# The measurements of the expansion of the universe don’t add up

The mystery of the Hubble constant

FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology

Solving the discordant data on the expansion rate of the universe is like trying to thread a ‘cosmic needle’, where its hole is the H0 value measured today and the thread is brought by the model from the furthest Universe we can observe: the cosmic microwave background.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltetch/ESA-Planck Collaboration/SINC

Physicists use two types of measurements to calculate the expansion rate of the universe, but their results do not coincide, which may make it necessary to touch up the cosmological model. “It’s like trying to thread a cosmic needle,” explains researcher Licia Verde of the University of Barcelona, co-author of an article on the implications of this problem.

More than a hundred scientists met this summer at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California (USA) to try to clarify what is happening with the discordant data on the expansion rate of the universe, an issue that affects the very origin, evolution and fate of our cosmos. Their conclusions have been published in Nature Astronomy journal.

“The problem lies in the Hubble constant (H0), a parameter which value -it is actually not a constant because it changes with time- indicates how fast the Universe is currently expanding,” points out cosmologist Licia Verde, an ICREA researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICC-UB) and the main author of the article.

“There are different ways of measuring this quantity,” she explains, “but they can be divided into two major classes: those relying on the Late Universe (the closest to us in space and time) and those based on the Early Universe, and they do not give exactly the same result.”

A classic example of measurements in the late universe are those provided by the regular pulsations of cepheid stars, which the astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt already observed a century ago and which helped Edwin Hubble calculate distances between galaxies and prove in 1929 that the Universe is expanding.

The current analysis of the variable brightness of cepheids with space telescopes such as the Hubble, along with other direct observations of objects in our cosmic environment and more distant supernovae, indicate that the H0 value is approximately 73.9 kilometres per second per megaparsec (an astronomical unit equivalent to about 3.26 million light years).

However, measurements based on the early Universe provide an average H0 value of 67.4 km/s/Mpc. These other records, obtained with data from the European Space Agency’s Planck Satellite and other instruments, are obtained indirectly on the basis of the success of the standard cosmological model (Lambda-CDM model), which proposes a Universe made up of 5 % atoms or ordinary matter, 27 % dark matter (made up of particles, as yet detected, that provide additional gravitational attraction so that galaxies can form and clusters of galaxies are held together) and 68 % dark energy, which is responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe.

“In particular, these measurements of the primordial Universe focus on the farthest light that can be observed: the cosmic microwave background, produced when the Universe was only 380,000 years old, in the so-called recombination era (where protons recombined with electrons to form atoms),” says Licia Verde.

The researcher highlights a relevant fact: “There are very different and independent ways (with totally different instruments and scientific tools) to measure the H0 on the basis of the early Universe, and the same goes for the late Universe. What is interesting is that all the measurements of one type are in mutual agreement with one another, at an exquisite precision of 1 or 2 %, as are those of the other type, with the same great precision; but when we compare the measurements of one class with those of the other, the discrepancy arises.”

“It looks like a small difference, only 7%, but it is significant considering that we are talking about precisions of 1 or 2% in the value of the Hubble constant,” as emphasised by Licia Verde, who jokes: “It is like trying to thread a ‘cosmic needle’ where its hole is the H0 value measured today and the thread is brought by the model from the furthest Universe we can observe: the cosmic microwave background.”

In addition, she points out some of the consequences of the discrepancy: “The lower the H0 is, the older the Universe is. Its current age is calculated at about 13.8 billion years considering that the Hubble constant is 67 or 68 km/s/Mpc; but if its value were 74 km/s/Mpc, our universe would be younger: it would be approximately 12.8 billion years old.”

Modifying the model in the early Universe

The authors point out in their study that this anomaly does not seem to depend on the instrument or method used for measuring, or on human equipment or sources. “If there are no errors in the data or measurements, could it be a problem with the model?” the researcher asks.

“After all, the H0 values of the primordial Universe class are based on the standard cosmological model, which is very well established, very successful, but which we can try to change a little to solve the discrepancy,” says the expert. “However, we cannot tamper with the characteristics of the model that work very well”.

If the data continue to confirm the problem, theoretical physicists seem to agree that the most promising route for solving it is to modify the model just before the light observed of the cosmic microwave background was formed, i.e. just before recombination (in which there was already 63 % dark matter, 15 % photons, 10 % neutrinos and 12 % atoms). One of the ideas proposed is that, shortly after the Big Bang, an intense episode of dark energy could have occurred that expanded the Universe faster than previously calculated.

“Although it is still highly speculative, with this fine-tuned model, the H0 value obtained with measurements based on the primordial Universe could coincide with local measurements,” notes Licia Verde, who concludes: “It won’t be easy, but in this way we could thread the cosmic needle without breaking what works well in the model.”

###

References:

Licia Verde, Tommaso Treu & Adam G. Riess. “Tensions between the early and late Universe”. Nature Astronomy 3: 891-895, October 2019

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Vuk
November 19, 2019 2:31 am

Universe is an endless cycle of conversion of mass to energy and vice versa. All energy and therefore forces including the gravity are fundamentally electromagnetic (E=mc^2) due to presence of the speed of light constant.
Having this in mind it can be mathematically shown that the Universe space is constant (no expansion) as shown here
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CU.htm

Greg
November 19, 2019 3:02 am

Occam’s razor says Vuk’ wins.

which proposes a Universe made up of 5 % atoms or ordinary matter, 27 % dark matter (made up of particles, as yet detected, that provide additional gravitational attraction so that galaxies can form and clusters of galaxies are held together) and 68 % dark energy, which is responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe.

and they do not give exactly the same result.”

Despite the fact that the 5% 27% and 68% are totally non physical frig factors which were invented to make the models match.

Even “hard” sciences like physics and cosmology have gone totally off the rails now. Descending into fantasy worlds full of magical matter and unicorn energy. The book of Genesis is looking better every day.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 3:23 am

The author meant “as yet undetected.”.

Both Genesis creation stories were long ago shown false in every detail, which fact doesn’t detract from their value as myth. But neither is of any use as science, which modern cosmology is.

Science is never settled. Even after the disparity between the two H0 measurements is rectified, other issues will remain or new ones arise.

Mike Graebner
November 19, 2019 6:13 am

Actually, that is not true that Genesis has been shown to be false. Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe, explains it better than I can. His training is in astronomy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5kKErlvaLs&t=163s.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 7:01 am

Of course it’s not objectively real.

Day and night didn’t exist before the sun, nor did plants. A male human was not created from dust before animals and a woman. Every other part of both creation stories is equally wrong, besides which the myths in Genesis 1 and 2 are irreconcilably contradictory.

icisil
November 19, 2019 10:47 am

“Day and night didn’t exist before the sun, nor did plants”

Which simply proves that that part of Genesis is not to be taken literally, i.e., that the word day (Hebrew yom) must refer to 24 hours (cf. Genesis 2:4: In the day (Hebrew yom) the Lord created the heavens and earth (7 days)).

icisil
November 19, 2019 11:14 am

“… the myths in Genesis 1 and 2 are irreconcilably contradictory”

Only if you take the passages literally, i.e. that the word translated day (Hebrew yom>) must mean 24 hours (which is contradicted by its usage in scripture).

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 1:16 pm

The Hebrew word for “day” has the same range of connotations as its English equivalent. “Yom” is used in the OT in the same ways as in English, not just in one way.

It’s clear that the repeated passages to “day and night” refer to the effect which we now know to be caused by the rotation of the earth. But everywhere in the Bible, earth is immobile, as well as flat.

It’s impssobile to winkle any science out of Genesis, no matter how literal or figurative you take its text to be, nor however ingenious your attempts. Every single “scientific” passage in Genesis 1 and 2 is irredemiably wrong, plus self-contradictory.

It is however easier to try to read evolution into Genesis than it is modern astronomy, physics, chemistry, meteorology, geology or any other discipline, to include the rest of biology.

Phoenix44
November 20, 2019 12:53 am

Seriously?

n.n
November 19, 2019 8:39 am

There are two competing mainstream creation myths. One is based on historical knowledge. The other is based on inference, liberal license, and conflation of logical domains. That said, whether it is historical or physical myths, people want to believe.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 9:43 am

The two creation myths in Genesis, as elucidated elsewhere in the Bbile, are made up stories, both objectively contradicted by all observed reality.

The Big Bang is based upon observations of nature and the laws of physics. It is not a myth requiring belief. It will sink or swim on the basis of the scientific method. It makes testable predictions.

WXcycles
November 19, 2019 4:26 pm

John, if it were so compelling in that regard we would not have had 20+ years of egg-heads playing with ‘string-theory’, innately pretending space has ‘dimensions’ (which they can never define the meaning of), rather than the real-world measuring of mentally-imposed useful abstractions called ‘dimensions’, but which don’t actually exist in space. Dimensions are just more theoretical bafflement created by people caught up on the mental artifact detritus of prior memes. We’ve all read numerous textbooks and papers, and these serve to make a healthy minds skeptical of the ‘just-so’ stories so far.

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 9:37 am

Weather,

The Big Bang hypotheis doesn’t rely on string theory.

It makes teastable predictions which have been confirmed. Yet, as with other well-supported scientific hypotheses, such as universal gravitation, there is always room for improvement and refinement, if not indeed eventually replacement.

Besides the measurement discrepancy, the BB hypothesis still has yet to unify gravity with the other three forces, among other issues. But seriously to equate it with Genesis or other creation myths as comparable scientific propositions is preposterous.

November 19, 2019 5:27 am

Genesis says nothing about how the universe was formed. The first words “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” is all we get. (And P.S. these words also show that the earth existed before the 6 days that followed, showing that the earth was not created in six 24 hour days.)

The only thing that comes close in the Bible about the universe is that it says the earth is round (Isaiah 40:22) and that the earth is suspended on nothing (Job 26:7). And that is it. Nothing about the universe expansion can either confirm nor deny that God exists.

DMacKenzie
November 19, 2019 5:45 am

Huh? try Exodus 20:11

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 7:08 am

Yes. God definitely made everything in the universe, to the extent that it was known during the centuries in which OT books were composed.

For instance, Isaiah 40:26 says that God made the stars (whatever they were):

“Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.”

Mark Lee
November 19, 2019 10:31 am

The Bible also says in 2 Peter 3:8, ‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day’. The comparison of 1000 to 1 is not literal, it is allegorical. The point being that when you refer to Genesis, the 6 days are not literal 24 hour days or intended to be so. Though since God is not bound by physics, there is no reason it couldn’t be. If you believe the creation narrative to be myth, then all life on earth arose from the physical matter that existed at that time. The Bible says that from dust (inorganic minerals) we were made, and to dust we return. Pretty much describes the secular circle of life. Living things are composed of the same matter as the earth (dust). When they die, they decay, or are consumed and then that organism dies and decays, ad infinitum. The elements of a living being are eventually returned to an inorganic state.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 1:52 pm

Mark,

The “day and night” in Genesis 1 are indeed meant literally to be 24 hours, ie morning and evening. But elsewhere in the Bible, “day” does indeed mean other things. Agree that the 1000 years passage is probably meant figuratively. Nowhere does the Bible say that a day lasts over 750 million years.

Genesis 2 says that God fashioned a man and some animals from the dust of the ground, breathed life into them, then made a woman from the man’s rib. That is not how humans and other animals arose, even if you liberally interpret “dust” to be the constituent chemicals of organisms. But we’re made of organic compounds, with of course some inorganics thrown in. Soil contains both.

Life arose from organic chemistry, of which biochemistry is a subset, in an aqueous environment, perhaps with a dry cycle. A mineral substrate, to include ice, might have played a part. But in any case, no magic required. Just chemistry, given hydrogen and the elements made in stars, ie carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and some others.

It’s pointless to try to read modern science into ancient, pre-scientific myths, which sought explanations through stories, especially those with a moral, rather than the scientific method. Theologians as important as Augustine and Calvin recognized this fact. Ironic that fundamentalists claim to be Calvinists, when he wasn’t bothered in the least by the obvious fact that the creation myths in Genesis aren’t literally true, nor is there any reason to try to reconcile them with science.

RoHa
November 23, 2019 11:09 pm

2 Peter 3:8, ‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day’.

This was an excuse cooked up to explain why the promised end had not come. Very early Christians had been saying that they were living in the Last Days, that the ice caps would melt, the sea rise and inundate the coastal cities, there would be wars and rumours of severe storms, and so forth, Jesus would return in glory and sort everything out.
But it didn’t happen, so people began asking awkward questions.

John Tillman
November 24, 2019 8:55 am

Yup. Second Peter is a first century forgery, aiming to explain away the failure of the expected Second Coming.

Even First Peter was probably not written by Peter, an Aramaic-speaking fisherman from the Roman province of Palestine.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 6:53 am

Isaiah doesn’t say that the earth is a sphere. It doesn’t even say that it’s round, like a flat plate. It says that God sits not on the “circle” of the earth, but its “circuit” (as the Hebrew word is translated elsewhere in the KJV), ie its edge. From this vantage point, people appear to Him like insects.

The second passage in the verse continues that God “stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in”, which bears no relationship with reality. Instead, it shows yet again that the Bible shares the ancient Near Eastern conception of the cosmos, ie a flat earth covered by a solid dome or tent, with waters below the earth and above the heavens. The sun and moon move over the earth.

How to translate mysterious verses in Job was discovered in the Ugaritic texts. The KJV has, “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing”. Modern scholarship’s version is, “He stretches out Zaphon over the void”. “Zaphon” came to mean “north”, thanks to Mt. Zaphon’s location, but here stands for the heavens. The word translated as “void” is the same as in Genesis 1:2 (KJV). In the next passage, “nothing” is better rendered as “wasteland”.

By the time that Jewish scholars in Alexandria were translating the OT into Greek, the origin of “zaphon” for “north” had been lost. It derives from the Mount Zaphon at the northern end of the Levant, the abode of Baal Zephon, the Canaanite storm god, their tribal version of Babylonian Marduk. Heavenly Mt. Zaphon was contrasted with earthly Mt. Zion, at Jerusalem.

But I agree that modern cosmology says nothing about the existence of God, or lack thereof. God proposition is not a scientific hypothesis, subject to test of predictions made upon it.

Matthew Schilling
November 19, 2019 11:02 am

The Hebrew word for north is “tsaphon” so how, pray tell, was that connection lost to the authors of the LXX?

The universe can certainly be thought of as a dwelling place set up for us. The Anthropic Principle remains an astounding truth at every scale. The universe was created prior to us, just as a young couple prepare and furnish a baby room before the baby is born.

A wasteland can most certainly be thought of as void and nothing: Nothing useful is set up in it (no home or garden, etc.). It is void of any and all order that would be imposed on it by an intelligent worker.

In this way, the wasteland is like the raging seas – places of chaos, lacking order. God is shown in scripture as Lord over both, and bringing order out of (and into) that chaos.
Daniel saw a vision of various kingdoms rising up out of the waters of the sea (Dan 7:3). They are violent and opposed to God (proving there really is nothing new under the sun!) yet, they are vast organizations of humanity, arising out of chaos – as opposed to the “law of the jungle”, meaning no law at all.

John M. Ware
November 19, 2019 11:45 am

“A thousand years is as a day . . .” refers to the fact that God created time and therefore stands outside it. Jesus said, “Before Abraham ever was, I am.” Thus He, too stands outside time and views it both as an observer and as an agent.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 2:40 pm

Matthew,

As I attemtped to explain, apparently not too well, the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria c. 250 BC, authors of the Septuagint OT translation, knew “zephon” only as a Hebrew word for “north”. They did not know the derivation of the term from the Canaanite name for the mountain at the northern end of the Levant, the abode of the storm god Baal Zaphron.

Discovery in the early 20th century of the Ugaritic texts, about 1000 years older than the Septuagint, elucidated this connection and clarified the meaning of certain previously obscure biblical passages in Job and other books.

Phoenix44
November 20, 2019 1:00 am

The Anthropic Principle is utterly illogical. Of course any life able to ask the question exists in a universe where life is possible. It is a precondition for asking the question that the universe allows life. And since we have no way of knowing how many previous or subsequent universes there may be, nor whether we are in one of a trillion simultaneously existing universes, we cannot calculate any kind of meaningful probabilities. And even if this is the o e and only universe, these conditions are just as likely as any other.

Finally, it is both arrogant and ignorant to assume this universe is perfectly designed for us – why us and nit a different form of life and why assume this universe is “perfect”? For example the speed of light preventing meaningful travel outside our solar system.

Hugs
November 19, 2019 1:17 pm

’The book of Genesis is looking better every day.’

Some people argue on seven per cent of H0, and due to this serious ’being off the rails’, we should discard about half physics, astronomy, geology, paleontology, archaeology, radiochemistry, biology and most medical basic research in favor of a book telling everything was started on one morning by a mysterious three-in-one deity.

goracle
November 19, 2019 8:00 pm

I love science and wanted to become an astronomer growing up. Life happened. However, my love of science never left me.

An infinitesimally small, dense, hot thing decided to expand in an event many call the Big Bang that created or set in motion everything we see today. A being many call God created or set in motion everything we see today. Neither is definitively provable (you can’t create the conditions that caused the Big Bang and can’t see God). People say the Big Bang is real and show scientific equations and computer models as possible evidence. People say God is real and show the Bible as possible evidence. In either instance, you need some faith. Who is right? That’s up to you. Someone called Jesus said he was Gods son. Was he lying? Not sure but we still talk about him 2,000 years later. We must all make up our own minds. But one thing is for sure, anyone who says that the Big Bang is fact but God is pure fiction is 100% fooling themselves. By this post, I think you can see what I choose to put my faith in.

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 6:38 am

No faith required for the Big Bang hypothesis. It’s based upon observations of nature, ie the cosmic microwave background radiation. Predictions made upon its basis are testable, capable of being confirmed or shown false. That’s science.

OTOH, Genesis’ creation myths are made-up stories, repeatedly shown false in every single last detail. Therefore, the only possible basis for believing them real is willfully blind faith.

goracle
November 20, 2019 2:16 pm

John Tillman, you don’t have to believe Genisis…. I have a hard time with it myself… too fanciful and hard to wrap my head around it… but to say the big bang is testable? Stop kidding yourself. sure we have algorithms and equations and super computers to crunch the numbers and real observations…. but is this evidence of any big bang? something from nothing? only in cosmology does something come from nothing… and what was that nothing prior to the big bang? im not saying you’re crazy for believing it, but I am saying that, in the end, we’re both putting faith in something we’ll never be able to prove with 100% certainty… I’m just up front about it…

I dont know about Genesis story but I do know a man named Jesus said he was the son of God @ 2,000 years ago and, whether he lied or not, he definitely changed the hearts and minds of those he touched… and we still talk about him today. I’m not asking you or anyone to believe in God… but the leap of faith you’re taking with the big bang theory at least shows you’re willing to put your faith in something 😉

John Tillman
November 21, 2019 12:21 pm

Of course the Big Bang hypothesis is testable. No faith required, just the scientific method. So far it has been repeatedly confirmed. Maybe one day it will be shown false, but not yet.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/07/11/big-bang-confirmed-again-this-time-by-the-universes-first-atoms/#498f39d079c2

RoHa
November 23, 2019 11:19 pm

Why would anyone give the time of day to this Genesis book?

The Kojiki tells us that Kunitokotachi and Amenominakanushi brought Ianami and Izanagi into being, and gave them the task of creating the land.

Why believe any story that contradicts this?

John Tillman
November 22, 2019 8:30 am

Recent discovery relevant to dark matter:

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/fifth-force-nature

Greg
November 19, 2019 3:05 am

FECYT , as in can you explain how the universe works?

Well it’s all to do with invisisble , non detectable matter and energy which by definitions we can never detect but we know it must be there because otherwise our models must be totally wrong and that’s totally … err … totally ….
…. aw FECYT !

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 3:26 am

Since gravity also operates at the same speed, it makes as much sense to say that the universe is gravitational.

Same goes for the strong and weak forces.

beng135
November 19, 2019 8:42 am

I agree. Electromagnetic involves charges — gravity doesn’t. Plus, there are 2 charges opposing each other (balancing to overall net-zero), gravity is one-way.

Matthew Schilling
November 19, 2019 10:46 am

Gravity operates essentially instantly. Neptune is constantly attracted to where the sun IS, not to where it was 15,000 seconds earlier. If Neptune constantly fell toward where the sun was 15,000 seconds previously, it would have fallen away from the solar system long ago.

Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 19, 2019 2:30 pm

Newton was quite distressed by the fact that his law of gravitation required instantaneous action at a distance. He was aware of Rømer’s finding that light had a finite speed, and even knew that the Sun was about eight light minutes from Earth. But it seemed to work, so there you are.

Newton’s most solid contribution to physics were his three laws of motion, the first of which is that a body’s state of motion (direction and velocity) remain unchanged unless the body is acted upon by an external force. Newton considered gravitational attraction as a force.

Einstein’s later view was that the gravitational effect of mass in the universe is to distort the space-time around itself. In his view, gravity is not a force. Newton’s first law is still obeyed in that massive bodies near each other still travel in straight lines. It’s just that the “straight” part is different from a Euclidean space’s “straight.”

Einstein’s view makes more sense, and doesn’t change Newton’s laws of motion. In fact, neither relativity nor quantum mechanics ever changed Newton’s laws of motion in any way, which makes this contribution to physics the greatest of any in history.

Matthew Schilling
Reply to  Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 19, 2019 6:13 pm

But Einstein can’t be right, or explanations of what he meant are too simplistic. Gravity cannot merely be geometric, and merely the bending of space. Where does the impetus to motion come from? Without the attractive force what difference does a slope make, no matter how steep?

Jim Masterson
Reply to  Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 19, 2019 10:52 pm

>>
Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 19, 2019 at 2:30 pm

In fact, neither relativity nor quantum mechanics ever changed Newton’s laws of motion in any way,
<<

That’s not exactly true. Einstein changed Newton’s Second Law of Motion. The Second Law is:

$\displaystyle F=m\cdot a$

or force is equal to mass times acceleration. Einstein changed it to force is equal to the rate of change of momentum with respect to time or

$\displaystyle F=\frac{dp}{dt}$

Linear momentum is defined as

$\displaystyle p=m\cdot v$

or momentum is mass times velocity. If we substitute this into Einstein’s definition and take the derivative of a product, we get

$\displaystyle F=\frac{d(m\cdot v)}{dt}=m\cdot \frac{dv}{dt}+v\cdot \frac{dm}{dt}$

The derivative of velocity with respect to time is acceleration and the first term becomes our familiar mass times acceleration. The second term is interesting. In classical-Newtonian physics the derivative of mass with respect to time is zero, i.e., mass is a constant. However, in relativity, mass is a function of velocity. If you plug in the Lorentz transformation for relativistic mass, you get a very messy expression for relativistic force.

Jim

Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
Reply to  Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 21, 2019 8:18 pm

Newton’s Second Law of Motion, as stated by Newton, was that the time rate of change of the quantity of motion (expressed as m*v) is proportional to the applied force. He never separated the two. And, in fact, the chain rule expression you have presented is wrong.

Jim Masterson
Reply to  Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 22, 2019 10:09 am

>>
He never separated the two.
<<

They do now, so your argument that Newton’s version has stood the test of time didn’t even make it to the nineteenth century.

>>
And, in fact, the chain rule expression you have presented is wrong.
<<

That would probably be true if I had used the chain rule. As I said, I used the derivative of a product–definitely not the chain rule.

Jim

Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
Reply to  Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 23, 2019 7:11 pm

Newton’s “quantity of motion” was p, the entity we now call momentum. He never stated his Second Law as “F = m*a.” That someone else did is irrelevant. Einstein used the Second Law exactly as Newton conceived it, though with a much expanded view of what it meant.

Also, the chain rule absolutely refers to the “product rule” for differentiation. It’s wrong as you state it because it doesn’t account for the relative coordinate systems. I’ve spent my life in rocket propulsion, and equations expressing the thrust of a rocket nowhere contain “mass times acceleration.” They do contain the change of mass with respect to time multiplied by velocity (of the exhaust). But the velocities have to be carefully defined, because there are more than one of them.

Jim Masterson
Reply to  Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 25, 2019 6:58 pm

Okay, points taken.

Jim

Robert of Texas
November 19, 2019 7:41 pm

Not so. Gravity is just the warping of Space-Time, not a traditional force. Changes in space-time (i.e. Gravity Waves) travel at the speed of light – this is now confirmed.

Neptune simply follows it’s straight line path (ignoring the other planets to keep this simple) through Space-Time, it isn’t pulled toward the Sun. If the Sun moves in relation to Neptune (and of course it does because of various other masses acting of Space-Time) then the Sun distorts Space-Time and those distortions propagate at the speed of light.

This is according to the General Theory of Relativity – not the speculations of how it should work using Quantum Physics.

So forget attraction – Neptune is just following a straight path unless other forces act upon it.

Matthew Schilling
November 19, 2019 8:48 pm

That’s just silly. The sun is moving and Neptune is keeping up with the sun’s movements instantly. If information can’t propagate faster than the speed of light then updates to the curvature of space can’t propagate instantly to Neptune.
Furthermore, curving space doesn’t cause motion. Curve as much as you want- how does that compel anything to move, let alone accelerate? People who satisfy themselves with the shallow notion of the curvature of space are assuming objects will tend to slide down the curvature… because they are thinking of gravity as they experience it. But gravity can’t be part of the definition of gravity!

Matthew Schilling
November 19, 2019 8:54 pm

Gravity waves are not gravity, just as the sound of a tree falling is not the falling tree. The sound of that tree falling is independent from, and much faster than, the motion of the tree. Gravity waves propagate outward at the speed of light. That does not mean gravity propagates at the same speed. It propagates at orders of magnitude faster.

beng135
November 20, 2019 8:46 am

Matthew, please get up to date. The gravitational-wave observatories have proven that gravity travels at the speed of light. In this un-politicized topic, Wikipedia is actually a reasonable source — there are many others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational-wave_observatory

Matthew Schilling
November 20, 2019 9:40 am

Imagine an object launched into space that immediately began to move away from the earth, retracing the earth’s orbit in reverse. Imagine that object had just enough fuel to decelerate from the earth’s orbital speed until it sat motionless relative to the earth streaking away from it at greater than 66,000 MPH. What would happen next to that inert object, sitting 93 million miles away from the sun, but lacking any motion perpendicular to its direction to the sun? It would immediately start falling toward the Sun. And, if its launch and fuel burn had been timed to place it where it would be least affected by Venus or Mercury, then it would continue to fall faster and faster, accelerating toward the sun until it finally burned up, with its ashes falling into the sun.

Though our object was at rest, and though objects at rest tend to stay at rest, it would still accelerate toward the Sun. It wouldn’t be geometry that would compel that object to move. It would be the PULL of the Sun’s gravity, acting as a FORCE on the object.

That same force is relentlessly pulling every planet in our solar system. And, by studying the straightforward ballistics of the planets in orbit around the Sun, we know for a fact that gravity works on them instantly: Neptune is falling toward where the sun IS, not to where it was 15,000 seconds earlier – not to where the visible sun appears in its sky. Even though the Earth orbits much closer to the Sun than Neptune, still there is a measurable delta between the direction from which sunlight arrives here vs. the direction in which the Earth is tugged by the Sun’s gravity.

If, while standing on the surface of the Moon in July of 1969, Neil Armstrong had pointed a gun toward the Moon’s horizon and pulled the trigger, the bullet would have sped away from him, yet it would have also immediately started falling toward the ground because of the Moon’s gravity. The faster the bullet exited from his gun, the farther away it would have traveled before it finally fell to the ground.

Yet, if that bullet had sped away fast enough so that it could reach the horizon prior to reaching the ground – if Neil could have brought the curvature of the round moon into the equation – then the bullet would have continued to travel around the moon. Though it would be continuously falling the entire time, its speed perpendicular to the center of the Moon’s gravity would keep carrying it over the horizon so that it didn’t touch down onto the ground.

The planets are like that bullet. They are in continuous free fall toward the Sun, yet their forward motion perpendicular to the Sun keeps them from falling into the Sun. Yet, they are each falling toward where the Sun IS, not to where it appears to be in their alien sky. If the planets fell toward where the visible Sun appeared to be in their sky, they would continuously drift away from the sun – and would have drifted away long ago.

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 1:05 pm

Matthew,

Gravity waves are not gravitational waves.

Gravity has been shown repeatedly to operate at the speed of light.

To Newton, space and time were absolute and gravity worked instantaneously. Einstien discovered that space-time is relative and gravity works at about light speed.

This is no longer theoretical, but an observation of nature, ie a scientific fact. Actually, the best measurement presently available finds the velocities of EM waves and gravity to vary slightly, but close enough for government work. The point is that gravity isn’t instantaneous.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aa920c

Lots of authors!

Matthew Schilling
November 20, 2019 6:42 pm
beng135
November 21, 2019 5:56 am

Matthew, did you even read any articles on the what the observatories saw? Do you know how they determined where the gravitational events occurred? Do you understand time delays between the observation points of each event and what that means (hint: the time delays exactly match something traveling at the speed of light)? If not, I’m talking to a brick wall & wasting time.

Matthew Schilling
November 21, 2019 8:38 am

Beng, Did you even read my comment? Do you even realize the Earth is accelerating toward a spot IN FRONT of where the Sun appears in our sky – to where the Sun actually IS vs. where it appears to be because light from the Sun takes over 8 minutes to arrive at Earth? Otherwise, I’m talking to a brick wall and wasting my time.

John Tillman
November 22, 2019 6:47 am

Matthew Schilling November 20, 2019 at 6:42 pm

The “speed of gravity” refers to the velocity of a gravitational wave, which, as predicted by general relativity and confirmed in 2017 by observation of the GW170817 neutron star merger, is the same as the speed of light.

Matthew Schilling
November 22, 2019 1:45 pm

John Tillman,

And yet, Neptune is still attracted to where the sun IS, not to where it was 15,000 seconds ago – the time needed for light to travel from the Sun to that planet. So there’s that.

Neptune would’ve drifted out of our solar system long ago if there was a propagation delay to gravity, as there is to light.

John Tillman
November 24, 2019 9:49 am

If the sun suddenly disappeared, Neptune would continue on its orbital path for about 250 minutes, before shooting off on a tangent.

The problem with Newtonian instantaneity was first noted in 1859 with reference to Mercury’s orbit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity

Gordon Dressler
November 21, 2019 7:41 am

According to the well-established Theory of General Relativity, the speed of gravitational waves is equal to the speed of light in a vacuum, c. Within the equally-well-established Theory of Special Relativity, the constant c is not exclusively about light, but is instead the highest possible speed for any interaction in nature.

As of December 2018, the Advanced LIGO project made eleven detections of gravitational waves, of which ten were from binary black hole mergers. The other event was the first detection, on 17 August 2017, of a collision of two neutron stars which simultaneously produced optical signals detectable by conventional telescopes, thus establishing that gravitational waves travelled at the speed of light. In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry C. Barish “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.” (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO ).

So, theory and observation both say that gravity (i.e., changes in an established “steady-state’ gravitational field) does NOT operate “essentially instantaneously”.

Matthew Schilling
November 22, 2019 1:47 pm

Come back a little closer to home and please tell me why Neptune is attracted to where the Sun IS, not to where it was 15,000 seconds ago – the time it takes for light to travel from the Sun to that planet. Thanks!

Gordon Dressler
November 22, 2019 3:16 pm

Matthew, I never said that Neptune is attracted to where the Sun is in relationship to it at a give instant in time. I argued just the opposite . . . the Neptune senses the gravitational field of the Sun as it was established/perturbed some 15,000 seconds seconds EARLIER.

Neptune is following the geodesic in curved space-time that was established by the Sun some 15,000 seconds earlier, with small perturbations being contributed by the other plants, depending on how close/far, and in what direction, they were from Neptune in the same manner, with the same distance/c time delay. The movement of the barycenter of the Solar System (referencing the vector to it from Neptune) over the course of a Neptunian year is so small it has negligible effect on Neptune’s orbit

Matthew Schilling
November 23, 2019 8:31 am

Gordon, I accidentally replied to you, rather than to John Tillman’s comment that appears just above yours.

Neptune travels the width of its diameter in the 15,000 seconds it takes for light to travel between it and the Sun. The Sun’s attraction would continuously miss Neptune by a full planet width behind it, if gravity propagated at the speed of light.

Also, the Sun isn’t merely moving around within its barycenter. According to Space.com, the sun is travelling at around 450,000 MPH in its great revolution around the Milky Way. Therefore, the sun has moved on nearly 1.9 million miles (more than twice its diameter) in the 15,000 seconds it takes for light to travel from the it to Neptune. Neptune, therefore, would constantly be attracted BEHIND the sun by a couple million miles, even as the sun’s attraction of Neptune misses it by a full planet width behind it. If that was true, Neptune would’ve fallen away from the solar system long ago.

But it isn’t true. The Sun and Neptune are each attracted to the instantaneous location of the other. There is no delay between them of the propagation of their current location

Michael S. Kelly LS, BSA Ret.
November 23, 2019 11:00 pm

I’m just glad that none of us in this thread has been so puerile and juvenile as to talk about attraction to Neptune and repulsion from Uranus.

Oh…uh…wait…

Greg
November 19, 2019 3:30 am

The Hubble constant is basically the linear trend of the universe. Despite the immense, unfathomable complexity and extent of the universe they have the stupidity to try to reduce it all to a linear trend.

when that does not work , they try to have it slightly “convex ” or “concave”.

I guess, like our wonderful climate, if you squint hard enough, you should be able to make a few linearisations and get the right answer. After all, it all comes from the basic physics.

Then extrapolate your linearised approximations back 13.5 billions years and explain how the lights came on. If only God could summon that kind faith !

Joel O’Bryan(@joelobryan)
November 19, 2019 8:13 am

H0 is not linear. It is a rate (km/sec) increasing with distance (Mpc).

But H0 has units: distance/time/distance, usually expressed as km/second/Mpc.

One that basis: H0 could be written as a: (number) time^-1, where the distance terms cancel. Inverse function are not necessarily linear, inverse time may not be not linear.
Fundamentally this true because when we look at the stars at night, we are looking backwards in time., but that time distance relationship constant across time. Maybe not, the discrepancy between H0 measures suggests it likely isn’t (linear).
We we observe Alpha Centuri A/B from Earth, we see them as they were 4.2 years ago. And so forth as we look at evermore distant objects, we go backwards in time. (The speed limit of light though prevents us from ever exploiting this reality to win last Saturday’s lotto though.)

And space-time as Einstein’s GR equates shows those two are related. So the bottomline is the universe is not linear.
That the CMB early universe provides a lower value of H0 than the (closer) Cepheid method, is also a suggestion that the universe may be accelerating it space-time expansion. So again, not linear.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 9:37 am

Well said.

IMO there really isn’t a discrepancy, although if so, an explanation is likely to emerge.

As the expansion rate appears to be accelerating, the divergence ought not to surprise. The constant isn’t constant. The rate might not only be accelerating but variable.

Energy inherent in space-time itself could be a drag or an accelerant.

Sal Minella
November 19, 2019 3:34 am

Galaxies within 100 million light-years of the Milky Way are moving towards us, those farther away are apparently moving away and the farther away they are the faster they are diverging from one another – an indication of an expanding Universe. To support the expanding Universe both dark matter and dark energy have been invented to “fudge” the data. If, however, the earlier (more distant) galactic clusters were diverging faster than the later (closer) galactic clusters then the interpretation that the Universe was, in fact, collapsing would be a better fit for the observation and no fudge would be needed.

n.n
November 19, 2019 8:47 am

We have barely made close observation near the edge of our solar system. The galaxies and other phenomena (images) are inferred from signals of assumed/asserted fidelity. With time, we may reduce the uncertainty, and discover, perhaps confirm, what lies beyond our solar system.

Peter
November 19, 2019 6:28 am

Hi Vuk,
I agree with you. I is all electromagnetic. Gravity is caused only by interaction of chaotic internal electromagnetic structure of matter with another matter entity and partially aligning electromagnetic fields.
And expansion of universe can be explained by finite 4D sphere universe, where going one direction you will return from opposite side. So object going further from us is actually already returning from other side and accelerating toward us. So you actually see it accelerating from you, while it is already accelerating toward you from opposite side.

brians356
November 19, 2019 3:52 pm

Hey, I can use that motion to stir my highball! Thanks.

Charles Higley(@higley7)
November 19, 2019 7:28 am

When you base your Big Bang expansion of the redshift of objects and ignore redshift caused by gravitational field, you are bound to get spurious and variable results. Different researchers focus on different objects and misinterpret the results. Quasars are local objects to galaxies and clearly show that as they move away from the mother galaxy, they decrease in redshift and develop into protogalaxies.

As electromagnetism is 10^34 times stronger than gravity, it is ingenuous to assume that all charge is evenly distributed in the universe at any level. It certainly is not in our solar system.

It may very well be that the reason they have had so much trouble nailing down gravity is because it really does not exist but is actually a residual effect of electromagnetism; a one part in 10^34 residual effect. As it is impossible to have mass with a proportional amount of charge in the quarks and electrons, they need to disprove the possible long-range London dispersion forces that might comprise the effects of gravity. They cannnot adopt and extra, fourth force until they discount electromagnetism from being real gravity’s source.

BFL
November 19, 2019 8:09 am

Vuk: Ahh but how would this look if gravity speed were nearly instantaneous. The only way the Einstein view can correlate with orbital mechanics is by a complicated correcting fudge factor.

http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html

Vuk
November 19, 2019 11:36 am

Einstein introduced his fudge factor (cosmological constant – lambda) in his field equations of general relativity because he didn’t like that his theory predicted non-static universe. When Lemaître demonstrate that universe is not static (you can take it as expanding or contracting, it in my view it is an endless cycle of conversion of mass to energy and vice versa) Einstein realised that fudge factor was superfluous, he enthusiastically embraced non-static universe, abandon the idea of the fudge factor and exclaimed ‘lambda = 1’.

son of mulder
November 19, 2019 2:28 pm

Does your relationship between little g and big G predict why rotating galaxies don’t fly apart?

Joel O'Bryan(@joelobryan)
November 19, 2019 3:13 pm

Vuk,

Your assumption of TF = 1 creates a logic loop leading to the conclusion that requires TF=1. Circular.
In effect, you assume what you set out to prove.
Nice try though, but no Nobel Prize.

Regards,
Joel

Vuk
November 20, 2019 12:53 am

I assume you did see remark at bottom of the page.

Gordon Lehman(@gymnosperm)
November 20, 2019 9:32 am

The temperature variations in the MBR are very small ~1:100,000. Basically a brick radiating originally at 3000K (the temperature where electrons can bond with nuclei) and red shifted to 3K by something. If not expansion, what?

Mark Broderick
November 19, 2019 2:58 am

Charles Rotter

“(made up of particles, as yet UNdetected, that provide additional gravitational attraction…” ?

Ed Zuiderwijk
November 19, 2019 2:58 am

IMHO as one who trained and worked in astrophysics, although not in cosmology itself, things like ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ will turn out to be the Phlogeston of cosmology. Hypothetical entities which serve the narrative but really are just a metaphor for our profound lack of understanding of fundamental aspects and workings of the universe.

But hey, at least no ‘hide the decline’ in that field of research.

Greg
November 19, 2019 3:16 am

Wow Ed you just put your finger on it ! Climatology is saved.

Briffa’s tree rings were not showing a decline in real temperatures they were just picking up some dark coldness that is undetectable on thermometers and classical ways of measuring temperature.

Similarly Trenberth’s “missing heat” is just “dark heat” which we are not yet capable of measuring.

More funds are urgently needed for fundamental research into detecting “dark heat” in the oceans in order better understand climate save the planet.

Anyone outside cosmology can see that it’s BS and you don’t need PhD to smell it. As someone once said: it is very difficult for someone to understand something when their job depends on them not understanding it.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 9:57 am

Cosmology is science.

“Climate science” (TM), not so much.

commieBob
November 19, 2019 3:50 am

Dark matter and dark energy remind me of the aether which used to be thought of as the medium through which electromagnetic radiation was propagated.

A C Osborn
November 19, 2019 4:47 am

And still is.
The Electric Universe appears to make more sense than the Gravatic one.
There is also the interesting work of a group who believe that the science of Quantisised Inertia (QI) is the correct model.
One of it’s main proponents can be found here

Patrick
November 19, 2019 3:53 am

lDark matter and dark energy are both opaque to our direct observations, and yet provide evidence of *something*. That’s nearly all that we currently have to go on.

There is an excess of gravity on the outskirts of galaxies, causing measurable impossibilities with their motion.
It can’t be a distance variability to the gravity constant, because the observed data is too lumpy and inconsistent.
It can’t be primordial black holes, because accretion discs are anything but black. Any tortured nuclei that comes near one emits x-rays and gamma rays before being shredded and consumed by them.
It can’t be neutrinos, because while they rarely interact with matter, we have pretty solid data on how much that they do interact, both in the cosmos and in the lab.
It can’t be more hydrogen, because that would absorb more ambient light than it does.

The list goes on and on. If you can solve this mystery, I’m sure that you’d be a shoe-in for a Nobel Prize.

Tom in Florida
November 19, 2019 4:39 am

The effects of dark energy and dark matter are the results of God’s actions. With that, both sides are satisfied.

You can keep the hardware just give me the cash.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 6:56 am

Punting to God doesn’t satisfy the requirements of the scientific method. Doing so explains nothing.

Hugs
November 19, 2019 1:25 pm

The fundamental reason, why things are as they are, has got to be maths, so it finally neither explains, just describes.

It is a bit like God did it, but without the antropomorfisms of religions.

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 7:25 am

Nope. Science does explain observed phenomena. Math is a tool or language useful in explaining.

You might be partially right as to Newtonian mechanics, in which math both tries to explain and does describe, up to a point. Einsteinian gravitation, however reliant on equations, offers an explanation beyond the inverse square law and attraction based upon mass.

Other areas of physics and other sciences also seek natural explanations for observed phenomena, which math to help describe hypotheses. As physics spawned calculus, so did biology beget statistics.

So it’s the other way around: observations first, then math to help understand them.

Frenchie77
November 19, 2019 5:01 am

It also can’t be dark energy or dark matter because unicorns aren’t real.

What we can be sure of; however, is that our dark models (lambda cdm) are wrong because the data tells us so. Skeptical scientists are needed to solve this problem, not more acolytes. Yet skepticism is highly derided these days. I expect it will take a least a couple of generations to solve this, not because we couldn’t but because we wouldn’t.

Patrick
November 19, 2019 4:52 pm

I know that the James Webb Telescope is over a decade behind schedule, but there’s no reason to think that it will take *that* long…

Leonard Weinstein
November 19, 2019 5:23 am

Randall Mills has solved the issue. Dark matter exists, and is a form of hydrogen called hydrinos. The acceleration in expansion is not caused by dark energy, but is due to conversion of some matter to energy in stars.

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 1:58 pm

It has now been 33 years since Mills proposed hydrinos, and set up a company to harness their power.

Still no evidence of hydrinos and the company is still a scam.

kzb
November 19, 2019 5:25 am

It might be hydrogen. Certainly there is strong evidence the galaxy is full of small (actually AU-sized) gas clouds. They are detected as Extreme Scattering Events in radio astronomy, and they can be seen in e.g. the Helix Nebula. There are many thousands per star, and their combined mass could easily account for the galaxy rotation curve. Naturally, research in this area attracts a profound silence. See for example:

http://manlyastrophysics.org/index.html

RoHa
November 23, 2019 11:24 pm

Shoo in.

And what is the connection between dark energy, dark matter, and the dark side of the Force?

Garland Lowe
November 19, 2019 7:23 am

But hey, at least no ‘hide the decline’ in that field of research.

Give’em time. Real scientists seem few and far between.

Walter Sobchak
November 19, 2019 8:55 am

Dark matter, dark energy, black holes, …

Do you ver get the feeling they are just making dugash up to fit their equations, whether or not those equations have a darned thing to do with reality?

I say cut their funding until they come up with some theory that can be tested and verified.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 9:52 am

The Big Bang hypothesis has been repeatedly tested and confirmed.

The differing results from different measurments of H0 don’t falsify the hypothesis.

Johann Wundersamer
November 27, 2019 6:20 am

Ed Zuiderwijk November 19, 2019 at 2:58 am

things like ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ are ineffective by their poor chosen names:

– dark matter is in no way dark, but invisible for our baryonic sensors and

– dark energy is working without our cognition of its origin.

____________________________________

Non-baryonic matter is matter that, unlike all the kind kinds of matter with which we are familiar, is not made of baryons (including the neutrons and protons found in all atomic nuclei). … This attribute could be used to measure the contribution of non-baryonic matter to the total amount of mass in the universe.

WXcycles
November 19, 2019 3:55 am

Cosmology is mothers-milk to a growing brain.

Astronomy is meat … … er … … soy and rhubarb protein-shake.

Prjindigo
November 19, 2019 4:05 am

Occam’s Razor: The Universe isn’t expanding, the matter we see is expanding outwards as if from a non-uniform explosion.

The whole functioning definition of “universe” is bullshit. Reality exists far far beyond where we can see, the incoming information is just lost as noise.

Stephen Wilde
November 19, 2019 4:05 am

Recent convoluted imaginings are becoming less and less likely to be correct as their complexity increases.
Most likely, the universe is constant in total combined energy and mass content and spherical in shape but contains regions of convection where mass either moves away from the centre ( KE is converted to PE) or moves back towards the centre (PE is converted back to KE).
In former regions there is expansion and a red shift but in the latter there is contraction and a blue shift and both combined net out to zero.
We are situated in a region that is moving away from the centre and expanding in the process.
Such expansion appears to be accelerating because the amount of space available increases exponentially as one moves away from the centre. Contraction within regions moving back towards the centre would appear to be decelerating because the amount of space available decreases exponentially as one moves towards the centre.
Any sphere containing matter floating freely within a gravitational field will be bound to develop a convective overturning cycle due to the inevitability of density variations caused by uneven heating in the horizontal plane and the universe as a whole is likely to follow that rule.

Jonathan Ranes
November 19, 2019 4:43 am

That feels like a much better place to look while we are waiting for dark matter to come knocking on our door

migueldelrio
November 19, 2019 9:47 am

Your assumption is that, if the universe is expanding, it must do so linearly.

Rotation of the universe would provide for the apparent expansion from our vantage point while providing no evidence as to whether the universe actually expands or contracts.

Your assumption is analogous to beliefs commonly held centuries ago that the earth is flat.

Stephen Wilde
November 20, 2019 5:34 am

My assumption is that the universe is not expanding but ‘parcels’ of matter within the universe can either expand as they move away from the centre of gravity or contract as they move towards the centre of gravity.
That is pretty novel and bears no relation to flat Earth theories.

rhoda klapp
November 19, 2019 4:41 am

It is hubris to imagine that you can accurately describe the universe by way of observations from one spot. Which in themselves rely on a number of assumptions made for convenience. OTOH, it doesn’t really matter much, does it?

H.R.
November 19, 2019 5:53 am

Rhoda klapp: “OTOH, it doesn’t really matter much, does it?”

It really would be nice to know the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, but even if we did, at the end of the day everyone would still clock out and go home to dinner.

It’s like the dog that chases cars and finally catches one. Now what do you do with it?

That said, I still don’t mind the bright ones among us having a go at it. I know a bunch of useless things, but still I get a lot of satisfaction from knowing them, and for all I know, they may turn out to be not so useless after all.

November 24, 2019 10:16 am

“It really would be nice to know the meaning of life, the universe, and everything”

You’re assuming there even IS a meaning.

tom0mason(@tom0mason)
November 19, 2019 4:47 am

“The problem lies in the Hubble constant (H0), a parameter which value -it is actually not a constant because it changes with time- indicates how fast the Universe is currently expanding,” points out cosmologist Licia Verde, an ICREA researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICC-UB) and the main author of the article.

Oh is it?
The universe has always been, it is a steady state — the rate at which time passes varies, giving the ILLUSION of an expanding universe. The rate at which time passes is like the movement of treacle with variable viscosity — thin treacle spiraling out of the center (close to the so called big bang origin), thick treacle at the far edges of the universe. However it is never quite totally homogeneous as aggregations of matter warp and bend the rate at which time passes in it’s local vicinity.

November 19, 2019 7:05 pm

“The universe has always been, it is a steady state”

You say that, but you don’t KNOW it.

LT
November 19, 2019 5:00 am

I predict if and when the new telescope is in orbit, that a deep field analysis will see objects that are 20+ billion light years away. And the head scratching will continue.

Vuk
November 19, 2019 5:49 am

Consider following possibility: the universe is a space-time enclosed entity. Light can be absorbed, change its frequency (red & blue shifts) but not destroyed, which begs a question how far it goes to and how far it comes from. We know that mass bends light, so it is not unreasonable to assume that each ‘ray’ of light be it visible, infra red or electromagnetic radiation that our telescopes observe it has been already affected by total mass of universe, the further it comes from greater its principal its curvature, eventually closing on itself, i.e. at a certain time-space event we might be seeing not some far flung galaxy but our bit of space many billions of years ago.

Super Hollis
November 19, 2019 8:04 am

Yes Vuk, Big Bang Theory is seemingly built on the foundation stone of redshift.

Is it reasonable to suggest that redshift is caused by something other than velocity? If it is, we lose:

the ever problematic theory of Inflation—it is problematic
the backwards physics of the very early universe expanding from infinite gravity
dark energy
13.3 billion year-old fully formed galaxies
the expansion itself
the flat universe problem
the horizon problem
large-scale structures such as voids and walls that shouldn’t have had time to form
dark matter

They need to get that James Webb Telescope up.

James francisco
November 19, 2019 8:21 am

That’s heavy man.

tom0mason(@tom0mason)
November 19, 2019 10:47 am

Given the speed of light is a constant. However time/space=a constant but each of them is free to vary but maintain that constant.
The size of the universe is then what??

Vuk
November 19, 2019 12:30 pm

The universe is a space-time enclosed entity of an endless cycle of conversion of mass to energy and vice versa. We may think of limits to universe containing mass but not of limits to one containing energy, since energy is omnipresent and in its entirety omnipotent. Perhaps, before idea of energy was properly and scientifically defined and quantified it was (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) the idea of what God is.

tom0mason(@tom0mason)
November 19, 2019 2:33 pm

Thanks Vuk,

I will endeavor to persevere.
The way I see it is that as time/space exchange the effect of the transaction is the gravitational effect observed with matter.

WXcycles
November 20, 2019 7:38 pm

If the Universe contains mass, then like everything else present, mass must be an emergent property of space itself, just as the particles are that ‘have’ such emergent mass.

In which case, it is simpler (the simplest) to think of matter as a local anisotropy of isotropic space properties. The space has the mass (a property of a physical space, thus our physics) but the particle forms a higher-density region of that same space, thus expresses a relative mass-gravity effect on nearby space that decreases with radius/volume.

i.e. the surrounding elastic-space (another physical property of space) is continuous, but is pulled inside the standing wave’s structure in space, as a ‘particle’, thus the particle contains relatively more ‘mass’ (i.e. more space) than the surrounding space.

As the local space aggregates at higher density in the wave structure, the surrounding elastic-space is pull to a higher tension (which creates a propagating tension within space, at v=c, which is what call a ‘gravity-wave’). So elastic space around the particle is locally made anisotropic (due its higher density of mass and tension, which is E), but within the large-scale the space averages out to elastic and mass isotropy, over the scale of 14 billion light years radius, for example.

So where particles aggregate, planets stars galaxies, the surrounding elastic space is thus anisotropically distributed, compared to the large-scale isotropic background. Thus space is curved on all scales except for the largest cosmic isotropic scale – where the elastic-tension averages to an isotropic force (G). Thus G negates itself in all directions at distances where isotropy is approximated (i.e. space reaches equilibrium distribution of m and elastic tension, G).

Thus a steady-state infinity, that distorts infinitely elastically, and can thus ‘expand’ and ‘compact’ again, infinitely, as well.

Thus ‘space’ is an infinite something with real physical properties of infinite elasticity, and with mass (and thus space has inertia and is the source of it, and thus all physical dynamics) and the stretching of the infinite elasticity in its various forms and scales, is what we called ‘energy’, E.

And when space stretches you get gravitational (elastic-tension) waves in space inbetween ‘objects’ that are aggregating space-mass, but the EM force of particle scale, and the strong and nuclear forces of atom and nucleus scale, are all just the same stretching of this elastic space, making the E ‘forces’, thus all forces are one space being stretched, with different local and large-scale expressions and scales.

So the shorter the scale, the stronger the elastic tension, thus the strongest ‘force’ will be expressed over the shortest distance.

Thus E=hf

An infinitely-elastic space, the origin of m, thus emerges G via anisotropic space aggregation into particles, which innately gives rise to E. While ‘c’ is just the maximum rate at which this elastic space can deform anisotropically.

Space can’t accept a higher acceleration without immediately creating a shower of ‘particles’ due any further excess acceleration energy input. Thus acceleration is turned back into matter with mass expressing G at v=c.

All these are properties of space, and particles are space, distributed anisotropically.

It’s easy to understand once you realize the only thing that exists, including ‘us’, is space. The stuff ‘in space’, is simply anisotropic space.

Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed. There was no ‘creation’, there was no beginning there is no end, there is no outside, there is no inside, there are no dimensions.

And what tapped this out into text was space, and that space is innately alive, conscious and senses its own surrounding space anisotropy.

Space needs a cup of tea.

Steve Keppel-Jones
November 19, 2019 8:33 am

They already found one 16 billion light years away… https://www.space.com/20112-oldest-known-star-universe.html

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 9:49 am

The article explains why the seeming paradox isn’t.

London247
November 19, 2019 5:21 am

I recently read a 1950s book by Bronowski discussing the development of scientific theory. The most profound point is that as Einstein proved, there is no such force as gravity. It is the distortion of space-time by mass. Newton’s relatively simple equations produce accurate results, except when large masses are involved.
My current view, take aa analogy of the Universe being a large sheet of latex. At Big Bang ( imagine a lot of marbles)the total mass of the universe was at then centre pulling the latex down. At Big Bang the latex rebounded elastically scattering the marbles. Which then spread out across the sheet. The sheet bouncing up and down but with a general slope.
If this analogy is correct then the Hubble Constant should vary like simple harmonic motion depending where you look.
By accepting it is the curvature of space-time removes the need for dark mass or dark energy.

Thomas Wolf
November 19, 2019 6:33 am

The crux with your analogy is that it uses the same concepts you want to describe as the description. The ‘marbles pulling the sheet >down<' are completly void of any metaphorical meaning without the concept of gravity as a force.
Besides, Relativity Theory is simply (mathematically) wrong, something that can easily be shown by inserting the transformed coordinate values in Einstein's spherical wave proof; c.f. http://www.relativitychallenge.com/archives/category/mistakes

James F. Evans
November 19, 2019 5:24 am

The Scientific Method: observe & measure.

Apply the mind-set or approach of reasonable skepticism.

Or, in other words, scientific scrutiny.

Now more than ever.

Mark - Helsinki
November 19, 2019 5:28 am

“27% dark matter”

Science has so far shown us that there is no such thing as dark matter. By the well tested laws of physics we can say is as true as can be, dark matter cannot exist.

We’re meant to believe a matter that cannot be detected, exchanges information with the space around it, yet that exchange is undetectable apparently, and this matter is 100% reflective as it absorbs nothing, and yet reflects nothing.

Give me a break. LMAO

WXcycles
November 19, 2019 5:54 am

It used to be called “Missing-Mass”, but that more circumspect term morphed into missing unseen “dark-matter”. There’s relative motion evidence suggesting ‘missing-mass’ is required to explain the motion, but there’s no evidence it’s unseen “matter” though. All it means is space is more bent than we’s supposed it should be due what’s seen there, so we’ve invented unseen “matter” to explain the implied extra bending implied by the motions.

Space has transient expressions of virtual-particles, so I don’t see why it can’t also have associated transient expressions of a virtual-mass, which has a standing net-effect on the surrounding space.

Occam’s Razor?

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 9:55 am

The matter has been detected, based upon its effect on matter around it. Just because we don’t know of what it consists doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

You can’t see air, but we know it exists from its effects. Now we know what air is, but for most of history, we didn’t.

WXcycles
November 19, 2019 2:40 pm

Occam’s Razor involves the simplest possible theory that explains all observations. As there are no observations just interpretations of motion, that does not amount to a detection of matter with mass. That’s an interpretation. The causation is unknown and assertions about unseen matter are innately unable to be tested directly.

We sense wind directly, materially, its undeniable to our human senses. But we do not sense dark-‘matter’ directly, it is very much deniable, it’s about the most indirect of all human presumptions.

I’m not into touting cosmic beliefs about the allegedly ethereal, the allegedly material, or untestable interpretive conceptions that moonlight as allegedly scientific ‘explanations’.

I’d rather be honest and say the cause is unknown, possibly even unknowable. At present directly sensing dark-matter is out of the question. Though my simple thought extension that transient but physically real virtual-particles may also express a ‘virtual-mass’ bending effect upon space. This makes more sense to me in accounting for the observed motions and implied appearance of mass being present than does your untested presumption of matter, IMHO.

At any instant there are always approximately (and arguably) an infinite number of virtual particles distributed in the cosmos, and if these express a small mass, then space and ray-paths must bend accordingly, thus we see the motions, but no matter in the resulting bent space. The matter is then testable ‘virtual matter’ with mass.

There may be ways to measure the expression of a virtual-mass of a virtual particle. It’s at least potentially measurable, repeatable, falsifiable and a cosmological effect of such a measurement could be calculated and tested observationally to see if it’s consistent with the motion. That to me makes far more scientific sense than decades more nebulous postulations about dark-matter and dark-energy of space.

We know virtual particles emerge from ’empty’ space, so why can’t they be expressing a mass that’s highly relevant to space curvature, cosmos dynamics and mass-energy changes with space-time bending?

If isotropy (no bending – flat space) is the natural state of space and its’ bending is a divergence from its natural equilibrium, then bent space is also a stored potential energy of space, thus a ‘dark-energy’ of space.

I see nothing to object to there, though I do innately object to accepting consensus belief in “strange matter” candidates which seem destined to remain speculative. I’m not settling for that thanks. It would be nice if I’m completely wrong but self-selecting a favorite consensus mass candidate does not make it so, when a virtual-mass is far simpler, and frankly more consistent with being science, and of fitting with all else we’ve observed.

2c worth of abundant navel lint

Tom Abbott
November 19, 2019 5:33 am

We need bigger telescopes.

Monster
November 19, 2019 6:46 am

Chaswarnertoo
November 19, 2019 8:08 am

AKA ‘ we need faster computers’ Dilbert.

beng135
November 19, 2019 8:30 am

Yes. Maybe the James Webb telescope can see Cepheid variables far enough away that might help. And/or a better view of the early universe (tho it doesn’t specialize in microwave frequencies).

Super Hollis
November 19, 2019 5:42 am

There are two types of science in my experience. ‘Almost settled science’ and unsettled science. The almost settled science of electromagnetism, optics, electronics, chemistry and more. These are examples of science that can be tested in any lab, with the same results.

The Big Bang Theory is one of those that I put in the unsettled science category. I’m sure it was Feynman that said something along the lines of physics equipping you with a great BS detector, which I mention because of my time in Birmingham’s Physics dept. My initial problem with the Big Bang, which seems to be always overlooked, is the simple fact of an infinite mass, with infinite gravity, expanding in the first place.
My other, is that the whole theory strongly relies on red-shift which, for obvious reasons, is always taken to show recession; galaxies speeding away from us in all directions. I know the tired light theory is or has been shown to be BS, but you only need to invoke a single fudge factor or two to remove it, and we’re back to steady state or eternal evolution. The Big Bang needs a lot more fudge factors, invisible forces and undetectable matter. Feel free to point me to more evidence other than red-shift because I’ve struggled to find any.

With regards to Dark Matter, it’s an inescapable fact that galactic rotation can’t be explained by their observable masses. Is there a reason why no one ever looks at electromagnetism as a possible factor? I’m clueless on this one but from what I know, cosmic rays are said to be 80%+ protons and galaxies are spinning. I’ve read that the overall net galactic polarity cancels out in some way but is that settled?

Spinning galaxies with charged electric particles flying around seems to be ignored and the electric universe theory doesn’t help matters at all. Maybe there’s some truth in their theory but my BS-omitter goes in the red when I look at that one.

A C Osborn
November 19, 2019 10:36 am

There are plenty of people looking at electromagnetism, they are disparaged, much like Climate Sceptics as kooks.
But the Electric Universe people have some decent ideas.
Their work on the way that the Sun works is proving to be making a great deal of sense.
I suggest that you take a look at the Afire Project series of update Videos, it is fascinating for anyone in to cutting edge science showing real results.
The last one is here

Mark
November 19, 2019 4:07 pm

Mono-pole motor effect

MarkW
November 19, 2019 6:59 am

“the so-called recombination era (where protons recombined with electrons to form atoms)”

How can electrons and protons combining for the first time be recombining?

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 8:04 am

Not the best possible name for the era.

kivy10
November 19, 2019 7:48 am

Do thoughts, ideas, knowledge, intelligence, have mass and/or energy? If not do they exist? Maybe they just have velocity.

ScienceABC123
November 19, 2019 7:51 am

In science the best explanation is accepted only until a better one comes along.

mkelly
November 19, 2019 7:57 am

If you can accept something from nothing then accepting dark matter is easy.

n.n
November 19, 2019 8:59 am

There is a similar concept in human society: spontaneous conception, and with each there are regular injections of brown (e.g. dark) matter to force reconciliation. That said, it’s actually easier to believe in a “Big Bang” or a coherent extra-universal force (“God”) a la coherent terrestrial force (“human”). The first belief, “spontaneous conception”, can be reasonably dispelled through close observation and a high degree of correlation, but the latter two assume a complete or sufficient knowledge, one based on physical myths, and the other on historical myths.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 9:46 am

The Big Bang hypothesis doesn’t posit something from nothing. Based upon observation of nature, it supports expansion from a hot, dense singularity, beginning around 13 Ga.

mkelly
November 19, 2019 11:19 am

And where did the singularity come from?

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 1:23 pm

Hard at present to look back before the Big Bang, although some scientists are trying to do so by various observational and theoretical means. Without being able to do so, only speculation is possible.

Continual cycles of expansion and contraction are possible.

Currently, no one can say with any degree of confidence that spacetime is or is not eternal. Nor if our universe is but one of an infinite number of such spacetime continua in a sea ov cosmic foam, some bubbles of which soon burst, while others endure.

Without observations upon which to make testable hypotheses, we’re in the realm of metaphysics, not physics. But positing a Creator doesn’t explain anything. Natural explanations are the goal of science.

Stevek
November 19, 2019 8:13 am

Contradicting results often mean something is terribly incorrect in our understanding.

Same goes for climate models not matching well with observed temperatures.

chemman
November 19, 2019 11:51 am

More like the blind men touching different parts of the elephant.

JimG1
November 19, 2019 8:24 am

The echoes from the big bang imply an infinite universe which implies that there was no big bang to make echoes. Chew on that a while unless you want to decouple space and time, which some have attempted. The microwave background could be the remnants of some “local” event and not the beginning of an infinite universe.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 9:38 am

Depends upon mass of universe. Big Bang could have resulted from a preceding Big Crunch, as a prior universe reached the limit of its expansion, before reversing course under gravitational attraction.

whiten
November 19, 2019 4:01 pm

Exactly.

Definitely that is what plants crave for…. 🙂

cheers

Steve Reddish
November 19, 2019 5:53 pm

Currently, rate of expansion appears to be increasing. It is the reason for suggesting dark energy as an explanation. Any previous Big Crunch required a universe with a decreasing rate of expansion.
Did this cycle get short changed? Is this to be the last expansion? It seems odd to suggest an endless cycle of expansion and crunch – that won’t have a crunch this time.

SR

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 7:06 am

As noted below, the Big Crunch hypothesis hasn’t attracted much support, at least not for the fate of the present universe.

However a prior universe might have had different rules and ratios. It’s also possible that our measurements and calculations as to dark energy and matter are off.

Peter
November 19, 2019 8:30 am

I think that red shift is simply degradation of light wave caused by interaction with gravitational field. It is very simple, the further light wave starts the more gravitational interactions it undergoes. Each interaction is taking a little bit of light wave energy and moving it toward less energetic red spectrum.
It is very simple, imagine light beam bent around some gravity source, e.g. black hole. It is happening we saw pictures of gravity lensing.
When this happens light beam is bent and loses some of its energy, but on the other side, black hole gains equal amount of energy and moves a little bit perpendicular to light beam.
As result whole gravitational universe moves against this one beam path propelled by energy of this light.
Light beam alone is losing its energy, redshifting.
There is no expansion of universe.

Bill Taylor
November 19, 2019 8:39 am

most modern “scientists” have convinced this intelligent layperson that they as a group are utterly dishonest and NOT engaged in science on any level…….claims we “know” so much about the universe are pure BS

WXcycles
November 19, 2019 2:53 pm

All we view is what sensors indirectly detect. ‘Knowing’ is merely an abstract interpretation of an indirect signal. I’m prepared to accept we don’t know and actually don’t need to know, and couldn’t know if we wanted to.

Such a position will not endear me to anyone else’s money supply. But false-promises of delivering an illusion of knowledge (interpretive myths) from a newly detected mysterious indirect seen signal, may pay for the house and the eldest daughter’s ‘special’ wedding. Hence, professional scientific exploration of the cosmos.

Best to remain light-hearted about interpretations being presented as certainties.

JaneHM
November 19, 2019 8:44 am

I can’t understand the point of this article. Why don’t they just change the data to match the model???

Bill Taylor
November 19, 2019 9:22 am

the universe is infinite, we likely have seen less than .001% of it yet “scientists” makes claims they KNOW minute details of things unseen.

John Peter
November 19, 2019 9:30 am

If the Universe is expanding, then there must be a centre where the original pea that exploded 13.8 billion years ago must have been located. Might there still be some residual matter there? Round that point in the Universe there must be an empty space all round equivalent to the rate of movement of all matter away from this centre. I wonder where that can be. It must by now be a mightily large empty space. If it does not exist the theory of the Big Bang is clearly faulty. I wonder what marvelous mechanism could create all the known and unknown matter in the Universe from a pea.

Bill Taylor
November 19, 2019 10:01 am

my opinion is where the pea was should be an ever expanding void because an explosion that powerful would push everything away from that location

beng135
November 19, 2019 10:40 am

There was no center. Center implies something around a point, which there wasn’t. And point isn’t a good description anyway, as there was nothing that existed. So there was no center, and everything (existing space and matter) was at the “point”. Hard to grasp — we’re not made to intuitively imagine something like that, but that’s currently what the math/theory says.

Bill Taylor
November 19, 2019 10:56 am

claiming the universe came from NOTHING is rather dumb and 100% anti science.

Mikey
November 19, 2019 2:38 pm
John Tillman
November 19, 2019 3:04 pm

There was something before cosmic inflation began. It’s called a singularity.

But you’re right that there was and is no center of the universe.

According to standard cosmological theory (always subject to change when warranted), the universe started with an inflationary “Big Bang” around 13.8 billion years ago, and has been expanding ever since. Yet the expansion has no central point; it’s the same everywhere.

The Big Bang is not comparable to an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a center into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell fom our vantage.

tom0mason(@tom0mason)
November 19, 2019 10:51 am

John Peter,
Your pea would contain the mass of the universe, how much would that bend light/warp time?

WXcycles
November 19, 2019 4:08 pm

Stop trying to complicate stuff! … and eat yer peas!

Andrew Hamilton
November 19, 2019 10:39 am

I think we’ve all cottoned onto the central issue in this problem:

“If there are no errors in the data or measurements, could it be a problem with the model?”

D Carroll
November 19, 2019 11:24 am

I ain’t no scientist, just a curious observer. But, I’ve for a long time believed that, sooner or later, the current established theory of the universe will fall apart.
If the age of the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe is 3 times that. That’s a bit like saying, my grandfather was the first person. And that don’t make no scene to me.

Curious George(@moudryj)
November 19, 2019 6:32 pm

I remember when the Earth was older than the Universe. Then someone discovered a second class of Cepheids (stars used to measure distance of galaxies), and the Universe suddenly got much older. These astronomical numbers usually carry astronomical uncertainties.

The fact that the General Relativity allows for singularities, be it black holes or a Big Bang, naturally invites speculation. Until very recently, there were no direct observations of effects strongly deviating from Newtonian gravity.

LIGO observation of a merger of black holes is the first reasonably direct confirmation of singularities. Previously, we only had models of black holes, explaining observations of some strange objects. By the way, the black holes that LIGO observed, should not exist according to current models of star evolution.

Vuk
November 19, 2019 12:35 pm

The universe is a space-time enclosed entity of an endless cycle of conversion of mass to energy and vice versa. We may think of limits to universe containing mass but not of limits to one containing energy, since energy is omnipresent and in its entirety omnipotent. Perhaps, before idea of energy was properly and scientifically defined and quantified it was (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) the idea of what God is.

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 2:50 pm

The God of Abraham, like those of other Near Eastern gods, plus of Nordic, Classic, Vedic, etc myths, was originally conceived of not as energies, but persons, usually larger than humans, whom they otherwise resembled. Hebrew coins show YHWH riding in a chariot across the sky, like the Greek sun god Apollo.

In the early parts of the OT, God appears to men and women, as to Adam and Eve, and walks with Abraham beneath the terebinth trees. Later, as with Moses, humans can only hear His voice in burning vegetation of mountaintop storms. Later still, to see Him is to die. Authors’ conceptions of God changes over the centuries during which the OT was written.

Vuk
November 20, 2019 12:37 am

I know a bit about Greco/Roman gods and that is about it. Of ancient stories I have red Iliad &Odisey and speaches of Cicero, with Shakespeare next in chronological order following with European classics, so I take your word about the religious stuff.

whiten
November 20, 2019 1:02 pm

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 at 2:50 pm
———————————-

John,
I am not sure what you trying a point out there John.
But as far as I can tell, the above claim of yours is wrong and most probably so due to your biased initial condition about the scriptures in question.

In consideration of all the names mentioned there by you, and many more that you may consider as per the scriptures in question, only Moses (which happens to be not a name) is the only character there that very clearly and specifically described
as the only one that indisputably considered to have being having the real experience of the whole full form presence of God, by his own request which was very kindly granted by God.
Probably what may be considered as the best kind top ever reward to Moses.
(as far as I can tell, from the way I remember the Biblical accounting)

I do not know of any one else character daring to even request such from God, let alone being granted such as a request.

And is clearly described there, in the accounting of a such event the seriousness and the daring of “to see Him is to die”.

In that account, God makes sure that Moses eyes are covered ( by God’s hand) till Moses is positioned in a safe distance place from where he can not have a direct straight look or view at the full mighty presence of God…
as per the line of the scriptures, either when such considered fictional or otherwise.

John,
you have the right as any one else there to argue one way or another, or have your own analyses and following proposition put forward in any given matter and issue, whether in a fictional or otherwise consideration of a given subject,
but I think you must recognize and accept the diminished value of such as when the initial approach in such subjects consist as an outright dismissal from the very outset… quite a biased stand.

And for what it may matter or be worth.
As for the consideration of “good Samaritan”…
one is borne, not simply just made.(kind of natural at it)…
if that makes some sense there!

cheers

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 2:24 pm

No bias, just going by what the Bible actually says:

Exodus 33:20 (KJV)

And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

whiten
November 20, 2019 3:48 pm

John,

You mentioned Eve there John,
does “no man” covers for Eve or perhaps Miriam, the Moses sister!?
Humans, persons, John, “no man” or “no man” yet…

There is only four characters-persons in the Exodus that could enter safely and had no problem with The Holy of Holies, a God’s appearance presence enclosure.
No the full presence or the God’s face appearance there, but quite very deadly indeed to the many many.

Just saying, just a line of argument.

cheers

John Tillman
November 22, 2019 7:05 am

God appeared to Abraham.

Genesis 18:1.

From inside their tent, Sarah heard the three angels, who had eaten her bread and a calf.

Joel O'Bryan(@joelobryan)
November 19, 2019 3:18 pm

A cycle would imply at some point time reverses, thus entropy reverses, and the universe contracts back to an origin. Not buying it without any evidence that entropy of the universe can decrease, that is, that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is wrong.
Now how long will I have to wait for nature to prove me wrong?

John Tillman
November 19, 2019 4:18 pm

Hypothesized Big Crunch is probably wrong, but never say never! Or at least seldom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch

beng135
November 20, 2019 8:41 am

Joel, if time itself began running backward when the expansion reversed, then the 2nd Law wouldn’t be violated. However, I have trouble visualizing that. 🙂

Jim Masterson
November 20, 2019 10:36 am

>>
. . . if time itself began running backward when the expansion reversed, then the 2nd Law wouldn’t be violated.
<<

The Second Law is intimately connected with the arrow of time. Take a movie of someone dropping an egg onto the floor–it shatters and the contents spill out. Now reverse the movie–essentially reversing time. The egg reassembles itself and jumps back into the hand. That would violate the Second Law and is why you never see it in actuality.

Jim

Mikey
November 19, 2019 2:31 pm

Making assumptions about anything can end up scuttling your canoe before you’ve gotten into it. How do we really know that things like the speed of light or even time itself are constant? Could things like that change over time and space? What if electrons weighed something just a little different just after big bang than they do now? Leave no stone unturned I always say!

Robert of Texas
November 19, 2019 8:03 pm

The measured speed of the expansion of the Universe is flawed by far more than 7% no matter what the scientists say. They have based so much on a single simple assumption, and just can’t to understand that the assumption is what makes everything seem off.

They assume they thoroughly understand the intrinsic maximum brightness of a Super Nova Type Ia. They assume there is a binary system where mass is slowly exchanged from a lighter partner to a heavier star that is “on the edge” of being too heavy to support it’s structure. When the magic mass boundary is crossed, the star explodes shedding material and of course becoming very bright following a predictable curve. Since all Super Nova Tape Ia weigh (almost) the same, they must have the (almost) same brightness. If you know the true brightness of an object and view it from a distance, you can calculate that distance.

How do they know this? Well, they modeled it of course. Sound familiar?

The problems with this assumption is that we really do not know that all Super Nova Type Ia are really the same:
1) What if like some crystals that form from super-saturated fluids, some Type Ia can hold up longer than theorized? They go right past the boundary and at some random point, they suddenly collapse. Now the weight is off by more than expected, and so will be the brightness. What if this was more likely early in the universe than later? (see point 3 below)
2) What if the Type Ia is spinning very fast or slow. How would this affect the brightness. What if this caused the brightness to be variable depending on the angle of the spin axis? Now your calculations will be off more than expected. What if the early Type Ia had more average angular momentum than later age ones?
3) In the early universe, there was mostly hydrogen and some helium, with bits of other materials left over from the Big Bang. As stars keep forming and exploding, they leave behind more and more heavier elements. What if a Type Ia star’s brightness is more sensitive to heavier metals than expected? Older stars could be dimmer and newer ones brighter (or the other way around). Certain galaxies might have had more generations of stars than others (so more heavy materials), and appear closer or further away than they actually are.

I could go on…the problem is with the assumption that all Type Ia are easily predictable. NOTHING of consequence in nature is easily predictable – nature is messy and complicated. Just like climate change, Astrophysicists are assuming too much because they have no way to actually validate their models, theories, and guesses.

At some point there will be a breakthrough in understanding. Many of those astrophysicists already invested in “Dark Energy” will fight the new insights unto death, but a new generation of scientists will accept and produce new useful findings based on better understandings. Sound familiar?

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 10:34 am

Very few Type 1a supernovae are useful as standard candles.

Only in the very rare cases in which a white dwarf merges with another white dwarf will the Chandrasekhar mass limit momentarily be exceeded.
Then the united star begins to collapse, raising its temperature past the nuclear fusion ignition point. Within a few seconds of fusion initiation, a substantial fraction of the matter in the white dwarf undergoes a runaway reaction, releasing enough energy to unbind the star in a supernova explosion.

This type Ia category of supernova produces consistent peak luminosity, thanks to the uniform mass of white dwarfs that explode via the accretion mechanism. The stability of this value allows such explosions to be used as standard candles to measure the distance to their host galaxies, because the visual magnitude of the supernovae depends primarily on the distance.

Jim Masterson
November 20, 2019 3:08 pm

>>
Only in the very rare cases in which a white dwarf merges with another white dwarf will the Chandrasekhar mass limit momentarily be exceeded.

This type Ia category of supernova produces consistent peak luminosity, thanks to the uniform mass of white dwarfs that explode via the accretion mechanism.
<<

That’s not my understanding. The standard candle comes from a close binary where one is a white dwarf and the other, probably a red giant, feeds the white dwarf star matter. Occasionally the new matter on the surface of the white dwarf will cook-off creating a nova explosion. If the slow accretion of matter on the white dwarf then just exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit, that will cause a SN explosion and results in a standard candle effect.

The merging of two white dwarfs could easily exceed the Chandrasekhar limit, create a much brighter explosion, and not create a standard brightness SN explosion.

Jim

John Tillman
November 21, 2019 2:57 pm
Jim Masterson
November 21, 2019 5:13 pm

Jim

John Tillman
November 25, 2019 7:21 am

You’re welcome.

Wayne Job
November 19, 2019 9:44 pm

We have yet only seen a tiny part of the universe,we have no idea how big it is or how old it is.
It is somewhat like believing the entire city is what you can see from your house in the burbs.

Pretending we know how the universe works by observing our neighbours.

November 20, 2019 12:22 am

+1

November 20, 2019 12:17 am

So, the Type 1A supernovas have already been found Not to be Standard. Maybe Cepheid stars also are not standard.

so, this Nobel Prize for the Type 1A Supernovae could turn out to be a mistake, hope they do not have to give it back.

I mentioned this before.

And, if the Universe is expanding, why is the Sun still the same distance from the Earth? Has not changed a bit since they first propounded this Dark Energy.

So glad I went into engineering and Not science…

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 6:52 am

That is not how expansion works.

Expansion in the ~13.8 billion years since the Big Bang works on the largest of scales, ie between galaxies. In the ~4.6 billion years since its origin, our solar system has not expanded.

When the young sun was more massive, earth orbited a bit closer to it. But we’ve basically been at about the same distance since the planets coalesced out of the protoplanetary disk. The sun isn’t getting farther from earth, except slightly from its losing mass. Similarly, the sun is not getting farther from other stars in our own galaxy.

The solar system and Milky Way galaxy don’t expand, while the universe as a whole does, because our stellar system and galaxy are held together gravitationally. Same goes for other star systems and galaxies.

However, as the universe expands, our galaxy is getting farther from other galaxies, as are they all. At intergalactic scale, the billions of galaxies are all moving away from each other. In that sense, the universe appears to be expanding.

Spacetime is inflating between and beyond the galaxies at faster than the speed of light, like a balloon being blown up.

November 20, 2019 12:20 am

And posted immediately. No one-hour thing at this time of night? world-wide forum, what now?

November 20, 2019 12:38 am

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Good a theory as any. Amazing that the ancients 4,000 years ago got this so close, expansion, inflation. The writers of the Bible knew nothing about the coming heat death of the Universe, and yet they described it almost exactly, and it sounds just like a cyclic Universe.

Kind of thing that makes you say, “Hmmm….”

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 7:02 am

Nope. The authors of Genesis, and much earlier Sumerian myth-makers whom they copied, could hardly have gotten it more wrong.

There were no waters at the origin of the universe, nor hydrogen and oxygen with which to make water.

Light was able to move through the universe not when God ordered it to exist, but at about 300,000 years after the Big Bang, when the hot, dense early universe cooled down enough for protons to attract free electrons, turning them into neutral H and He atoms.

And the rest of Genesis 1 and 2 goes downhill as to reality from that point on.

As noted, day and night, the earth and green plants did not all exist before the sun.

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 7:10 am

PS: After that first flash of light, the universe went dark again, until stars and galaxies formed.

November 20, 2019 9:24 am

The reason for the confusion is a mistake made in 1929. At that time, there were 3 competing models of the universe – expanding, contracting and steady-state. Hubble’s discovery of the red shift in the light from most galaxies observable from Earth meant that the distance between the Earth and most galaxies was increasing. The error was in concluding from this alone that the universe was expanding. Though counter-intuitive, Hubble’s red shift is equally consistent with a universe contracting around a cosmic singularity like a massive black hole. Moreover, the contracting model offers simple explanations for Dark Energy, Dark Matter and other phenomena. See http://www.bigcrunchuniverse.com.

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 9:40 am

Shouldn’t a blueshift have been observed, in that case?

November 20, 2019 9:56 am

No. That’s the trick. In a contracting universe we can only observe galaxies within the earth’s light cone. Nothing from those galaxies on the opposite side of the cosmic singularity which are moving toward us can escape the gravitational pull of the hole. So light from them never reaches us. Theoretically, if we could receive light from the other side of the singularity, it would be blue shifted because those objects are moving towards us and we’re moving towards them. But we can’t see them because the light from those objects on the other side is absorbed by the singularity. Think of it like a black hole. As you’re falling into the hole, you can’t see anything on the other side of the hole because light from those objects is absorbed by the hole that’s between you and them.

November 20, 2019 11:08 am

Pretty late in the thread to try this, but here goes.

I’ve taken the science necessary for my engineering degree, but every time I have asked this question I never got an understandable response.

I accept that red-shift is a doppler effect indicating an object is moving away from our point of observation. Objects 2 billion light-years distant are receeding at a given average rate. Objects 4 billion light-year distant are receeding at a greater rate, etc.

But I don’t follow the logic that the universe is expanding at an accellerated rate.

It seems to me, the flaw is the “are”.

The light-year is not just a measure of distance, but a measure of time.

Objects 2 billion light-years in the past “were” receeding at a given rate. Objects 4 billion light-years in the past “were” receeding much faster, etc.
i.e. the expansion is slowing, not accellerating.

In the words of the fictional Dr. Smith: “Marty, you’re not thinking 4th dimensionally”.

Vuk
November 20, 2019 12:51 pm

Red shift progressively increases with the distance of a source, suggesting it is a Doppler effect in non-linear space expansion, however it may not be Doppler effect and the universe may not expanding at all to have the same effect. Here are three possible alternatives, based on Einstein’s theory of relativity
a) Whenever the light’s trajectory is adjacent to a large mass time slows down (A.E. “closer the clock is the source of gravitation, slower time passes”) fractionally increasing lights wavelength i.e. result is the red shift. Near galaxies light (affected by both the mass of its source and the mass of our own galaxy) would show small red shift, while for the light from galaxies further away it is a bit more caused by galaxies in between.
b) If the hypothesis of ‘dark matter’ is correct, which is more or less evenly distributed through the universe, the effect would be a progressively increasing red shift since the light would encounter more ‘dark matter’ mass along its trajectory from more distant sources.
c) Total mass of universe causes degree of curvature in the light’s trajectory, longer the path grater the curvature, i.e. larger the red shift.

John Tillman
November 20, 2019 12:54 pm

The apparent acceleration of expansion was discovered in 1998 by two different teams, both of which relied upon Type 1a supernovae observations. It has been confirmed by various other kinds of observations since then, but of course this conclusion is never settled, since cosmology is a real science, unlike “climate science”.

Prior to this seeming discovery, cosmic inflation was thought to be decelerating.

SocietalNorm
November 20, 2019 5:03 pm

I’m certainly not an expert on any of this, but it seems that we are calculating an H0 value of 67.4 km/s/MPc. assuming “a Universe made up of 5 % atoms or ordinary matter, 27 % dark matter (made up of particles, as yet detected, that provide additional gravitational attraction so that galaxies can form and clusters of galaxies are held together) and 68 % dark energy, which is responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe.” However, 95% of that model is just hypothetical values of hypothetical things that are plugged into the equations of a theory so that the equations come out the way the proponents think they are supposed to.
We don’t even really know that H0 is really a constant variation of velocity with distance.

In my biz, we work off KNOT. What we know, what we think we know, what is opinion, and what we need to know (yes, it’s out of order but it makes a word.)
What we KNOW in science is what matter and energy do in the realms we can observe (i.e. we can observe a red-shift).
What we think we know are things that have a lot of evidence behind them, are in-line with with observations and we have no reason to believe differently so we use these as assumptions to base our theory on (we think we know the red shift means things are getting farther apart – this is not a certainty as posts above have shown).
Opinions would be logical conclusions from what we know and think we know, but have no confirmation of. These would be scientific theories here (Standard theory, string theory, etc.)
What we need to know would be items (perhaps experiments) that would prove or disprove the opinions (theories).
I’m not saying any of it is certainly wrong, just saying we need to be very humble in any assertions in scientific fields (like, say things dealing with climate).

SocietalNorm
November 20, 2019 5:05 pm

My own theory is that there is a baseline level of un-quantized energy(/matter/gravity) throughout the universe and when it clumps together in quantized groups (only certain states are allowable) it creates observable matter and energy. Really not even a theory, but a concept of operations.
I’m sure some physicist could put together equations that would show this a valid theory in some aspects, but even doing that would really not be evidence that is was true.

Likelihood of being correct is very small.

Gordon Dressler
November 21, 2019 7:14 am

My understanding is that according the the Theory of General Relativity any form of energy is a source of gravity.

Therefore, I cannot reconcile this statement from the above article: “. . . the standard cosmological model (Lambda-CDM model), which proposes a Universe made up of 5 % atoms or ordinary matter, 27 % dark matter (made up of particles, as yet detected, that provide additional gravitational attraction so that galaxies can form and clusters of galaxies are held together) and 68 % dark energy, which is responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe.” This statement seems to imply that “dark energy” does not contribute gravitational attraction within our universe, but instead only “pushes” the universe into greater expansion.

Can someone please explain this paradox? Is it as simple as we call it “dark energy”, but it is mischaracterized as such?

John Tillman
November 26, 2019 11:37 am
Jim Whelan
November 21, 2019 9:42 am

Two values. One based mostly on theory and calculations, the other on actual observation and measurement. The science I know says the one based on observations is correct and the calculations and their basis must be examined for error or correction.

Gordon Dressler
November 21, 2019 4:32 pm

You are in good company:
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, if it doesn’t agree with observation, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” — physicist Richard Feynman

H_sqd
November 21, 2019 12:27 pm

After perusing the comments, I was surprised to not find any references to Halton Arp. It’s been years since I’ve read many of his papers, and maybe some of his ideas have been rendered passe, but he pressed against several attempts to force velocity as being the fundamental cause of redshift, particularly in trying to deal with the location of Quasars. He also was big on quantifying the observation that redshift was quantized, ie that there was not a continuum of shifts across the observable Universe.

From my perspective as a lowly measurements engineer, who came up with the absolute dictum that all redshift is velocity and how do you prove that?

The fact that we just discovered an interstellar ‘pressure’ outside our solar bubble might deserve some consideration. Phlogiston, anyone? /s

John Tillman
November 21, 2019 1:54 pm

Arp’s colleague Margaret Burbidge still lives, aged 100.

John Tillman
November 21, 2019 2:08 pm

Dr. Becky on the crisis in cosmology:

Discussion of which starts around 14:30.

Joe D
November 21, 2019 5:20 pm

There is a similar crisis of dating with different methods in regards to rocks on the Earth, though at at much greater magnitude than the issues with cosmology. If you date lava with a known eruption date, you often get dates in the millions of years, when they should only register as 0 years old, when using the radiometric dating methods used for igneous rock. And if you date the carbon in 14 in diamonds, you end up in the range of 40,000 years, when it should have no C14 at all if they were over a billion years old. It seems that you can choose the date you want, by choosing the dating method that you think will give you the answer you want.

The ease of doing DNA sequencing is providing data that disagrees with what evolutionists have long held as fact about the tree of life created based on phylogenetic evidence.

John Tillman
November 22, 2019 6:37 am

Wrong on both counts, as to dating margin of error and the fact of evolution. Genomics has supported one phylogeny over another in some lineages, but that provides no evidence against evolution, which is confirmed by DNA and RNA sequencing.

Johann Wundersamer
November 27, 2019 5:56 am

“The problem lies in the Hubble constant (H0), a parameter which value

-it is actually not a constant because it changes with time-

indicates how fast the Universe is currently expanding,” points out cosmologist Licia Verde, an ICREA researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICC-UB) and the main author of the article.

“There are different ways of measuring this quantity,” she explains, “but they can be divided into two major classes: those relying on the Late Universe (the closest to us in space and time) and those based on the Early Universe, and they do not give exactly the same result.”

____________________________________

Parts of an Equation:

Here we have an equation that says 4x − 7 equals 5, and all its parts: A Variable is a symbol for a number we don’t know yet. It is usually a letter like x or y. A number on its own is called a Constant.

____________________________________

Correct me where I’m wrong:

the Hubble constant (H0), is a variable depending on time / correlating with the sum of quantum mechanics effects.

Johann Wundersamer
November 27, 2019 5:58 am

“The problem lies in the Hubble constant (H0), a parameter which value

-it is actually not a constant because it changes with time-

indicates how fast the Universe is currently expanding,” points out cosmologist Licia Verde, an ICREA researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICC-UB) and the main author of the article.

“There are different ways of measuring this quantity,” she explains, “but they can be divided into two major classes: those relying on the Late Universe (the closest to us in space and time) and those based on the Early Universe, and they do not give exactly the same result.”

____________________________________

Parts of an Equation:

Here we have an equation that says 4x − 7 equals 5, and all its parts: A Variable is a symbol for a number we don’t know yet. It is usually a letter like x or y. A number on its own is called a Constant.

____________________________________

Correct me where I’m wrong:

the Hubble constant (H0), is a variable depending on time / correlating with the sum of quantum mechanics effects.

Johann Wundersamer
November 27, 2019 6:23 am

Ed Zuiderwijk November 19, 2019 at 2:58 am

things like ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ are ineffective by their poor chosen names:

– dark matter is in no way dark, but invisible for our baryonic sensors and

– dark energy is working without our cognition of its origin.

____________________________________

Non-baryonic matter is matter that, unlike all the kind kinds of matter with which we are familiar, is not made of baryons (including the neutrons and protons found in all atomic nuclei). … This attribute could be used to measure the contribution of non-baryonic matter to the total amount of mass in the universe.

Johann Wundersamer
November 27, 2019 7:01 am

The fallacity lies in assuming that quantum mechanics are a null sume game: matter completely destroys antimatter – If true we weren’t here.

Harald Lesch calls that ‘some kind of pollution’, the reason we “observe” a / any universe: we’re here, in a ever changing / expanding universe.