Sunday, February 15, 2015

More "science": cosmological speculation- the expanding Universe

My last cosmological idea was pretty quickly shown (with the proper search) to be an idea others have already had years ago. I hate when that happens (but it usually does, since an original thought which has never been thought before is probably extremely rare). I expect the same from this one, but I'll post it before I research it.

Red shift shows the expansion of the Universe. Unless such ideas as "tired light" have any validity (which seems highly doubtful to me) every point in the Universe (beyond local gravitational "groups") seems to be moving away from every other point. And, the farther away two points are from each other the faster they are moving apart.

This can be viewed like raisins in a rising loaf of bread- as the whole loaf expands, each raisin gets farther from all other raisins, but the effect is greatest (taking into account the rigid nature of the bread pan) for a raisin touching the bottom of the pan and one poking out the top of the loaf. Two adjacent raisins might not move apart noticeably, and if two are stuck together- like galaxies gravitationally bound together- the expansion won't affect their relative positioning at all.

You can read up on it to see how this shifts absorption lines toward the red end of the spectrum, if you care to learn more.

Back to the expanding Universe... Run this measurable expansion backwards and you reach a time about 13.8 billion years ago to see when the entire Universe would have occupied a single point. The "explosion" of this point is what is called the Big Bang and causes all sorts of speculation about what might have caused it. Lots of ideas- some plausible- but none confirmed or even universally accepted (and I mean by scientists who study such things, not Creationists).

But, maybe there's another answer that would explain the observations. Could the Universe be always expanding, but not actually getting larger? Might this do away with the need of "What made it Bang?"

Maybe, sorta.

Spacetime is curved- and this has been experimentally observed many times. This means the shortest distance between two points, on a cosmological scale, is a curve. And here I am speaking of a spacetime (4-dimensional) curve, not a 2- or 3- dimensional curve of the sort you can probably picture in your head. If the Universe is curved enough (which it doesn't seem to be), going in a straight line far enough would bring you back to the place you began.

So, here's my thought: What if the red shift actually does show the Universe/spacetime to be expanding, but the curvature of spacetime is always bringing the "outer" edge back to the "center"?

A lower-dimensional visual aid would be a fountain where the water flowing out the top is sucked in at the bottom to be sent back out the top again- ad infinitum. Well, try to visualize the Universe as a 4-dimensional fountain.

It would solve the problem of "what happened before the beginning" ("What is north of the North Pole?"), and put to rest the problem of what made it all begin.

It should one day be possible to test this hypothesis, since it is falsifiable. For that matter, it may have already been falsified.

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The honest results of government

Government regularly delivers the opposite of what it promises. That's just the nature of the thing.

When people say "safety would be compromised" by getting rid of the goons of the DHS, point out that DHS makes America (meaning you and me, if we are assumed to be "Americans") less safe. Because it honestly does.

Government schooling destroys education.

Government roads impair travel.

Government's anti-gun "laws" put you in danger and help the aggressive thugs.

And so on.

You could rightly respond to statist propaganda with shocked exclamations like these:

"You support the military? What, you don't care about our freedom? You hate America?"
"You support anti-gun 'laws'? You want everyone to be murdered?" 
"You don't want to abolish public schools? Don't you value education?!"

It is more consistent and makes a lot more sense than the ridiculous claims made by statists.

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