A Different Interpretation of Big Bang's Physical Evidence

[David_South#1]

Hello,
Someone challenged me to support something I said.
So I came up with a few conclusion to offset the theory of Big Bang expansion.
This forum has many engineering or physics class students.
Maybe you can take a look and verify if this is right.
Or maybe point out some logical or scientific errors.

A Different Interpretation of Big Bang's Physical Evidence
http://science-community.sciam.com/thread.jspa?threadID=300005992

Thank you,
Neil_In_Florida

 

[Fred]

Dear Neal.

What you propose is a variant of something that has already long since been falsified and goes under the name 'tired light'. Feel free to google for it.

Moreover the evidence for the Big Bang goes way beyond the CMB and Hubbles law. Big bang nucleosynthesis is precise experimentally down to decimal places as it stands and would be completely incompatible with your theory. Ditto for galaxy formation models, most of general relativities local predictions and so forth.

 

[David_South#1]

Thank you, Fred.

This is something new to me and will need to read a lot more about.
So the following early impression may well be wrong. But is what I have seen.

So far no comments on "tired light" theory link to observations of gravity.
I can understand how the analogy would make you think of "tired light".
I'm not sure "Compound Gravitational Red-shift" or CCLRU is "tired light".
The analogy of radiant ponds of light do match up with tired light theory.
So maybe I should drop that variation on my idea for CCLRU.
It was a vague attempt on my part where the model has a uniform wave.
Space is not filled with a uniform dispersion of matter.
This is why red-shift changes slightly for each sample group and the Hubble Constant get different measures when checking different areas of the sky.
So far in my understanding the Hubble Constant is really a statistical approximation.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/HubbleConstant.html
These variations, if I am correct, might be accounted for by the process of red-shift from complex compound lensing of wavelength.
Or CCLRU as I have nicknamed it.

"Tired light" was proposed and dismissed before we knew of gravitational red-shift.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light

It looks like it was again dismissed in 2001 by Lubin & Sandage
But again I'm not seeing anyone cite the mechanics behind "tired light" theory.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html#TD
In fact it looks like there are using a constant in the absence of considering gravity.

So I looked up the Lubin & Sandage Evidence dismissing “Tired light”.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0106/0106566v1.pdf
Oi, I have a lot of reading to do.
So I did a quick search for "gravi" to get any variations on gravity.
There was only one result in 40 pages when checking for “gravi”ty.

Page #20

The conclusion is that the Tolman test as performed here is sensitive to the value of qo at
the less than 23% level. However, as argued in Paper I, it is not so severe as to make the test
degenerate. Our result is that a Tolman signal exists, as modified by evolution, at the level of
(1 + z)n with n lying between 2.28 − 2.81 (±0.17) in the R band and between 3.06 − 3.55 (±0.13)
– 20 –
in the I band, depending on qo. Therefore, the correction for luminosity evolution is (1+z)p where
p lies between 1.72 − 1.19 (±0.17) in the R band and between 0.94 − 0.45 (±0.13) in the I band,
again depending on qo. The required evolutionary correction to make the real Tolman signal equal
to (1 + z)4 is well within the errors of the requirements of Bruzual & Charlot spectral synthesis
models, i.e. approximately 2.5 log (1 + z)p where p ≈ 0.8 to 2.4 in the R band and p ≈ 0.7 to 2.1
in the I band, as qo changes from 0 to +1. Therefore, we conclude that the Tolman prediction is
verified and that the expansion is real.

We note that recent studies of high-redshift Type Ia supernovae, the Cosmic Microwave Back-
ground, and the statistics of gravitational lenses suggest that the universe is flat with a non-zero
cosmological constant, _ (see e.g. Kochanek 1996; Helbig et al. 1999; de Bernadis et al. 2000;
Pryke et al. 2001; Riess et al. 2001 and references therein). Currently, the preferred world model
is M ≈ 0.35 and _ ≈ 0.65. In this cosmology, the log R values are almost identical to the
empty-universe (qo = 0) case; they are larger by only 0.01 dex or less at the redshifts of our three
clusters. In addition, all flat-universe models with 0 ≤ _ ≤ 0.65 give log R values which lie within
the range that we have calculated for the _ = 0 cosmologies (see Table 8). Consequently, our
conclusions about the universal expansion are still robust for these _ cosmologies.

In the next section, we show that the predictions of the “tired light” speculation is not verified
at the definitive level of better than 10 _.

At no point here is Tired Light linked to gravitational lensing.
In fact they note that current data from gravititational lensing shows a flat universe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/727073.stm
Meaning we are not in a rebounding model of Big Bang to Big Crunch and Repeat.
So Science is exploring the Big Rip based on the current ideas of big bang powered CMBR spectrums.
If my assertion of CMBR being fusion based are true, then that changes everything.
You have universe in drift without edges or or need of expansion. But that is getting a little bit ahead.

One thing of note about “tired light” that I have so far read.

"There are many problems with the tired light theory, the main one being that there is no known way for photon's to lose energy (without also changing in other observable ways) that is not equivalent to the universe expanding and the photons expanding with it. "

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=444

CCLRU is very much akin to gravitational red-shift.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_redshift
Which does account for a lot that "tired light" did not.

It will take some focused time to explore the new direction you are providing.
As of right now this is just an early impression of the idea you have pointed out.

Thank you for give me something to contrast my idea with and continue developing in regards to.
Do you think that in order to avoid confusion with “tired light” theory I should drop the pond analogy?

 

[David_South#1]

Dear Neil.

Moreover the evidence for the Big Bang goes way beyond the CMB and Hubbles law. Big bang nucleosynthesis is precise experimentally down to decimal places as it stands and would be completely incompatible with your theory. Ditto for galaxy formation models, most of general relativities local predictions and so forth.

I have a model for Stellar formation and planetary formation. But it is a very rough non-mathematical idea derived from observations of physical science. Further more it uses scientific evidence that contradicts what we are teaching in school but has been known since 1984 and 2005. In fact I would honestly have to call it an observed wild guess, for how far ahead of what formal education has prepared people to consider in regards to stellar formation.

Trying to defend more these two hypothetical assertions, by including stellar formation would excessively complicate my position.

So instead let's consider this,
My model is not as complete as one that has had 80 years and countless man hours in shaping, and still changes with every new discovery (flat = Big Rip). This does not seem grounds enough to decide that there is no room for even more new discoveries.

Do you agree that that there is always room for new considerations of scientific thought?

 

[Fred]

I usually don't like getting into details of pet theories very much b/c frankly theres a million of them floating around the internet. But you seem like a nice guy, so let me put it to you another way

You say
"Additional all matter in the universe inherently possesses an amount of attractive force."

In general relativity the amount of energy per unit volume is parametrized by whats called the stress energy tensor. In the case of gravitational interactions, this is an attractive force. "Energy gravitates" in GR so to speak, and is a prediction of the theory.

Now, if you are talking about something other than gravity that induces the attractive 'force', you are talking about essentially a mechanism to 'dissapate energy' (as you put it) that will induce a tired light scenario and will change the redshift formula in some way (presumably tailored to fit experiment). And you will run up against all the objections of the tired light hypothesis.

Moroeover, I take it you want to have some sort of infinite universe without boundary, and presumably timeless. Explain then, Olbers paradox (feel free to google that).

The bottomline is General relativity or something close to GR, is time tested with a ton of evidence behind it. Thousands of independant lines of observations and models depend crucially on it. Looking at just one feature (eg Hubbles law or the CMB) and toying with it might seem perfectly sensible at first glance, but you won't be taken seriously unless you can emulate those thousands of successes that modifying it would destroy.

 

[David_South#1]

Thank you! If you are helping because you see me as good person, then that is great news. I was concerned people weren't giving feedback because my profile was unprofessional.

So far you are the first person to help set me straight.

I definitely made a mistake in that analogy. The wording you quote me on is definitely not correct.
I chose poorly in try to express "something causing light/photons to bend".
An effect that would alter the wavelength. Not "Diffuse energy" by tire it out, just separate its course or bend it. My mistake.

Yes, I am specifically talking about gravity, trying to apply Einsteins theory of relativity. He and Feynman are the only two people I've read multiple books by or about.
I'm not trying to contradict them. One of my concerns is that from 1935 to 1955 his theory and goal of unified theories was subverted by what I am supposing to be a mis-understanding of forces that could cause red-shift.

I did not intend to go so far in my universal model as infinite infinity. I was hoping to work my way back to Steady State Theory and go from there exploring ways of understanding red-shift readings. But I am not afraid of big steps.

So I am reading, Olbers paradox which at first struck me as silly. Because I also assumed light after sufficiently diffusing (increased space between photons at great distances) would lose its straight line course.

I've seen photons swirl and loop like a whiffle ball or ping pong ball. I don't understand the mechanics of it. But I suspect it manages to strike an electron every so often releasing a photonic quark that hooks or slices according to the momentum imparted.

This ties back into the double-slit paradox. Where when un-observed, electrons or photons displayed interference patterns on a receiving plate instead of two slits. (I've always want to experiment with that and see it for myself. The idea seems very irrational. That when observed you get two slits without interference patterns. I've always figured there was something else going on, and accepted the results until the time I could play with it myself.) Either way what I am suggesting is that without enough photonic density (due to radiating distance increasing space) light becomes its own interference pattern obstructing a directional view.

However Olbers' paradox did come as a shock to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers'_paradox
I had at first thought to include absorption in stellar clouds and electron shells as possible factor. But learned that wasn't a good approach because people would assume it detectable. Another idea I am not backing, but share to consider was light moving out of the visible spectrum at greater distances.

The part that confused me about Olbers' paradox was the need to assert uniformity. In my opinion the only model inducing that idea was Big Bang theory, but they invented a quantum mechanical work around for matter to form in groups without uniform distribution (Which happens to defy physical science and Einstein's Relativity).

So long as stars are not uniformly positioned it is more likely for gravity and stray photons to meet with matter.

Again, I am not trying to break with General Relativity. It was what predicted warped gravitational space. And where I got the idea for compound gravitational red-shift. I just shy away from the word gravity by using CCLRU because when observing Einstein's Halo's I had a difference idea about how they worked.

 

[Fred]

You can bend light all you want through whatever mechanism you want, but if the universe is infinitely big and stretches back into the infinite past, all that bouncing around will average out and you still have the same conceptual problem unless you postulate that for some reason, star formation only occured recently and isn't distributed randomly in both time and space.

You see the problem of course. Dropping the simple assumptions of homogeniety and isotropy starts making the model contrived. You have to rely on initial conditions to match things (and experimentally we see a homogenous universe as far as we can see) so its not even clear how you would do that without violating observation.

In fact, this very same powerful observation (that the universe is statistically homogenous) is a serious modern problem. Its simply *too* flat, even for the simple FRW model (naively you would expect some quantum fluctuation to break the symmetry in the early universe). This motivated the study of inflation in the 80s

 

[David_South#1]

Fred, I am so lucky to meet you.

Take some time and be proud of yourself. I was hoping to get back and change that post before you saw it. Say thank you and let you know it would be this weekend before I would be ready.

Up until I met you I was basically staring at my feet.
And thinking in the order the thought occurred to me.
1) First there was gravity affecting the way we see red-shift.
2) Then there was this CMBR stuff that seemed more sensible as a "Fusion Clap".
My motivation for pointing this out was simply that the Big Bang theory seems to trip over itself.
Without having read the latest discoveries it was possible to recognize the forced logic.
That the discovers would later amend.
I just wanted to point out, "Hey, doesn't this make more sense?"
No specific goal or direction. Just a rational objection.

Now that I've met you my perspective is changing. And my awareness for cosmology is increasing.
The correct order or more systematic order for me to view this would have been.

1) If CMBR is not Big Bang, then we are studying Steady State.
2) If Expansion isn't really space expanding, then We don't have Steady State.
3) Without Expansion, you must address Oblers' Paradox. I wound up suggesting "Tired Light".

Oblers and Tired Light are new to me. So it will be a while as I try to learn about them. Also as mentioned I had been logically staring at my. Without the two Cosmological models I've actually read about, my logic must start looking for a directional conclusion.

Right now I don't know what sort of models exist, for an expansionless world. So I will need to stop and read what thoughts there have been on this.
Additionally I just discovered that photon still have zero mass!!!
I had read Einstein ideas a few times, and believed as he did, that there was mass to photons.
I had assumed that since science had come forward confirming gravity was bending light that there was now some minuscule value for photonic mass, (a non-zero value). To my surprise and further need of research to confirm, Science still believes photon haven't any mass. Amazing!

I find that surprising and interesting. Because I have to give more confident thought to the possibility of the Lensing I had been imagining. I had noticed Humans, Plants, the Planet Earth, and Even our Solar system have 2 magnetic shells. Humans one on the skin, one just beyond depending on static change; less so for plants. The Earth has two Magnetic Van Allen belts. The Sun has one around the the inner Asteroid belt and one ending near the Kuiper belt.

The point being I saw a picture of Einstein's Halo's and noticed the halo was really quite some ways out from the celestial body. Not what I had imagined gravitational bend of light would look like. Granted after some thought I figured it might just be the angle. Light being bent at a closer radius might be diverted from us seeing it. So a larger shell might make sense. Still this halo was kind of bright so I gave it more thought.

I thought of Electro-Magnetic Shells we and most bodies of matter seem to have, the Aurora Borealis, and the lensing of glass orbs. It occurred to me that light/photons may be flexed (Fresnel or what??) by this electro magnetic gravitational shell and not gravity itself. (To my eyes, light flares around people, the nearly same as it does the moon in eclipse. So I had to consider it.) That's the reason I didn't call CCLRU by the name "Complex Compound Gravitational Red-shift". I was just too embarrassed to explore this since, I thought we had found photonic mass. Now I'm back to the original idea of EM shells lensing lights for Red-Shift that looks like Expansion. And considering does this idea also offer a solution for Obler or do I still need another idea. It is a lot to think about and will take some time.

You've really filled up my plate. I now have to give serious thought to what were just casual considerations.

Thank you for the time. Please quote anything specific you are replying to. As I learn more, and understand better, I may want to revise my posts. The fact that I was still using the word "diffusion" really bothered me today and was the reason I wanted to get back before you replied. I need to sit down and define it, then start looking for synonyms or other words more precise in their meaning.

How did you come to have such a good understanding of this topic? It was a blessing to meet you.

 

[Davros]

have you thought about posting your theory here:
http://science.box.sk/

 

[David_South#1]

That's a curious website. How would you describe it and do you use it?

It's too early to call what I have a theory.
I made two logical conclusion.
1) One suggesting that "Fusion Clap" was the source of CMBR.
2) Another suggesting Complex (more than one variable) Compound Gravitational-Redshift instead of spacial expansion.

It seemed that Expansion and the abandoned theory of "ether wind" had a lot in common. If space is expanding them why isn't all matter expanding too? Why would it just show up in photons? Why not in the orbit of all electrons? People use the analogy of a balloon expanding and the farmer and she roaming on the surface. Despite the Farmer and sheep having atomics and gravity to hold them together, what holds space together as it expands? They've come up with imaginary science to explain how space is held together in order to overcome the paradox of the analogy, where atomic spacing Framer's and sheep goes un stretched.

There are just a lot of little observations when looking at big bang theory that do agree with science. So scientists have invented fancy theoretical quantum math in an attempt to achieve internal agreement of the theory, and not resolve the conflicts with physical science.

I am not yet able to prove the evidence of my two observations. But so far the logic holds up when examining the behaviors they describe. Even if they do not resolve the bigger picture, they do modestly account for some of the observational discrepancies.

Fred has given me a lot to think about. This will require I first read, consider, read, consider, or possibly elaborate on. To be clear and remind you of what I have said: It is fully possible that we have both expansion and Complex Compound Gravitational Red-shift happening at the same time in our observations of the universe. This might account for changes and variations in observing different sources of red-shift and the drastic gap between supernova's and nebula's in estimating Hubble's Constant.

As I said before. My goal is to work back to Steady State theory. "Fusion Clap" allows us to do that. From there I'd like to see additional scientific exploration on the nature of light. I believe there is something to my observations of CCLRU (even if it is just my guess).

However I have much to learn before making it a theory, for now they are one person's observational principles. As they are recognized and found agreement with their validity beyond that may change.

Thank you Davros, for the support and encouragement of seeking further understanding.

 

[Davros]

not sure what ive done but your welcome

i have used it but how you'd describe it im not sure but there are a few really knowledgeable people on there as well as a few average joe's who just have a passing interest

As I said before. My goal is to work back to Steady State theory.
.

should you really have a goal wouldnt it be better to have no goal and see where your observations take you ?

 

[David_South#1]

I agree with you. I should be working on entirely clean slate. That is the reason I was able to have two radically new ideas. However my whole life people refuse to accept unfamiliar ideas unless they fit their concept of the world. I've only made two scientifically logical observation. Rather than completely dismiss expansion, it would be easier and more reasonable to suggest that Complex Compound Gravitational Lensing of Red-shift is the cause for discrepancies in our observations of red shift readings. Where my original idea was it might be the whole shebang.

By suggesting concurrent thinking with what people are doing, they would be more likely to consider additional thought.
Which would you prefer:

1) Davros, Don't wear that sweater. Wear a Tee-Shirt instead.
2) Davros, Did you know its going to be warm today and it is already warming up outside?

1) Many people would be like don't tell me what to wear.
2) Most people would make a comment and change their mind.

I don't need to tell people what they should think. But I do want to let them know, that there are thoughts they are not thinking or share that I am thinking something different. Science to many people in science takes the place of religion. Telling them their God's plan is wrong is a lot more offensive for them to consider, then telling them a story in the book doesn't seem right.

I don't want to re-invent the wheel. I just want to strike a cord with their thinking.

It will be a long slow process. Today I described my stellar model for the first time to a research physics professor at UNF with a degree in electrical engineering, and is researching laboratory photonic observations full time. I don't know if the conclusion was too far fetched for him or not. I've shared it after we had been happening to talk about astronomy in agreement for some time. After making a few observations relating to my ideas and him agreeing things seemed fine. But then when pulling it together he didn't point out any problems with the idea or make any negative comment. Instead he thanked me for my time and we said goodbye. So I'm sitting in limbo not knowing what I should learn or study next to better clarify the idea. If there was some major blunder at the end or they just weren't ready to seriously consider it. If I had let the new ideas settle in since they agreed with them, and then come back later to suggest more. Maybe he would have offered some advice having appreciated the first ideas. Who knows?

I'm an outsider in a different profession. I don't really want to become an Astronomer. I just like figuring out puzzles. It's very difficult to get people to respect the value you have to offer when this is honestly who you are and don't pretend otherwise. I'm really concerned that my easy going stumbled on ideas will never get taken seriously unless I pretend to be a stubborn professional and who is serious about science. But really, I do it because I enjoy figuring it out.

BTW, Fred I should have a more agreeable solution to Obler's Paradox tomorrow. One that doesn't suggest tired light.

 

[Sobek]

have you thought about posting your theory here:
http://science.box.sk/

Wow, what a gathering of pretentious assholes. Having a read through I basically see this common pattern;

New User excitedly posts theory -> Decrepit Admin flamerapes him and pretty much calls him an idiot -> New User is forced to defend theory -> Decripit Admin flexes ego muscles and pretty much trashes thread.

I'd probably prefer to stick to smaller scale forums where peole will actually ASSIST and HELP you, such as The Naked Scientists. Sure, you don't get quite as much knowledge in one gathering, but the attitude more than makes up for it.

Sorry David, but I just had to get that out. I feel sorry for half of the people trying to learn things on that forum.

 

[Davros]

Ive a complaint about your web site too - I went there and there are no pictures of naked scientists whatsoever

 

[KimB]

Okay, so the evidence you list in favor of the big bang theory is hopelessly inadequate. Here's a more full listing:

1. Observation of relationship between redshift and distances (distances measured by brightness, length scales, and sizes).
2. Existence of the cosmic microwave background.
3. Correlation between anisotropies on the cosmic microwave background and the distribution of nearby large scale structure.
4. Primordial light element abundances.

The observed acceleration isn't evidence for the big bang itself, but rather is evidence for either the existence of some as yet unknown form of matter with some peculiar properties (dark energy), or that we don't understand gravity at very large length scales.

And, by the way, today we have very tight correlations between our understanding of cosmology and our understanding of high energy physics.

Furthermore, we actually need the expansion of the universe to explain one other simple fact: the fact that we exist at all. If the universe were not expanding, then this would describe a universe that was static. A static universe simply cannot work for a number of reasons:
1. It's unstable. A tiny perturbation would cause a static universe to either collapse in on itself or expand forever.
2. It's eternal. Because entropy always increases in a closed system (and the observable universe has the relevant properties of a closed system to reach this conclusion), the simple fact that we exist indicates that the universe is not at equilibrium, which means our region of it has a finite age. So unless you want to posit that a deceiver deity went ahead and placed all the 100,000,000,000 galaxies out there, and each with around 100,000,000,000 stars some finite time ago, a universe in which intelligent life forms exist to observe it which does not have a period of expansion is fundamentally impossible.

Finally, we actually understand quite well how light interacts with gravity. Light is blueshifted as it enters gravitational potential wells, and redshifted as it leaves them. While there is some very small net change due to the accelerated expansion of the universe (the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect), overall there is no systematic tendency of light passing through gravitational wells to be redshifted.

 

[Frank]

The unverse is probably simply a hyper-bubble created when some local super-high-energy event went out of boundary in another one. Compared to that universe, ours (and the amount of energy encapsulated within it) is tiny.

I mean, it's mostly a matter of scale. The surrface area of the quantum shells of particles depending on the amount of neighbors can account for gravity, and a net "leaking" (reduction) of particle energy densities that result in the creation of new particles can account for the expansion.

But I'm not going to try and see if that fits together neatly, and correlates with all current theories and experiments done!

 

[Neil]

Dust is greater than the math calculating the expansion of the universe had predicted. Therefore the brightness of the universe and the significance of Olber's Paradox are reduced. The expansion theory known as big bang may not be necessary to prove the dimmness of the universe.

Dust Dimming our Universe

 

[KimB]

The unverse is probably simply a hyper-bubble created when some local super-high-energy event went out of boundary in another one.

Well, we don't yet have enough information to say "probably" for much of any theory of origins. The best we can say about origins right now is that inflation happened, but we don't yet know what precisely that means, let alone how it started. Many ideas have been proposed, but we don't yet have the information required to select between them.

 

[Neil]

This ties into the previously mentioned idea of Olber's Paradox and Tired Light.
This is not to support them but illustrate a point that explains the issues they could not.

Dust dimming our universe
Astronomers have found that our universe shines twice as bright as thought.
Provided by the STFC

Lead author Simon Driver from the University of St Andrews says, "For nearly 2 decades we've argued about whether the light that we see from distant galaxies tells the whole story or not. It doesn't; in fact only half the energy produced by stars actually reaches our telescopes directly, the rest is blocked by dust grains."

While astronomers have known for some time that the universe contains small grains of dust, they had not realized the extent to which this is restricting the amount of light that we can see. The dust absorbs starlight and re-emits it, making it glow. They knew that existing models were flawed, because the energy output from glowing dust appeared to be greater than the total energy produced by the stars!

Driver says, "You can't get more energy out than you put in so we knew something was very wrong. Even so, the scale of the dust problem has come as a shock appears that galaxies generate twice as much starlight as previously thought."

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=6949

Further support for my notion that mass in space is interfering with the way we are interpreting Big Bang theory, expansion, and light reading can be found in the Harvard Gazette way back in 1999. This was the point in time where mass media went abuzz with "Oh my god the world is expanding at an ever faster pace.

student at Harvard University has thrown cold dust on the hottest science story of 1998.

Last year, two teams of scientists announced that the universe is expanding at a faster rate than anyone had believed.

"In a triumph for astronomers' ability to look deep into the past, the independent teams came to their conclusions by observing far-off exploding stars called supernovae that turn out to be surprisingly dim, revealing an acceleration that has swept them to unexpectedly large distances from Earth," wrote Science, the august journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "We name their findings, which transform our view of the universe and pose fundamental new questions for physics, as 'Breakthrough of the Year for 1998.' "

But Anthony Aguirre, a 25-year-old graduate student, thinks those teams may have had dust in their eyes. On Feb. 10, The Astrophysical Journal, published by the American Astronomical Society, will publish Aguirre's idea that the exploding stars look so dim simply because space contains a kind of celestial pollution. Specifically, he postulates the presence of minute needles of carbon dust floating around between the galaxies.

"I argue that bright, dusty galaxies, where many new stars are being made, eject needle-like dust that can account for the dimming of these supernovae," Aguirre says.

The favored explanation for the acceleration of the universe is an antigravity force that pushes matter apart faster that gravity pulls it together. "If my theory is right," Aguirre needles the pros, "such a force is not necessary."

Aguirre came up with the idea of a dust screen on his own, according to David Layzer, the Donald H. Menzel Research Professor of Astrophysics who advises him. "The whole astronomical community has bought into the acceleration idea, so I think it will make a stir," he adds. "I hope it does."

The student works in the same building as Robert Kirshner, a Harvard professor of astronomy and a member of one of the teams credited with the acceleration discovery. Aguirre discussed with Kirshner the possibility that dust accounted for the dimness, and Kirshner encouraged him to pursue it.

"It's good for science to have people on both sides of all issues," Kirshner comments.

Peter Garnavich, a researcher at the Harvard College Observatory who made the supernovae sightings with Kirshner and others, says that Aguirre's theory "is an interesting idea. We have been concerned that some kind of strange dust might make the supernovae look dimmer. Another explanation is that these supernovae may have been intrinsically dimmer when they first exploded billions of years ago." (The supernovae are so far away, it has taken billions of years for their light to reach Earth.)

Garnavich admits that Aguirre's careful work puts the dust theory on a sounder scientific basis than before, and, if true, eliminates the need for postulating an antigravity force.

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/02.04/cosmic.html

Nearly a decade later we are seeing that the presence of cosmic dust is multiple times great that what was previously known. This fact lends even more speculative support to the suggestions that the universe is not expanding at the rate or in the way we are being taught.

To account for this speed-up in expansion, most astronomers and astrophysicists favor bringing back Einstein's fudge factor. But keep in mind that no real evidence exists for reverse gravity; Einstein just made it up so that his equations would support the idea of a static universe. In a twist he could never have imagined, antigravity has returned to support the idea of a universe expanding forever at an increasing rate.

Aguirre thinks the idea of dust is much simpler, but he too is short on evidence. Some interstellar dust in needle-like form has been collected from meteorites, although it is not the predominant type of dust in these celestial rocks. Also, when carbon, which is abundant in the universe, solidifies from gas in laboratory experiments, it takes the form of needles.

"It's in everyone's interest to come up with the correct explanation," Aguirre says. "If dust is responsible for the dimming effect, it's going to come out sooner or later; you can't keep it a secret."

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/02.04/cosmic.html

Recently I read part of,
Space Dust and Debris: Proceedings of the Topical Meeting of the COSPAR Interdisciplinary Scientific Commission B (Meetings B2, B3 and B5) of the COSPAR Twenty-eighth Plenary Meeting Held in The Hague, The Netherlands, 25 June-6 July 1990

In the second paper in this book they openly admit that the measurements and estimates of dust that was blocking stellar light were never taken directly. But instead they statistical sampled the presence of light in neighboring stellar regions assuming a uniform amount of stellar distribution.

The reason being that this would fit with Big Bang/expansion theory, which suggests uniform distribution due to uniform expansion. (And yes new theories were invented to explain why big bang formation is not uniform.)

That aside let's jump 17 years forward to the latest CMB satellite readings which show indeed that stars are not uniformly spaced. And that there are in fact spaces showing no stellar activity. With stellar distribution not being uniform the presence of cosmic dust was never accurately estimated. Only statistically guessed at based on an assumption that does not hold true.

Since the above methods of guestamation used for estimating stellar counts, the presence of cosmic dust, and quite possibly the brightness of supernova as a function of expansion are increasingly invalidated. Then this adds further doubt to the value placed on using the stellar magnitudes from supernova as a measure of galactic expansion.

This is all inconclusive. But evidentially significant in how it alters our popular awareness of the topic referred to as Big Bang theory. And offers reasons to further question the correctness of this theory.