Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
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Since the early 20th century the story of our universe's origins
has been a shifting an incredibly strange tale.
Today it's generally accepted that the person who originated
the now widely held Big Bang Theory
was a Belgian priest named George Lemaitre
who proposed, in the 1920s,
that the Universe's primordial creation began with a single atom.
Around 1980, the physicist Alan Guth developed the idea of cosmic inflation
or the notion that physical space experienced an exponential expansion
immediately after the Big Bang.
On this series, we have reported on countless discoveries that in effect
falsify the foundations of the Big Bang Theory.
Nevertheless, it remains the dominant view in 21st century cosmology.
In this episode, Thunderbolts Picture Of the Day Managing Editor, Stephen Smith,
offers his analysis of the current state of Big Bang cosmology
and specifically the evidence for and against cosmic inflation.
Cosmology today is dominated by the Big Bang Theory.
The theory's major premise is that there was once a void
containing no matter, no space and no time.
For some unknown reason, a burst of energy from another realm of existence
replaced the void with the present universe.
The Big Bang Theory was developed because the astronomer Edwin Hubble
believed that he observed remote galaxies receding from the Milky Way.
The most surprising thing was not recession itself
but the high velocities associated with his measurements.
According to his calculations, some galaxies
were traveling away from his observatory at thousands of kilometers per second.
Hubble arrived at his conclusion
because of what was later called the redshift of light frequencies.
Adopting the Doppler effect to the spectra of various galaxies,
Hubble thought that the change in location of particular elemental signatures,
called Fraunhofer lines, indicated that light waves were shifted
toward the red end of the spectrum by a recessional velocity.
Fraunhofer lines are supposed to occur at specific frequencies in the spectrum
by whatever element is absorbing light.
If they are in a different location
then they have been Doppler-shifted because of the element's acceleration.
This forms the backbone of galactic scaled distance calculations
along with the recession that galaxies display.
Using this system of redshift, some galaxies are thought to be moving
at an unbelievable 90% of the speed of light.
All that we see and experience is supposed to have been born in the Big Bang explosion
so the original inertia, imparted to the universe, came from that event.
Since distances and relational velocities are correlated with a time scale,
something like a galaxy or a quasi-stellar object, that is 10 billion light years away,
is also thought to be as it was 10 billion years ago.
Astronomers think that they see ancient light traveling through space for 10 billion years.
The current estimate for the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years
and, as mentioned, distance and time
are thought to be related to each other because of redshift.
So when we look out at the universe,
distance provides information that determines how old it is.
In other words, the diameter of the observable universe
should be approximately 27.4 billion light-years.
However, there's a problem associated with that figure.
According to astrophysicists, the universe is thought to be
156 billion light-years in diameter and not 27.4 billion.
What explains that anomaly?
The answer is supposed to be something called inflation.
Astrophysicists in the past were shocked when observations
seemed to show more complexity in the early universe than should exist.
As the principle of inflation states though,
it's not merely the acceleration from the Big Bang
that is affecting the spectra of remote galaxies
but it's that the space in which they are embedded is expanding.
If it requires X amount of time for a galaxy to form and the universe is Y years old,
then a galaxy should not exist at time distances less than Y minus X.
When such galaxies were seen, some other explanation
had to be added to the Big Bang to account for them.
So, objects that appear to be redshifted to extreme distances
may not be as old as their spectra suggests.
They're moving along with the expansion of space.
As inflationary theory proposes,
they're not as old as they appear to be because they're simply farther away.
That dichotomy seems to demand that the early universe was expanding
faster than the speed of light since its size is more than 11 times greater than its age.
Edwin Hubble's observations of galactic distances
versus speed of recession led to another quandary.
Galaxies that are far enough away
move so fast that they must exceed the speed of light.
That's known as the universal horizon or the Hubble radius.
It's a point beyond which instruments can never see
because light from over that horizon can never catch up to the expansion velocity of space.
The theory of special relativity doesn't allow any object to reach the speed of light,
let alone exceed it, so how do space scientists deal with that dilemma?
They do so by ignoring the restrictions of special relativity
and resorting instead to general relativity
where such restrictions don't exist.
Since no information can be transmitted from beyond the Hubble radius,
no violation of relativity occurs.
Just how did these twists and turns in ideas,
as well as the warping of time and space, come about?
They are a direct result of the assumption that redshift correlates with distance.
Modern cosmological systems are built, without exception, on that assumption.
But what if Hubble's original premise was flawed?
What if redshift is really a red herring?
Where can we turn for an explanation?
Well, we can look at the work of Halton Arp,
an astronomer whose reputation was at least the equal of Edwin Hubble's.
In the 1960s astronomers discovered quasi-stellar objects, better known as quasars.
They have large red shifts implying that they're located
near the farthest edge of the observable universe.
Quasars are referred to as quasi-stellar because they're relatively small,
little more than a lightyear in diameter, yet they emit a lot of energy
so they're thought to be the most powerful continuously radiant objects in the universe.
The only other active energy sources detectable
at those vast distances are gamma-ray bursters.
However, GRBs last for minutes whereas quasars shine continuously.
They remain as bright as when they were first discovered.
Some astronomers found that many quasars are associated with spiral galaxies
and appear to be near the galaxy instead of billions of light years distant.
Based on other ideas,
such as quasars' anomalous apparent brightness when compared to their redshifts,
Hubble's expanding universe theory was called into question.
Long before the quasar problem arose, though, Hubble himself suggested
that inflation might not have taken place in the early universe.
He thought that new observational data was necessary
in order to decide whether it was definitive.
In 1947 he was waiting for the new 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar to be built.
So, in publications of the Astronomical Society Of The Pacific,
vol 59 number 349, he wrote,
"It seems likely that redshift may not be due to an expanding universe,
and much of the speculations on the structure of the universe may require re-examination...
We may predict with confidence that the 200-inch
will tell us whether the redshifts must be attributed as evidence of a rapidly expanding universe,
or attributed to some new principle of nature."
Unfortunately, nothing definitive resulted from
astronomers working with the Hale telescope
or the many space borne telescopes that have been in launch since then.
Instead, redshift and inflation are a dogma among the astronomical community
and ever more arcane mathematical excursions have been added to the mix.
Although many observations contradict the consensus view,
and have been doing so for 50 years or more,
those data are ignored or marginalized.
High redshift quasars, as previously mentioned,
are found in axial alignment with galaxies that possess substantially lower redshift.
They're also sometimes connected to lower redshift galaxies
by bridges of luminous material.
Halton Arp was the lone voice among a crowd of scientists
when he started publishing papers that demonstrated that inflation
or the Big Bang Theory were not valid.
As Hubble predicted, Arp's research using the 200-inch Hale telescope
demonstrated "some new principle of nature."
One of Arp's more interesting images was NGC 4319
and its companion quasar Markarian 205.
Arp called attention to the fact that the lower redshift galaxy
is physically connected to the higher redshift quasar.
A filament between the two objects violates the measured distances
because no such connection should be possible.
After all, NGC 4319 is said to be about 600 million light-years from Earth
while Markarian 205 as around a billion light-years away.
If those objects are physically connected,
they must be near each other and at the same distance.
Their redshifts have to be some, from some other factor not related to distance,
there must be something intrinsic to their makeup.
Arp assembled a catalog of discordant redshift association
that describes anomalous structures or physical links
among objects with radically different redshifts.
Some of the observations show quasar pairs
being ejected in opposite directions from active galaxies.
This led to the so-called ejection model of galaxy formation.
In brief, high-redshift quasars around galaxies are the daughters of the mature galaxy.
Their various red shifts do not indicate distance but age.
Arp speculated that redshift measurements of quasars
is not composed of a velocity value alone
but also depends on the aforementioned intrinsic redshift.
Intrinsic redshift is a property of matter,
like mass or charge, and can change over time.
According to his theory, when quasars are ejected from a parent galaxy
they possess a very high intrinsic redshift Z=2 or greater.
As the quasars move away from their origin within a galactic nucleus,
the redshift properties begin to decrease until they reach somewhere near Z=0.3
At that point the quasar resembles a small galaxy.
The inertial moment of ejection is eventually overcome
and the mass of the quasar increases while the speed of ejection decreases
until it may become a companion galaxy.
That is how galaxies form and age, according to Arp,
evolving from highly redshifted quasars to small irregular galaxies
and then into larger barred spirals.
There are several other examples of fast-moving quasars
in front of slower moving galaxies, or connected to them with luminous filaments.
NGC 7603 is a distorted spiral galaxy with a single arm
joined by that arm to a smaller companion with a much higher redshift,
and also within the bright material of the arm are two other objects,
each with redshifts different from the galaxy pair.
There's nothing conclusive in the mainstream scientific journals about Arp's data.
His revelations concerning problems with consensus dogma
were considered too intolerable so he was censured by his peers.
However, the evidence he gathered and promoted ought to make us stop and think.
Is the Big Bang dead?
How big and how old is the universe
if redshift readings are not reliable indicators of distance?
This discussion could almost be completed with one statement:
a theory built on questionable assumptions should never be the basis for new theories.
Astronomers think they found proof for the inflationary Big Bang Theory
in observations of the so called Cosmic Microwave Background.
The CMB is said to be the remnant signal leftover from the beginning of the universe.
In the early 1960s, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson
began to use the Holmdel satellite antenna as a research tool.
The antenna was originally built to detect signals
bounced off the earliest satellite communication system, known as Echo.
The Echo satellite was an aluminized Mylar balloon, 30 metres in diameter.
Radio signals beamed from Earth were reflected by the satellite
allowing transcontinental wave broadcast for the first time
without relying on what was quickly becoming a saturated network of transoceanic cables.
Penzias's and Wilson's original plan was to use the horn
to amplify radio signals from the Milky Way as well as from the space between galaxies.
They were attempting to create some of the first radio maps of deep space
and they got their chance after the Telstar satellite launch made Echo obsolete.
They soon discovered the antenna was picking up a lot of noise,
so much so it was making it difficult for them to carry on with their projects.
That story is probably familiar to a lot of people by now.
They checked the antenna by pointing it at New York City
to see [if there was] if that was the source of the interference.
Then they looked to see if it was some kind of radiation from the galaxy
or perhaps from an above-ground nuclear test
or maybe it was distortion from a nest of pigeons living in the horn.
After a full year of trying to locate the source
and finding that it was uniform across the sky,
they concluded that it had to be coming from somewhere so distant
that it was fundamental to the overall structure of the universe itself.
In 1964, Dr. Robert Dicke of Princeton University,
building on George Gamow's 1948 theory about the creation of heavy elements
in what is now known as the Big Bang,
proposed that there ought to be a 3 Kelvin glow left behind
by the original creatio ex nihilo event.
However, before they could complete their own radio antenna,
Penzias and Wilson announced their findings earning them the Nobel Prize.
Robert Dicke remained heavily involved with the Big Bang Theory until his death in 1997.
Dr. Alan Guth attended a lecture by Dicke in which he, Dicke,
explained the problems with the Big Bang Theory at that time.
One of those problems involve the question of density in the universe.
If the universe contains insufficient mass, it will continue to expand
until all the stars go out and all the matter loses its motion.
This idea was called, Heat Death.
If there's a greater density then the universe will draw back in on itself
due to the force of gravity into what is called the Big Crunch.
Guth decided to tackle the problem since many other considerations,
too numerous for detailed explanation here, began to emerge.
One important discussion centered on why the universe appears so uniform.
It looks pretty much the same, no matter where instruments are pointed.
His solution for the observed homogeneity of the universe in general,
and of the CMB in particular, was a period of inflation.
In August 1980 he published The Inflationary Universe,
a possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems.
Today, inflation is one of the foundational principles in Big Bang theory
because it "solves" the homogeneity problem.
Suffice to say, space is not a substance any more than time is.
Space cannot warp or bend or ripple or expand.
Space is defined as "The unlimited or incalculably great three-dimensional realm or expanse
in which all material objects are located and in which all events occur."
It's a domain without substance since it's where substance exists.
It is not that substance, therefore it has no existence
except as a method for defining the existence and position of things.
To infer that space and time are a fabric, in which gravity can wave, is ludicrous.
It's tantamount to saying that space exists in and of itself and is capable of alteration.
In conclusion to this brief discussion it appears that science is building castles in the air.
Eventually they're all doomed to fall.
In the Electric Universe conclusions are never based on the reification of abstractions.
Instead, observations point to the electrical nature of the cosmos
without the need for an endless series of ad hoc concepts
designed to prop up sagging theories.
For continuous updates on Space News from the Electric Universe
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