larger in recent years, even as the measurements have gotten more precise.”

And there it is again…more precise. Precision and accuracy are two different but now commonly conflated things. I blame the advent of digital displays on everything. When you had to squint at a slide rule to try and suss out accuracy of a calculation to one decimal place you got a better understanding of this than just slapping a calculation into a calculator and seeing 7 decimal places or such. As in a caliper, do you really think that digital display showing you measurement to 4 decimal places is real? When you have to try and read the number off of a scale like a slide rules you understand that the precision is not justified.

Jean Parisot
October 18, 2019 6:54 am

Would not one expect two different wavebands to respond to gravitational lensing effects differently? A similar effect is the different responses to atmospheric fades by different optical frequencies in free space laser propagation.

beng135
October 18, 2019 7:05 am

Nice post — astronomy sites have been discussing this lately. No clue myself what’s going on other than it may only be a measurement issue, or it may be a fundamental misunderstanding in physics. The James Webb telescope might be accurate enough to eliminate measurement questions.

But these astronomy/cosmology posts sure do bring out alot of clueless know-it-alls that actually know nothing.

Christopher Paino
October 18, 2019 7:15 am

Because models.

beng135
October 18, 2019 7:23 am

Identified the cover-pic star (wish the linked site would have done it) — a big ole’ Cepheid Variable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS_Puppis

SeanC
October 18, 2019 7:52 am

Big Bang is completely wrong to start with. It’s hard to get anything right on the heels of that BS theory.

Bill Taylor
Reply to  SeanC
October 18, 2019 8:24 am

exactly, how can any”scientist” think all the matter in the universe was in one TINY location, and then suddenly exploded…….that is IDIOCY

John Tillman
Reply to  Bill Taylor
October 18, 2019 3:10 pm

No scientist who has ever studied cosmic inflation thinks that.

The hypothesized initial, gravitational singularity, of seemingly infinite density, was not of matter, but contained all the energy (mass) and space-time of the universe. It didn’t “explode”, but quantum fluctuations caused it rapidly to expand at the Big Bang and during subsequent inflation, creating the present-day universe.

“Matter” as presently understood didn’t emerge until the universe had cooled enough for subatomic particles and H atoms to form.

The issue is whether its expansion is accelerating, and if so, at what speed.

Jon Jewett
October 18, 2019 8:09 am

Whether you are Christian, or Zoroastrian, or Hindu, or even Athiest, you will find this of interest.

Dr. Jordon Peterson explores the concept of God. The first of a series. (The human mind is every bit as complicated as the universe and as fascinating. Try it out, it costs nothing.)

https://youtu.be/f-wWBGo6a2w

Roland
October 18, 2019 8:30 am

Ugh, please don’t lump me in with the creationists, lumpy spacers, people that think the milky way is special and attracts light, or any other person that thinks this should be complicated….

Magic mass and magic energy seem just as far fetched to me.

I just want to know how can a linear red shift due to expansion can be differentiated by a photon drag from a relatively uniform matter distribution in space, or a linear decay of some sort (or transformation such as assumed with neutrinos).

I am aware of the tolman surface brightness test, and how it supposedly rules out “tired photons”, but it also doesn’t really match expectations for expansion either.

These comments have given me a lot more keywords and topics to research (when on topic), so as one not in the loop has helped a lot….but still cant find the explanations I am looking for…

Thanks,
Roland

October 18, 2019 8:47 am

The universe was created by a committee, most members of which avoided all the meetings because there were no donuts.

Urederra
October 18, 2019 9:03 am

Meanwhile climate scientists have 72 different values for climate sensitivity to CO2 and they are not bothered with that.

Mark Broderick
October 18, 2019 9:15 am

Correction, The universe was created by a 97% consensus of Mann…. : )

Hum
October 18, 2019 9:24 am

Rafi, you might want to look into Randell Mills – The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics (GUT-CP) https://brilliantlightpower.com/book/ . He predicted the increase in universal expansion prior to it being observed.

gmak
October 18, 2019 9:24 am

Are Universal constants universal and / or constant? Perhaps space / time fluctuates on a macro level and has different properties in different areas of the universe.

gmak
Reply to  gmak
October 18, 2019 9:31 am

Maybe space / time / gravity is an ocean. Objects can move withing this medium at different rates, based on some unknown reason – and in different directions. What if dimension 5 – 11 are not microscopically folded?

jmorpuss
Reply to  gmak
October 18, 2019 3:28 pm

gmak October 18, 2019 at 9:31 am
Maybe space / time / gravity is an ocean.

Everything is swimming or floating in a sea of electrons.

DocSiders
October 18, 2019 9:31 am

The Universe selected the Individual as the PRIME entity. The US Constitution as Self Evident codified the Individual as the fundamental legal unit….See below:

Many studies in Evolution point out that Creating a new species by random changes in DNA has huge problems.

https://youtu.be/noj4phMT9OE

One of these studies looked at the probability of a random DNA change producing an actual functional protein (not even THE Specific REQUIRED PROTEIN).

The answer was 1 in 10^70 ish…or 10^30 times the number of protons in the universe…which even at “molecular recombination rate frequencies” in the microsecond range would happen only once in 10^25 times the age of the Universe.

So basically impossible.

A species only 1/4 million years separated from its closest ancestor requires thousands of NEW FUNCTIONAL proteins…in very many specific co-working protein groups…with staggeringly complex working morphologies (protein shapes).

But Evolution sure seems to have happened. We clearly see a “path” of species development in the paleo record.

To my mind, just about the only theory that can reconcile this impossible “PROTEIN PROBLEM” (and all the other problems) is the Many Universes Quantum Theory…In which every possible quantum state arising from an initial state evolving in time (A big bang, for instance) “Spins off” a POTENTIAL new universe.

An actual Universe only “COLLAPSES” out of the evolving quantum waveform INTO REALITY when a MEASUREMENT is made by a conscious Von Neuman entity (i.e. An Individual) that simultaneously arises within the evolving quantum waveform. (John Von Neuman defined the requirements of a Quantum Observer…look it up…long story).

Socialists please note that the INDIVIDUAL is the fundamental “conscious” unit of the universe…not some defined group.

It doesn’t matter how improbable a quantum event is…if the quantum event state CAN exist while that same quantum state includes an INDIVIDUAL that can observe it…it will Collapse into Reality (whatever the hell reality is).

If this was the way that life evolved on Earth BY A NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE evolution of quantum states that collapsed into reality …the likelihood that there are other places in the universe where life evolved is essentially 0.

To add to the “Protein Problem” see Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis. This Wiki article chronicles how improbable it is that life started on earth.

So who “collapsed” the quantum event (Big Bang) and when. Who was our Adam and where and when did zhe “happen”.

Note that there would be no new Species forming in reality AFTER the Collapse Event because of the “Protein Problem”. Genetic variations are allowed…but no new organisms requiring new proteins are allowed.

John Tillman
Reply to  DocSiders
October 18, 2019 2:38 pm

None of the three characters in your link has even an undergraduate degree in biology, so no surprise that they have no inkling as to how evolution works. They can’t use spurious, utterly inappropriate math to “disprove” what is a fact observed in the wild and created or recreated in labs every day, ie that mutations in genes (DNA sequences coding for proteins) and in the amino acid sequences of proteins produce new functional proteins. The DNA mutations are of course heritable if in the germ cells of multicellular organisms or anywhere in the genomes of unicells.

While humans and chimps share 99% of our DNA, the differences are greater in our genes, ie the 33% of our genomes which code for proteins. In six or seven million years of separate evolution, the two African ape lines have accumulated quite a few differences in our proteomes. Also in the sequences which control gene expression.

Thus, for instance, both species have the same number of hair follicles per square inch, but over most of human bodies, the hair grows short rather than long.

At least one gross chromosomal mutation has influenced human evolution. Our large chromosome #2 resulted from the fusion of two small standard great ape chromosomes. It’s associated with our development of upright walking.

Three protein-coding, ie gene, mutations allowed the human brain to triple in size:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trio-genes-supercharged-human-brain-evolution

Clyde Spencer
October 18, 2019 9:34 am

An unstated assumption in measuring expansion is that the universe is isotropic. That is, one should get the same answer in whatever direction one looks, and at all time scales (distances.)

My take on the situation is as follows:
If our universe started from a singularity (Big Bang point), then everything should have radiated outward from that singularity, albeit possibly with different velocities, depending on mass and random variations. Thus, the particles would be something like the expanding membrane of a balloon, with nothing left at the origin point. However, Einstein’s work says that since light is bent by mass, all photons will be constrained to the mass of visible matter (and Dark Matter?). That is, light can’t escape from the universe. Under those circumstances, we can no longer observe the position of the singularity, only light from where it used to be at the edge of our observations and along the circumference of the constraining shell.

Now, assuming an instantaneous constant radial expansion (R) from the point of the singularity, the mass of the universe at right angles (circumference) to the radial direction would be expanding at 2pi*R. That is, there should be a more than 6-fold difference in apparent expansion rates, depending on the direction of view for the nearest bodies. For, bodies very far away, we are looking at expansion rates billions of years ago, which may have been faster or slower, depending on if the universe’s expansion is slowing down or increasing, respectively.

Any thoughts?

Joe Lynch
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
October 19, 2019 4:30 pm

Acceleration is the rate of change of speed in a given direction. If the speed of light is constant but the direction changes, light is being accelerated. In a universe curved by mass, light travelling from a distant source is under a constant curvature/ acceleration, and so should be red/blue shifted depending on the curvature. The further away the observer is from the originating source, the greater the apparent acceleration and the greater the red shift. Light shifting shows the extent of curvature of intervening space/time, rather than the distance to the source. That’s how I’ve always thought of it.

Roland
Reply to  Joe Lynch
October 20, 2019 10:34 pm

Eesh, this actually makes sense. If a photon is travelling a longer distance at a constant speed the wavelength would be stretched over that curvature…

I need to do some space curvature research now…

Roland

October 18, 2019 9:40 am

If Julian Barbour’s thesis is correct (I.e., MATTER establishes time and without MATTER there is NO TIME..the condensed form!) Then all sorts of things might be very wrong cosmology wise. For example, the speed of light..with a different time metric, say in the pure/empty space between galaxies, may not be constant. Well,
actually the “clock” being influenced by “matter” and it’s density, would be different.

Doug Huffman
October 18, 2019 9:43 am

If it ain’t falsifiable then it ain’t science: the demarcation boundary criterion. Much of what passes for cosmology, particularly pop-cosmology (you know the pap sold by Tyson, Cacu, Suzuki) is just virtue signaling.

mwhite
October 18, 2019 9:58 am

Apart from the standard model, there are two other views of the Universe that I know of.

https://www.plasma-universe.com/

and

https://www.electricuniverse.info/

Eric Flesch
October 18, 2019 12:18 pm

Spatial curvature is a candidate because more curvey (“hyperbolic”) and less curvey (“spherical”) space are mathematically consistent just as our own “flat” space is. If space was more curvey in the past, then we are unknowingly looking into a different kind of space when we view faraway objects, in which objects are naturally fainter because their light dissipates more efficiently in higher-curvature space. The key objection to this would be that therefore we are coincidently living in a time when the universe just happens to be flat, which is too coincidental, but that overlooks the intimate connection of life & physical law which quantum physics reveals. The key is simply that whatever space curvature we inhabit, we natively see to be flat. Given that, the universe can be remapped with a migrating curvature (seen locally as a migrating speed of light) and the distant observations make sense because you expect them to come out fainter, as the supernovae do. A further consequence is that there is no spatial expansion at all, it’s just an illusion of the migrating spatial curvature. If this idea is in fact the solution, it’ll take a long time to catch on.

Ian C
October 18, 2019 1:05 pm

A great deal of comment. But the topic was really why do we see the universe expanding at different rates in different directions. Possibly the reason why it is a question at all is because of the assumptions that underlie the question. The Big Bang Theory has been dead for a long time. But since it is a religious viewpoint, it will not lie down to be buried. (Just like the Anthropogenic Climate Change Theory).
The assumption is that the universe expanded from a single point. What if instead it were stretched by an outside force? You could easily get asymmetrical expansion rates. This is actually what the Bible describes; that God stretched out the universe. And because of General Relativity Theory, the expanded universe would display an age that would appear ancient, but could actually be as young as only a few thousand years.
ian C

Robert of Ottawa
October 18, 2019 1:34 pm

Hint: Maybe red shift ISN’T due to Doppler. And NO, I don’t know what it is due to if not Doppler, but it IS an assumption

Darren Porter
October 18, 2019 2:24 pm

Until science adopts metaphyics and the fractal holographic universe it will never understand anything

John Tillman
October 18, 2019 2:47 pm

Mr. Letzer is not a cosmologist:

“Rafi joined Live Science in 2017. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of journalism. You can find his past science reporting at Inverse, Business Insider and Popular Science, and his past photojournalism on the Flash90 wire service and in the pages of The Courier Post of southern New Jersey.”

Therefore, I’d urge commenters to read the original article rather than, or, time permitting, in addition to, his take on it at Space.com.

October 18, 2019 6:46 pm

Personally, I’ve thought there was something wrong with the universe ever since I learned about i, and the fact that one can actually do useful work with it.

I mean come on — you’re taught through your whole math experience that multiplying two numbers of the same sign give a positive number, and that square roots always have the same sign, then suddenly second-year algebra comes along and bam— they throw the square root of -1 in your face and act like it’s no big deal.

I think they know it’s a sign of the Apocalypse, but don’t want to admit to it.

October 19, 2019 9:12 pm

I would wncourage all interested parties to take a look at the work of Dr PM Robitaille on Vixra
http://vixra.org/author/pierre-marie_robitaille.
He has some imteresting insights on the nature of the “CMB”, black body radiation, and its (mis)applications in physics.
http://vixra.org/pdf/1310.0116v1.pdf concerns thermal emission if the oceans and its implications regarding the earth’s “energy budget” and implications to “global warming”

October 21, 2019 10:29 am

Sorry to be late to the party, but there was a mistake and it was made in 1929. Prior to that time there were 3 competing models of the universe under consideration – Expanding, Contracting and Steady State. Hubble’s discovery in 1929 that the light from most galaxies visible from Earth was Doppler shifted to the red (meaning that the distance between the Earth and those galaxies was increasing) led to the conclusion that the Universe was expanding. Though intuitive, that conclusion was a mistake. Like the action around a massive black hole, gravity from the Cosmic Singularity in the center of a Big Crunch Contracting Universe would be pulling all of the galaxies to it with those closer to the singularity moving faster than those farther away resulting in a red shift in any light passing between them. As between our galaxy, the Milky Way, and any other galaxy visible from Earth, one would typically be closer to the singularity and moving faster towards the singularity than the one farther away causing the distance between them to be increasing and a red shift in any light passing between them – exactly as Hubble observed – even though they will both end up in the singularity. The Big Crunch contracting model also has simple explanations for Dark Energy and Dark Matter based on simple gravity.
See http://www.bigcrunchuniverse.com for a complete explanation. No math required.

son of mulder
October 23, 2019 2:09 am

Einstein’s General Relativity relies on the application of differential and integral calculus to the metric of space-time, which both require the theory to be built on an assumption about space-time being differentiable, maybe it’s particulate in a way that local GR effects like Mercury Perihelion is a good approximation but predictions ove much larger distances breaks down. That would mean we have no tool to make good predictions and conclusions from certain observations are themselves impossible because of a lack of suitable mathematical framework.

Johann Wundersamer
October 28, 2019 9:11 am

“It might be something small: a measurement issue that makes certain stars looks closer or farther away than they are, something astrophysicists could fix with a few tweaks to how they measure distances across space.

It might be something big: an error — or series of errors — in cosmology, or our understanding of the universe’s origin and evolution. If that’s the case, our entire history of space and time may be messed up.

But whatever the issue is, it’s making key observations of the universe disagree with each other: Measured one way, the universe appears to be expanding at a certain rate; measured another way, the universe appears to be expanding at a different rate.

And, as a new paper shows, those discrepancies have gotten larger in recent years, even as the measurements have gotten more precise.”

Song by Talking Heads

And you may find yourself
Living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, well
How did I get here?

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was

Water dissolving and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean

Under the water, carry the water
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!
Water dissolving and water removing

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again into silent water
Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

You may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may say yourself
“My God! What have I done?”

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again into the silent water
Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Look where my hand was

Time isn’t holding up
Time isn’t after us
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Letting the days go by
Same as it ever was
And here the twister comes

Here comes the twister
Letting the days go by (same as it ever was)
Same as it ever was (same as it ever was)
Letting the days go by (same as it ever was)
Same as it ever was
Once in a lifetime
Let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Brian Eno / Christopher Frantz / David Byrne / Jerry Harrison / Tina Weymouth

Once In A Lifetime (Remastered) lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group