I Observational evidence against expanding universe in MNRAS

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This paper of mine was published online in Monthly Review of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The title is a good summary: "Observations contradict galaxy size and surface brightness predictions that are based on the expanding universe hypothesis".
For a non-technical description, see our press release here.

 

No.Hoyle hypothesized that the universe did not evolve. There is plenty of evidence that it does change over time. But evolution does not require expansion--the earth we live on has been evolving at an accelerating pace but is not expanding. The universe too can be evolving in an accelerating way without either having an origin in time or undergoing expansion. The redshift-distance relationship does imply something we don't yet understand is draining energy from the EM radiation as it travels long distances.

 

The evolutionary processes occurring on earth have changed it a lot, but have nothing to do with changes in the structure of space. Similarly, in the universe on large scales, gravitational, electromagnetic and nuclear processes can change it over time, independently of any expansion. You don't need expansion to form galaxies, stars, or planets or to burn hydrogen to helium in fusion.

I don't think the second question can be answered right now. One possibility is that matter is distributed fractally at all scales with a dimension of 2 or less. In that case, GR effects would be small on all scales. (In other words, if the density keeps dropping the curvature of space is negligible at all scales. In that case GR does not predict any expansion or contraction.) A second possibility is that gravitation weakens at very large distances. If some process drains photons of energy over large distances, it may well weaken EM forces and perhaps gravitation as well. Again, that would result in no overall expansion or contraction.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I don't claim to have a Theory of Everything. Observations are the test of theories. If the predictions of the theory don't hold up, then either the theory needs to be changed, or the assumptions, like homogeneity, that go into the predictions need to be changed. To figure out what needs to be changed requires more work. The first step is to decide that predictions are wrong. What this paper is saying is that the predictions based on expansion don't work, at least not for this data set. What works are predictions based on the hypothesis of no expansion and a linear relation between z and distance.

 

If tired light means that something happens to the light over long distances, yes. But no new parameter is needed, just the same old Hubble constant. With just the Hubble constant, the linear, no-expansion hypothesis fits the supernova data as well as LCDM does with three parameters (Hubble, dark matter, dark energy). No parameters at all are needed for the linear hypothesis to fit the galaxy size/surface brightness data. The value of the Hubble constant does not matter for that prediction of no change--there are no free parameters at all. And that data set can't be fit with LCDM hypotheses without violating other observational constraints, as I show in the paper.

 

A fractal of dimension n=2 means that matter is distributed in such a way that the total mass measured increases as D^2 (distance squared) when measured from any point. Average density then decreases with radius measured. Observations in peer-reviewed publications show that galaxies are distributed in this fractal way at least to scales of 200 Mpc, but it remains unclear whether that distribution is extended to still larger scales. There is no "special location" in such a distribution, but it would not be homogeneous at any scale. Prediction of the contraction or expansion of the universe requires a homogeneous distribution. (Indeed Edgar Allen Poe pointed out that Newtonian gravitation makes a homogeneous universe unstable to gravitational collapse.) If the universe is not homogeneous, the prediction is not valid.

In this paper, and an earlier one with my colleagues, I tested the hypothesis that z in linearly proportional to D at all D against observations. That is a perfectly good test of the hypothesis that this is the actual relation between these two quantities. I don't have, and don't have to have, a model that explains why this relationship holds. That is a further step. It is just like when the formula for the Balmer series was discovered long before quantum theory, which explains that formula, was perfected.

Right now, no experimental test is sensitive enough to show if light does change just by traveling a large distance. But such a test could be done if the proper equipment were put on the planned LISA experiment.

 

Dale, the whole point of the Tolman test is to compare the apparent size or surface brightness of nearby objects with distant ones. If you throw out the nearby ones (which number in the thousands and go out to a z of 0.14) you are saying that we happen to live in the center of the one part of the observable universe that has galaxies twice as big as everywhere else. You want to make that hypothesis? I think Copernicus would have a good chuckle over that.

 

Peter, and others, look up fractals online. They are very common structures in nature. There is no special point of origin. If you go out from ANY point, you get the same results. In my paper, the necessity for assuming a relationship of z and D in the non-expanding case is in order to have a formula for deriving absolute luminosity from measured redshift and apparent luminosity. We do that so we can compare galaxy samples that have the same absolute luminosity. So we don't have to measure distance to test the predictions. The prediction is just that galaxies of the same luminosity have the same radius independently of z.

Signing off for tonight. Good night to all!