Olbers' Paradox

Nabeshin

I'm going to resist the strong temptation to echo qraal's comments and ask a few questions about what you've actually said (in rough order they appear):

1) How can you possibly say we have no evidence for a "fabric of spacetime"? We move through space dimensions, do we not? Time as a dimension is really not that different, despite what you claim. The notion of space is so abstract, how could you possibly ever hope to experimentally test it, to detect a "fabric"? You can't. It is the framework on which we develop or theories, label points, and describe motion. You need a "fabric" of space (and time) to do this! No matter if this is GR or normal 3D euclidian space, you need such a fabric to do anything meaningful.

2) On the subject of gravitational waves, it is true we have never directly detected them. However, we have indirectly detected them with great accuracy. Plus, they are one prediction of GR, what do you say about the precession of the perihelion of Mercury? Gravitational Lensing? Gravitational time dilation? And if you intend to offer explanations, please offer a legitimate model rather than claiming it "has something to do with" some effect which has never been observed nor theoretically predicted.

3) c is constant, you are obviously just misunderstanding what is meant by c. C is the velocity of light in vacuum. This IS constant. Even while light propagates through a material, in between the individual atoms of the material, the light surely travels at c.

4) The difficulty in determining the Hubble constant is in no way a measure of the failure of the theory. To think so is not only ignorance of the theory, but ignorance of science in general. The Hubble constant is notoriously difficult to measure due to a plethora of problems, one of which is accurately determining distances. Just because we have refined measurements over the past 80 years doesn't mean that the theory was wrong.

5) In regards to your point #2: What? Have you heard of hyperbolic geometry? This is a geometry in which space is indeed infinite but has definite curvature.

6) In regards to your point #3: This is tied to my #1, and is in general an extremely unsupported position for you to take.

7) In regards to your point #4: I would like to see one iota of observational evidence to support this claim.

DaveC426913

I'm sorry unerkennbar, but PF is not the place for flogging your personal theories. Initially I thought your ten point were questions. They're not, they're claims.

navilon

If the universe is infinite..we may then be able to view point A,,B,,C,,D,,etc,,at any given moment..like a picture that contains everything..it just depends on where we r statnding..

Chronos

Some papers to consider.

Inferences from the dark sky: Olbers' paradox revisited
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0007428
The classical formulation of "Olbers' Paradox" consists in looking for an explanation of the fact that the sky at night is dark. We use the experimental datum of the nocturnal darkness in order to put constraints on a Newtonian cosmological model. We infer then that the Universe, in such a model, should have had an origin at a finite time in the past.

John Baes gives a brief, but, illuminating discussion here
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...GR/olbers.html

See also
http://cmb.physics.wisc.edu/tutorial/olbers.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...ro/olbers.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers'_paradox

The most important point, IMO, if infinitely old and populated, the universe should be in thermal equilibrium. This is not observed as noted here:

Molecular Hydrogen in a Damped Lyman-alpha System at z_abs=4.224
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602212
". . . The high excitation of neutral carbon in one of the components can be explained if the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation has the value expected at the absorber redshift, T=14.2 K. "

- and -

http://babbage.sissa.it/abs/astro-ph/0012222
The microwave background temperature at the redshift of 2.33771
Authors: R. Srianand (IUCAA, Pune), Patrick Petitjean (IAP, Paris), Cedric Ledoux (ESO, Munich)
Comments: 20 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Nature, Press embargo until 1900 hrs London time (GMT) on 20 Dec 2000

The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation is a fundamental prediction of Hot Big Bang cosmology. The temperature of its black-body spectrum has been measured at the present time, $T_{\rm CMBR,0}$ = 2.726$\pm$ 0.010 K, and is predicted to have been higher in the past. At earlier time, the temperature can be measured, in principle, using the excitation of atomic fine structure levels by the radiation field. All previous measurements however give only upper limits as they assume that no other significant source of excitation is present. Here we report the detection of absorption from the first {\sl and} second fine-structure levels of neutral carbon atoms in an isolated remote cloud at a redshift of 2.33771. In addition, the unusual detection of molecular hydrogen in several rotational levels and the presence of ionized carbon in its excited fine structure level make the absorption system unique to constrain, directly from observation, the different excitation processes at play. It is shown for the first time that the cosmic radiation was warmer in the past. We find 6.0 < T_{\rm CMBR} < 14 K at z = 2.33771 when 9.1 K is expected in the Hot Big Bang cosmology.

droogie01

....... back on topic...


what about if there was some sort of massive body like a black hole between you and the closest star in one particular direction... would that black hole " suck up" all the photons not allowing you to detect them? Is it possible that this would create a dark spot in your continuous sphere of light? Also is it possible for stars nearby the star hidden by the black hole to send out light that may get bent around the gravity well of the black hole, creating the illusion that there are stars where the black hole is? (i know that is an observed phenomenon i had an assignment question on it 2 years ago) Would Olbers Paradox consider these "images" of a star to truly fill in the dark spot?


you------empty-space------ blackhole----empty-space----- closeststar

DaveC426913

They are called Einsteinian Rings.

And, unless you're proposing that black holes are more common than pimples on a teenager, I don't see how it would play into Olber's Paradox in any significant way.