Pushing Back on the Expanding Universe Theory

My Self-Indulgent Quest for Comfortable Speeds in Nature

The scientific establishment, including all of its wiz-kids and seasoned experts, is allowing a shocking and bewildering idea to linger in the physics conversation. This established scientific community is telling us that the entire universe is expanding, and that its expansion is happening faster and faster.

The shared belief is that, without any observed epicenter to speak of, all the galaxies are moving away from each other. Our Milky Way galaxy is getting farther and farther away from every other galaxy. The distance between us and our neighboring galaxies is increasing and increasing… endlessly. This all implies that the farthest dot of light we see in one direction is moving unbelievably fast in relation to the most distant dots of light we see in the opposite direction. The key word for me right now is “unbelievably”.

I want to state up front that I believe the Earth is not flat, humans have gone to the moon, our planet’s average temperatures are warming at an unprecedented rate. On the other hand, this whole idea of an expanding universe is a different matter. Yes, an expanding universe can help provide a means by which there might be an observable beginning to the cosmos, but the desire and need for such a beginning provides a mechanism whereby an expansion theory might quickly and easily become a preferred paradigm. It may hint at leanings that are based in philosophical and religious inclination rather than science.

More to my point, though, after reading the popularized versions of cutting edge cosmological science, the entire theoretical structure for expansion seems held together by a single unspoken, tacitly accepted assumption; one that represents a single point of failure that could allow the entire belief structure to fall apart at any moment. That assumption would be articulated in a single sentence: When very distant light shifts toward the red, it could not be for any reason other than that galaxies are moving away from us with a great deal of speed. I find the insistence upon making this assumption to be suspicious, dubious, and hurried, given the motivations people often have around their cosmology. It’s not that this assumption is explicitly stated, but its primacy seems implicit, judging by the mental resources being invested with it as a foundation.

To frame the issue more clearly, let’s ask the question, In what way is the universe expanding? The story seems to diverge here, at least from my glossing over various videos and articles. By some tellings, we are given to learn that each point in space is moving away from every other point in space. In this modality, it’s not the case that astronomical objects are staying the same size while they move away from each other, but instead, objects themselves are getting larger because of the expansion of the fabric of space itself.

Alternatively, an expanding universe has been conceptually able to accommodate non-uniformity, permitting the fabric of spacetime to be more stretchy. Here, localized gravitational forces can make the fabric of space expand more slowly than elsewhere, making it possible for regions surrounding a massive object to not be contributing to the overall expansion.

For some, including a physicist named Alexandar Fridman, growth of wavelength happens not because of a “normal Doppler redshift”, but because of the expansion of space affecting wavelength directly. That is thought to involve greater rates of expansion where we see more reddening of stellar objects, generally.

In order to ponder the discovery of the universe expanding, I tried a thought experiment. My mind went to ‘Alice in Wonderland and her transformative pieces of mushroom. An advice-giving caterpiller explained to her the usefulness of the mushroom he sat upon: “One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter”. In the story, she tried it and things appeared to work as predicted.

There was some very clear evidence, in this story by Lewis Carroll, that when Alice had a nibble from one side of the mushroom, she actually did grow taller. The evidence for that was being able to see trees far below that were once above her head. And what about the evidence for the expansion of the universe? This obvious type of comparison is not even possible if the entire universe is expanding. Is there something getting smaller while the universe is getting bigger? I have yet to hear someone point out that anything measured in length is shrinking relative to the increased size of the universe, citing that as evidence.

So this should lead us all to ask the question, “What evidence has turned up to cause incredibly smart and knowledgeable people to believe in an expanding universe?” So far as I can tell, it mainly centers on this this idea of a redshift factor. Originally, in 1929, Edwin Hubble observed that “light from faraway galaxies appeared to be stretched to longer wavelengths, or reddened, a phenomenon called redshift.” . At some point Saul Perlmutter observed, when studying type Ia supernovae, that the farther away a supernova was from our telescopes, the more reddish the light appeared to be. His more accurate measurements were interpreted to mean that “the expansion of the universe is accelerating” . Both scientists are reporting a shift of distant light toward the red end of the spectrum. In my mind, absent some set of facts that just are not getting communicated, their important scientific work ends there, not so much in offering interpretations that go any further.

My prior thinking had been that some kind of space dust could be causing the redshift. The same way we observe that sunsets and sunrises take on a red-orange hue, especially when there is a lot of dust in the atmosphere, maybe Hubble and Perlmutter were seeing the effects from space dust. I want to just trust that such dust has not been observed by scientists, though many have admitted that more than 90 percent of what is out there in space is not visible to the human eye. I will not die on that hill that says there is a lot of space dust out there in every direction, but there are other hills to consider dying on.

What if the entire known universe is not expanding, but light itself experiences some sort of degradation from the effect of time or some other perfuse influence like gravity or unknownatons? What if there is some kind of unexplored property of light propagation that causes the shift in color, basically a loss of energy, for light traveling over extremely large times and/or distances? What if the phenomenon was happening at larger distances but remained imperceptible at shorter ones? After all, nature generally doesn’t provide us with perfectly straight lines. It has, in every other instance, provided us with curves — curves that are complex and distorted. Yes, galaxies too are likely to be exhibiting non-linear motion, but unfathomably large celestial bodies travelling at extreme speeds, ones exceeding that of light, are surely to be seen as much less plausible and less likely than non-constant patterns of light propagation.

Just possibly, the real yardstick is not the traveling light quanta, but the actual stable dimensions of the universe at large. Is the varied wavelength of light trying to tell us something about what happens to light itself as it propagates? Or is it truly indicative of the motion and velocity of the emitter?

What we hear about these days is just one of the two possibilities: we hear that the universe is expanding. We don’t read about the other, in my mind, more interesting possibility, that there is some kind of change of frequency, a red shift, happening as a natural process of light propagation over extreme amounts of time. What we don’t hear is that it is quite impossible to know for sure which of the two things is actually happening. Yet, somehow, the more disturbing and unsettling and even bizarre interpretation has prevailed! Well, if there’s some reason for that, it is glaringly absent from explanations that I’ve come across.

Unknownatons you say?!! What evidence do you have for this? Well, I have none. But if I stack up the zero evidence I have for it against the stack of zero evidence that others are showing me that redshift can only indicate accelerating expansion in the spacetime fabric, it’s a wash. That there is some force, some dark energy propelling every galaxy everywhere away from each other is but one of the downstream assumptions, a fudge factor that is only there to help the math work out. That we should completely rule out light shifting for unobserved reasons would also have no supporting evidence. I find it strange that this is not ever discussed, if for no other reason than to put it to rest.

Furthermore, it’s not entirely unintuitive that electromagnetic radiation could potentially loose some of its energy when it propagates over longer distances. I would find it very strange, even preposterous, if the shift in wavelength seen in distant light sources was toward the blue, i.e., toward the higher energy end of the spectrum. Energy, if it is spent during travel, would tend to be lost, not gained.

There are some dilettantes who have raised the possibility of redshift arising from things other than an expanding universe. Turns out that light that enters a “gravity well” can indeed be shifted in the red direction, and shifts back toward blue when and if it leaves. There were some very informed people responding to this attempt (by schmengie, if you followed the hyperlink above) to reinterpret redshift as being something that is not indicative of recession of the distant galaxies. I find the conversation fascinating, even though it doesn’t, in my mind, lead to any solid conclusions affecting cosmology.

Some skeptics, doubters of the expanding universe theory, who are even in the field of astrophysics are being branded as ‘crackpots’ by the incredibly influential Johns Hopkins professor Sean Carroll. Professor Carroll, a self-professed atheist, someone who has little to no need for positing a young universe, has reasons for his faith in the expanding universe theory, “evidence” which he gives here.

What is not yet available to us are parallax measurements to support or corroborate the distance measurements based on redshift. Apparently they are not that helpful because parallax, which is based on the geometric positioning of two observation points and a distant star, does not have the accuracy needed for the most distant stars. Luminosity measurements coming from scientists like Perlmutter apparently show an unexpectedly severe redshift at greater distances when they are factored in. Still, this does not really prove the cause of the redshift. That part, I want to say, is being supplied by means of a bold and audacious inference: It must be the Doppler effect and cannot be any other phenomenon. We have basically ruled anything else out.

Those who put forward a hypothesis that does not violate the cosmic speed limit will need to have an alternative explanation about the darkness of space. The mainstream astronomical viewpoint, even Fermilab is agreeing, is that much of the starlight has failed to reach us from distant galaxies because of this universal expansion that the speed of light from distant stars cannot keep pace with. The thought is that light should be coming to us from every angle in a steady state universe that does not have this ‘recent’ beginning of 13.5 billion years ago.

A not so great answer might be that our eyes do not register light of longer wavelengths. A slightly better answer might be that luminosity does not continue over longer distances, so maybe the reason for the black nighttime sky. I don’t think that’s really the right answer though.

Is the blackness of outer space simply due to the total loss of energy in electromagnetic radiation coming from the most distant parts of the universe?

By suggesting that the universe may not be expanding I am not necessarily clinging to a universe that is homogenous, or even one that has existed for an indefinite period of time. What I am trying to do is be honest and admit that it is so darn tempting to propose that what is out there can probably be explained more simply by taking away the unrealistic rates of expansion and allowing a history that honors the cosmic speed limit.

Some will argue that Alexander Friedmann was able to predict the expansion of the universe from Einstein’s theory of general relativity. While this is true, Einstein disliked this use of his work and the the expansion/evolving universe theory and preferred the “steady state” theory of the universe. One reads in Wikipedia that Einstein’s referred to this, or some theoretical assumption related to this, as his “greatest blunder”. Yet the theoretical nature of what Einstein was positing when he incorporated “dark energy” into his models should not be forgotten. I am not sure, just yet, that the “blunder” was really so misguided. Modelling a steady state universe was his goal for a time, and I think that it conveys is a kind of intuition that I can relate to and I can understand taking a liking to it.

Questioning the expansion theory gets us off the hook in a significant way. We want to hold onto Einstein’s conception of the speed of light being something that cannot be exceeded. This cosmological speed limit does not hold if light from larger distances is being outpaced by an expanding universe. Don Lincoln from Fermilab describes this odd behavior in his explanation of how fewer and fewer objects will be visible from Earth as time moves foreward..

It also solves the problem raised by Matt O’Dowd that with the present conception of the cosmic microwave background radiation, or CMBR, an apparent diffusion of temperature required that causality travelled faster than the speed of light. It seems clear that either a shortened timeframe must go, or the cosmic speed limit must go. Getting rid of expansion also gets rid of that shortened timespan, but religious minds won’t rest until timeframes have been shortened to approximately six days I think.

There are contorted ways of dealing with this problem of violating the cosmic speed limit. I happened onto one TikTok video in particular that tries to ease our minds about the violation of the fundamental rule, by a unit analysis and by floating the idea that we shouldn’t be comparing apples to oranges. I am left dumbfounded by the ‘explanation’, much like the character portrayed at the end of the video! Not going along with the basic idea of an expanding universe gets us of off the hook in a much simpler, less magical way.

Temperature differences in the CMBR are grainy and lumpy in appearance after all, to the point one might question if a ‘big bang’ could produce such large lumps and composite structure, each having a short history when compared to that of congealed stars and galaxies.

One other big lump that is hard to swallow might be the massive grouping of objects called Lanaikea. The monsterously indescribable size of this composite structure in our universe seems hardly aware of the program of what should happen after a very big bang. The fragments that are produced by a sudden explosion of energy tend to be smaller fragments, not large structures. Lanaikea didn’t get the memo.

Because of recent problems arising from calculated Hubble constants based on local data it seems like a good time to do a major rethink along the lines of questioning our basic assumptions. It cannot be good for the standard cosmological model when newer measurements are telling us that some of the closer objects are moving away from us faster than the more ancient and more distant ones!

And finally, this just in! The images from the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) are showing distant galaxy sizes that are not compatible with the big bang theory. A recently published video explanation of this flatly states that ‘the universe isn’t expanding and the redshift isn’t proportional to distance’.

I’m really struggling (and definitely failing) to believe in the expansion of all of space in our universe in the procession of time. I’ve lived my life in a world where smaller things move more freely and larger things seem to stay relatively fixed. I’m okay with fluctuations and rubbery behavior of the spacetime fabric, but I find the expansion of the entire known universe to be, well… quite a stretch.