Without wanting to sound a complete idiot. What undeniable evidence do we have to support the scientifically accepted view of the above (that the universe is expanding, not that I'm a complete idiot!!!)

Take the red-shift noticed in light from other galaxies for example. I can think of a scenario where objects moving away from each other doesn't necessarily mean the entire volume they occupy is expanding - that is a miscomprehension of perspective. If the universe was contacting and this contraction was accelerating would we not detect the same phenomenon?

I've also read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time where he states the possibility that the direction of time would reverse in a universal contraction, but it was not clear from this how he arrived at that conclusion, or even why we should notice if time is 'flowing backwards'. That's down to perspective again.

So, you scientists out there. Please explain to me why we believe the universe is expanding. After all we do seem to be basing a lot of our current physics research on that assumption (i.e. the search for 'dark energy' as the motive force for the accelerating expansion of the universe - negative gravity!!! Why should I believe in such an animal.)

Perhaps but it's not so easy to account for the particular sort of expanion we see--that is, one that's homogeneous and proportional to distance. The only real alternative to a physical expansion is to assume everything's rushing away from us and (for some reason) galaxies further away are going faster. It's much less artificial to interpret this as the universe itself expanding and not just the galaxies in the universe acting strangely in concert.



No. A contraction would lead to blueshifts.



I can't really speak to that because I don't know the context of his statement. I'd imagine, however, that he's speculating that in a contracting universe entropy might work backwards and thus the arrow of time (which we often define in terms of entropy) would reverse as well.

I believe astrologists can study this by measuring how stars move over a period of time. Or perhaps by studying how the debris from dead stars (nebulas) take movement. On a talk show, a scientist was talking about how the universe is "stretching" thin. That's all I can muster up for now.

One of the interesting things is that everything in the universe seems to be moving away from us at the same rate, almost as if we were at the center. Why is that?

That's because galaxies just seem to be moving away, it is space that is expanding equally between galaxies so from any other galaxy you will see the same effect as if that one is in the center of the universe - but nothing is at the center, there is no center. Think of an ant on the surface of an expanding balloon.

Cheers

We would be moving further away too...I think. We would all be moving away from the center of the universe or the origin of the big bang, or so the theories say.

????u know i dont really know

i heard a long time ago that if the universe is expanding for ever then it is called an open universe and if it is doomed to expand and then suddenly start to shrink in upon itself, then it is called a closed universe. i also heard that if it were to contract, as it were, then it would happen in the blink of an eye, i.e one minute the universe is expanding and the next there is nothing.

but how about this for an idea: the universe's edge isn't expanding or contracting, it's just stationary, containing everything that ever was and is inside it.
and how do scientists know that the universe is as big as they say it is?, in theory couldn't the universe end as far as our best telescopes can reach? please someone prove me wrong with a link or some reliable info pls.

Thanks for all the responses. I've been offline for a couple of days due to my ISP having problems and I couldn't access the site.

startraveller,

I bow to your superior knowledge of physics etc, however I was of the impression that the red-shifting of light was due to the apparent motion of the source to the observer? This would imply it is immaterial whether the universe is expanding or contracting so long as the source was moving away from the observer?

The context of Hawking's explanation of time shifting direction was due to his assumption of the reversal of universal entropy. I understand the argument about the direction of time reversing, I just question whether we would notice.

I'm not saying physicists are incorrect in their assumptions about universal expansion or contraction. I am concerned however, that a lot of the research they are undertaking is based on that assumption and they are therefore 'mining' the data to fit this. I use dark energy as evidence of this. There is no direct evidence this exists but physicists are using it's existence to explain an apparent acceleration in the universal rate of expansion. If the universe was contracting however, the invention of dark energy would not be necessary.

To my mind, the invention of artifacts such as dark energy is extravagant and unnecessary and we should firstly try to look for simpler explanations for observed behaviour.

A redshift due to a receding source is called a Doppler shift. This is to be distinguished from the cosmological redshift which (assuming the standard interpretation is correct) is due to the space between galaxies expanding. The difference is that the second one allows galaxies to recede from each other faster than the speed of light, something that is observed. Two galaxies moving away from each other in a flat background of space would be forbidden from doing that by special relativity.



No, it doesn't seem that we'd notice.




There are those that agree with you.

I get the horrible feeling that asking you to explain how you can tell the difference between these 2 phenomena will result in a novella sized proof, possibly crashing the UM server but at the very least causing a lot of people reading it to go 'Huh?'! I will do some investigating online. Thanks.

well if the universe is expanding then what would the so called emptiness be like that it is expanding outward to? What would this whatever it is because space and matter would have encroached it by the time we get a time to see be lie? What would the nature of this ground however you define it?? Nothing cannot exist, nothing is something. If nothing didnt exist then it wouldn't exist in the first place to deny.

OK,

I've been reading up on the cosmic redshift and why it's different to Doppler redshift and I think I understand what this is.

When the universe was smaller, light was radiated from various objects. As the universe expands the wavelength of that light increases to match the relative expansion. This positive increase in wavelength cause the light to appear red hence the cosmic redshift?

If this is wrong then I'm back to the drawing board.

Much of what we read about cosmology concerns galaxies or other objects discovered millions or billions of light years away. The reason they can tell the distance is because of the cosmological redshift of the light? Correct I hope.

However this light has been travelling for those millions or billions of years to get to us. How do we know that the situation is still the same i.e. the universe is still expanding?

Ok, I might not have understood the theory behind cosmic redshift correctly, or maybe incompletely, and it appears to be true the universe WAS expanding however there's no (or not much) evidence to say this is still the case. So why do cosmologists/astrophysicists assume this to be so? Back to my original point they are only working on solutions based on a single assumption, not considering alternatives that may hugely affect the conditions.

I accept that what we learn from these scientists is media driven, but we are given the impression that there is little uncertainty regards 'what is'.

Hey man, You're quite an open minded scientist. As for your topic here. I have some info from a book i have called "tales from the timeloop" by "David icke" About half a page is written about the big bang theory. So i thought that I would write it in for ya. I'd be really keen to hear your opinion of it. David icke is a journalist and here is his written section on the big bang.

Big Bang baloney.

A little observation in the light of all this. Science says that the universe was created by the "Big Bang". It says that matter was concentrated in a fireball of enormous density and this was all that existed. Then the fireball, or cosmic egg, exploded and the matter and space it contained expanded out from the centre and is still expanding. The official theory says this is why the galaxies etc. are still moving away from each other. Out of this cooling explosion of matter came the universe as we see it, we are told. But hold on. If there is no matter because matter is an illusion of the mind, how could there be a "big bang" of original matter, except as an illusion? The universe, like everything in the Matrix, is a mass of vibrational thought fields that our minds decode into a 3-D holographic illusion. As a result of this big bang explosion and the process that followed, the official story goes, subatomic particles emerged. But if waveforms only become particles when they are observed, how could they be created by a process of 'matter' that followed the explosion? They could only be 'formed' out of thought fields by being observed into holograms. Maybe someone was looking, eh? The universe is the thought equvialent of a computer program and just as a software program does not need to explode to be seen in Windows 2000, neither does the universe need to explode to be formed as thought fields observed into a holographic illusion. Imagine if there was an explosion of "matter' every time a thought field was created. It would be bloody noisy, wouldn't it? BOOM! "Hey ethel, stop thinking will you, I can't hear the telly." "Sorry dear, I was just thinking we need some more cheese." BOOM! "And some tomatoes." BOOM! "Etheeeeel!" There was no need for an explosion to create the universe. Once the thought fields are projected it's a done deal. If the galaxies are still moving away from each other, that is because the 'program' was written that way, not because something had to go 'bang'.



What do you rekon??

b_n_w,

I did like your description of 'matter being conjured out of thoughts'..."Etheeeel!"

I don't know about open-minded - I just don't like it when science and scientists start describing things in absolutes. I'm trying to be a scientist and I hope I never fall into that habit.

I tend to think of things in probabilities and, when dealing with things like cosmic phenomena which happened billions of years ago, I don't like they way definitive conclusions are drawn about the conditions in which these phenomena existed means this is how things are today.

As for Mr Icke's hypothesis it is in part similar to other hypotheses I've read about before. If you check out the New Scientist website and browse their Cosmology section there are a few listed. The 'Illusionary Reality' part of David Icke's hypothesis isn't there but the 'Matrix Universe' (the computer program) part is. TBH the illusionary reality aspect is really about belief rather than science (IMO) but that doesn't mean it's invalid.