As much as i respect Hubble's work, the fixing of the problems with extrapolation of Doppler to millions of light years with dark matter and dark energy begs for a proper solution. An investigation if that extrapolation can actually be done is necessary. Not to discredit Hubble, but to perfect his work, and get rid of the dark matter and energy fix.
Kind regards, Vincent
Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
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SkyBoat
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Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
This post has been expanded and edited for readability. Enjoy!
@KL-666-
You should not confuse Hubble's work with the subsequent theories of dark matter. Hubble proved by observation that the galaxies were moving away from one another at some rate based on the red-shift he saw on his spectrographic plates. To my knowledge, he remained an observational astronomer and was not part of the theoretical group who worked on dark matter. That notion, interestingly enough, came from your homeland.
Dark matter was first proposed in 1932 by the Dutch astrophysicist, Jan Oort (for whom the Oort Cloud is named) and his work was quickly followed by that of Frtiz Zwicky in 1933. Both astronomers were studying the motion of galaxies. And both found that the speed of the galaxies was too great for the amount of mass they appeared to have.
Now, consider this. Less than half a decade after Hubble publishes his paper on the expansion of the universe, astronomers are already studying galaxies at a giant-step forward in sophistication. The only problem is that the math of both astronomers is wrong.
But as other astronomers through subsequent decades made similar observations with increasingly sophisticated equipment, they kept getting the same troubling results. The galaxies were moving too fast. To make a long extremely complex story short, it was the discovery of gravitational lensing (see my previous post for the definition of gravitational lensing) that finally allowed astronomers to develop a reliable method of measuring how much mass is missing for a given galaxy.
I now am going to provide a quote from Wikipedia, because I have pretty much exhausted my historical knowledge on the subject and it is a very complicated topic to try to explain, and to be honest, I don't have the depth of knowledge about dark matter to be able to do it justice.
And here is the accompanying graph. It should be noted the Graph's dating of the Universe's current age is out-of-date. The accepted date is now 13.8 billion years. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
Personally, I have never liked the prevailing theory of dark matter. The scientist in me finds it extremely inelegant. It takes pages and pages of complex mathematical formulas to make it work. My favorite quantum physicist, Leonard Susskind, in his book The Blace Hole War, never even mentions the subject, and he is one of the fathers of string theory. From my perspective, his silence is deafening. When I say my preferred scientific theoretical constructs are elegant, I generally am following a long-held principle called Ockham's (or Occam's) Razor, which states,
Source: Wikipedia
Ockham's Razor does not mean an elegant formula or theory is not complex. Einstein's immortal formula e=mc^2 is absolutely elegant in the simplicity of its mathematical structure but absolutely complex in its physical manifestation, when one breaks each of the components, energy, mass and light apart into understanding how energy is generated by mass times the speed of light squared. Using Ockham's Razor can also be a trap, because sometimes the hypothesis with apparently the fewest assumptions may still prove to be shown wrong through experiment--if one or more of those assumptions were wrong to begin with. That, however, is how real scientific method works.
Here is my personal conjecture on the dark matter issue. There is indeed some mass in the universe that accounts for its expansion at the rate we know as the Cosmological Constant (represented by the Greek letter Lambda (the upside down "v")
or as a Planck Unit = 10 ^−122). But like the time before Copernicus discovered the earth and the planets revolve around the sun in 1543, our dark matter science is still like it is in the Ptolemaic period (named after Claudius Ptolemy, Ca. A.D. 100-179, astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, Roman citizen lived in Alexandria, Egypt), when astronomers were still trying to prove how the sun and the planets revolved around the earth. (Keep in mind the first telescope used for space viewing was not invented until 1610 by Galileo.) They were constantly were coming up with more elaborate models that were very complex and inelegant and that just barely worked, but really did not actually work. But once Copernicus' work was published, the Ptolemaic systems were turned to dust virtually overnight (speaking conceptually, not literally, which took a good couple of hundred years, give or take a century). That was what we now call the "Copernican Revolution."
I see dark matter theory and research in the same state of historical and scientific ambiguity as the Ptolemaic astronomers were in the last century or two before and during the Copernican Revolution. There were some very famous and successful astronomers of that period, in the middle to late 1500s such as Tycho Brahe, the brilliant Danish astronomer who had an island as his observatory, but died nine years before Galileo invented the telescope, and Johannes Kepler, who discovered that the planets' orbits trace out an ellipse not a perfect circle, and thus solved one of the problems with orbital motion Copernicus had not been able to achieve.
So, now, too, there are brilliant astronomers working on dark matter, trying to prove its existence, to discover ways to detect it according to the current paradigm, and I must concede if they do, they do. But if so, I will be very surprised. What I think will be far more likely is that the discovery of the culprit will be an offshoot of the current mainstream work, perhaps not that far, but almost certainly from the mind of one of those indescribable geniuses that history seems to throw into the mix every once in a while, who one day looks that the same old stuff and sees a whole new universe. That is when I think we will have our Copernican Revolution in "dark matter" and my suspicion is that it will be so scientifically elegant that it will, at least for those attuned to its implications, take our breath away. At that moment, we will understand not just what the mass?energy/gravity propelling the universe is, a myriad other pieces of the cosmological puzzle will fall into place at the same time.
I rather they hurry up. I'd like to see it in my lifetime!
@KL-666-
You should not confuse Hubble's work with the subsequent theories of dark matter. Hubble proved by observation that the galaxies were moving away from one another at some rate based on the red-shift he saw on his spectrographic plates. To my knowledge, he remained an observational astronomer and was not part of the theoretical group who worked on dark matter. That notion, interestingly enough, came from your homeland.
Dark matter was first proposed in 1932 by the Dutch astrophysicist, Jan Oort (for whom the Oort Cloud is named) and his work was quickly followed by that of Frtiz Zwicky in 1933. Both astronomers were studying the motion of galaxies. And both found that the speed of the galaxies was too great for the amount of mass they appeared to have.
Now, consider this. Less than half a decade after Hubble publishes his paper on the expansion of the universe, astronomers are already studying galaxies at a giant-step forward in sophistication. The only problem is that the math of both astronomers is wrong.
But as other astronomers through subsequent decades made similar observations with increasingly sophisticated equipment, they kept getting the same troubling results. The galaxies were moving too fast. To make a long extremely complex story short, it was the discovery of gravitational lensing (see my previous post for the definition of gravitational lensing) that finally allowed astronomers to develop a reliable method of measuring how much mass is missing for a given galaxy.
I now am going to provide a quote from Wikipedia, because I have pretty much exhausted my historical knowledge on the subject and it is a very complicated topic to try to explain, and to be honest, I don't have the depth of knowledge about dark matter to be able to do it justice.
Dark matter's existence is inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter and gravitational lensing of background radiation, and was originally hypothesized to account for discrepancies between calculations of the mass of galaxies, clusters of galaxies and the entire universe made through dynamical and general relativistic means, and calculations based on the mass of the visible "luminous" matter these objects contain: stars and the gas and dust of the interstellar and intergalactic medium.[14]
The most widely accepted explanation for these phenomena is that dark matter exists and that it is most probably[10] composed of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that interact only through gravity and the weak force. Alternative explanations have been proposed, and there is not yet sufficient experimental evidence to determine whether any of them are correct. Many experiments to detect proposed dark matter particles through non-gravitational means are under way.[12]
One other theory suggests the existence of a “Hidden Valley”, a parallel world made of dark matter having very little in common with matter we know,[15] and that could only interact with our visible universe through gravity.[16][17]
According to observations of structures larger than star systems, as well as Big Bang cosmology interpreted under the Friedmann equations and the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric, dark matter accounts for 26.8% of the mass-energy content of the observable universe. In comparison, ordinary (baryonic) matter accounts for only 4.9% of the mass-energy content of the observable universe, with the remainder being attributable to dark energy.[18] From these figures, matter accounts for 31.7% of the mass-energy content of the universe, and 84.5% of the matter is dark matter.
Dark matter plays a central role in state-of-the-art modeling of cosmic structure formation and galaxy formation and evolution and has measurable effects on the anisotropies observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). All these lines of evidence suggest that galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the universe as a whole contain far more matter than that which is easily visible with electromagnetic radiation.[16]
Though the theory of dark matter remains the most widely accepted theory to explain the anomalies in observed galactic rotation, some alternative theoretical approaches have been developed which broadly fall into the categories of modified gravitational laws and quantum gravitational laws.[19]
And here is the accompanying graph. It should be noted the Graph's dating of the Universe's current age is out-of-date. The accepted date is now 13.8 billion years. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
Personally, I have never liked the prevailing theory of dark matter. The scientist in me finds it extremely inelegant. It takes pages and pages of complex mathematical formulas to make it work. My favorite quantum physicist, Leonard Susskind, in his book The Blace Hole War, never even mentions the subject, and he is one of the fathers of string theory. From my perspective, his silence is deafening. When I say my preferred scientific theoretical constructs are elegant, I generally am following a long-held principle called Ockham's (or Occam's) Razor, which states,
Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
Source: Wikipedia
Ockham's Razor does not mean an elegant formula or theory is not complex. Einstein's immortal formula e=mc^2 is absolutely elegant in the simplicity of its mathematical structure but absolutely complex in its physical manifestation, when one breaks each of the components, energy, mass and light apart into understanding how energy is generated by mass times the speed of light squared. Using Ockham's Razor can also be a trap, because sometimes the hypothesis with apparently the fewest assumptions may still prove to be shown wrong through experiment--if one or more of those assumptions were wrong to begin with. That, however, is how real scientific method works.
Here is my personal conjecture on the dark matter issue. There is indeed some mass in the universe that accounts for its expansion at the rate we know as the Cosmological Constant (represented by the Greek letter Lambda (the upside down "v")
or as a Planck Unit = 10 ^−122). But like the time before Copernicus discovered the earth and the planets revolve around the sun in 1543, our dark matter science is still like it is in the Ptolemaic period (named after Claudius Ptolemy, Ca. A.D. 100-179, astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, Roman citizen lived in Alexandria, Egypt), when astronomers were still trying to prove how the sun and the planets revolved around the earth. (Keep in mind the first telescope used for space viewing was not invented until 1610 by Galileo.) They were constantly were coming up with more elaborate models that were very complex and inelegant and that just barely worked, but really did not actually work. But once Copernicus' work was published, the Ptolemaic systems were turned to dust virtually overnight (speaking conceptually, not literally, which took a good couple of hundred years, give or take a century). That was what we now call the "Copernican Revolution." I see dark matter theory and research in the same state of historical and scientific ambiguity as the Ptolemaic astronomers were in the last century or two before and during the Copernican Revolution. There were some very famous and successful astronomers of that period, in the middle to late 1500s such as Tycho Brahe, the brilliant Danish astronomer who had an island as his observatory, but died nine years before Galileo invented the telescope, and Johannes Kepler, who discovered that the planets' orbits trace out an ellipse not a perfect circle, and thus solved one of the problems with orbital motion Copernicus had not been able to achieve.
So, now, too, there are brilliant astronomers working on dark matter, trying to prove its existence, to discover ways to detect it according to the current paradigm, and I must concede if they do, they do. But if so, I will be very surprised. What I think will be far more likely is that the discovery of the culprit will be an offshoot of the current mainstream work, perhaps not that far, but almost certainly from the mind of one of those indescribable geniuses that history seems to throw into the mix every once in a while, who one day looks that the same old stuff and sees a whole new universe. That is when I think we will have our Copernican Revolution in "dark matter" and my suspicion is that it will be so scientifically elegant that it will, at least for those attuned to its implications, take our breath away. At that moment, we will understand not just what the mass?energy/gravity propelling the universe is, a myriad other pieces of the cosmological puzzle will fall into place at the same time.
I rather they hurry up. I'd like to see it in my lifetime!
SkyBoat
"Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real."
Donald Douglas
"Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real."
Donald Douglas
Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
Enjoyed it 
We know Einstein had some good gut feelings, which inspired him to some revolutionary science. His guts also told him there is something wrong with the expanding universe. But he just could not lay his finger on it, like he did with relativity. I trust his guts and expect of such "whole new universe" that what we see now as unlimited expansion will be interpreted differently. How exactly (slower, not at all) is hard to say, because the word "expanding" might not even be in the vocabulary of such theory. The interpretation may be at least that different, that it renders the big bang invalid.
The (extremely) weak interaction of dark matter with our matter is of course the most brilliant part of that theory. Now not detecting any of such "particles" can not prove them wrong.
Kind regards, Vincent
We know Einstein had some good gut feelings, which inspired him to some revolutionary science. His guts also told him there is something wrong with the expanding universe. But he just could not lay his finger on it, like he did with relativity. I trust his guts and expect of such "whole new universe" that what we see now as unlimited expansion will be interpreted differently. How exactly (slower, not at all) is hard to say, because the word "expanding" might not even be in the vocabulary of such theory. The interpretation may be at least that different, that it renders the big bang invalid.
The (extremely) weak interaction of dark matter with our matter is of course the most brilliant part of that theory. Now not detecting any of such "particles" can not prove them wrong.
Kind regards, Vincent
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SkyBoat
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Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
KL-666--
I'm glad you enjoyed reading the post. I have multiple books on my shelf on the history of astronomy and love to read and write about it.
For purposes of the discussion, to disprove the expansion of the universe at this point, some 74 years after the discovery, you would have to come up with an instrument that invalidates the spectrograph and the evidence it produces, that is creating a prismatic picture of a galaxy's light and seeing if the light on the developed plate is shifted to the red or to the blue.
Here is a graphic illustrating a typical spectrographic image with the absorption lines for the different major elements, but using hydrogen as the example because it is the most common element in the universe:
Image Courtesy of http://www.docbrown.info
That is a very tall order indeed. A spectrograph can be attached to any high-quality telescope of, say 16 inches up to 24 inches, which are available on the market. It is not necessary to have access to a professional level observatory to do such work. In fact, with the current computer technology, it would be possible, to purchase five Meade LX200 ACF 16 inch 406mm Catadioptric telescopes for USD $16,000 and set them up in a pentagonal pattern so they are exactly hundred meters apart from each other as if you had a 100 meter wide mirror, and use software for what is called interferometry, and you would have an approximation of the light-gathering capacity of the 100 meter observatory. In short, it is not necessary in this day and age to have to have half a billion dollars/euros in funding to build one's own observatory or get time on an existing observatory to test a competing theory to the expansion model. Interferometry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry
Image Courtesy of B&H Photo.com
All this to say, to advance a theory that the universe is not expanding requires observational proof that can be validated by any astronomer pointing his or her telescope into the sky using the same instrument and getting the same results. That is what Hubble did and how the expanding universe model was accepted as fact. With all due respect, I do not see a path to disprove the expansion model, because the instrument to prove it, to the best of my knowledge does not exist. You also have to take into account the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) space satellite's findings validated the Big Bang and the expansion theory to a high degree.
Wikipedia: The famous map of the CMB anisotropy formed from data taken by the COBE spacecraft. (CMB = Cosmic Microwave Background)
Those are my thoughts regarding your reply. I would welcome your thoughts in greater detail to better understand the the theoretical perspective you favor.
SkyBoat
I'm glad you enjoyed reading the post. I have multiple books on my shelf on the history of astronomy and love to read and write about it.
For purposes of the discussion, to disprove the expansion of the universe at this point, some 74 years after the discovery, you would have to come up with an instrument that invalidates the spectrograph and the evidence it produces, that is creating a prismatic picture of a galaxy's light and seeing if the light on the developed plate is shifted to the red or to the blue.
Here is a graphic illustrating a typical spectrographic image with the absorption lines for the different major elements, but using hydrogen as the example because it is the most common element in the universe:
Image Courtesy of http://www.docbrown.info
That is a very tall order indeed. A spectrograph can be attached to any high-quality telescope of, say 16 inches up to 24 inches, which are available on the market. It is not necessary to have access to a professional level observatory to do such work. In fact, with the current computer technology, it would be possible, to purchase five Meade LX200 ACF 16 inch 406mm Catadioptric telescopes for USD $16,000 and set them up in a pentagonal pattern so they are exactly hundred meters apart from each other as if you had a 100 meter wide mirror, and use software for what is called interferometry, and you would have an approximation of the light-gathering capacity of the 100 meter observatory. In short, it is not necessary in this day and age to have to have half a billion dollars/euros in funding to build one's own observatory or get time on an existing observatory to test a competing theory to the expansion model. Interferometry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry
Image Courtesy of B&H Photo.com
All this to say, to advance a theory that the universe is not expanding requires observational proof that can be validated by any astronomer pointing his or her telescope into the sky using the same instrument and getting the same results. That is what Hubble did and how the expanding universe model was accepted as fact. With all due respect, I do not see a path to disprove the expansion model, because the instrument to prove it, to the best of my knowledge does not exist. You also have to take into account the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) space satellite's findings validated the Big Bang and the expansion theory to a high degree.
Wikipedia: The famous map of the CMB anisotropy formed from data taken by the COBE spacecraft. (CMB = Cosmic Microwave Background)
Those are my thoughts regarding your reply. I would welcome your thoughts in greater detail to better understand the the theoretical perspective you favor.
SkyBoat
SkyBoat
"Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real."
Donald Douglas
"Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real."
Donald Douglas
Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
Hello Skyboat,
I am not the one that is smart enough to "one day look at the same old stuff and see a whole new universe". In fact i do not even know much about astronomy. But what i can see is that there are more uncertainties in astronomy than we like to believe, which make it prone to a new revolution like relativity did. To name a couple i can think of:
1) We are not certain whether we can extrapolate relative short distance logic to billions of light years. Einstein has shown us once that we could not do it with gravity, although we first thought we could.
2) Even when extrapolating, there is not so much certainty about for instance the actual distance of stars/galaxies. The triangulation method works only relative nearby. And that other method is much less exact.
3) We infer very much from very dim light. Mass, distance, temperature, composition, speed. The dim light is prone to contamination, whether from influences nearby or far away.
4) At the very long distance we see only galaxies. Is the interpretation of middling the effects of the stars within a galaxy correct? Do old (distant) galaxies behave the same as younger (nearby) galaxies in terms of the parameters we measure? Are they actually galaxies, or some dinosaur stars from another lightyear-age? They are very old and we hardly have more than a pixel of them.
5) And of course the issue of the dark matter and dark energy does not make the current interpretation very convincing.
There are probably many more uncertainty factors that i do not know of, each of which can make things slightly different when measured and interpreted better, and at long distances make a huge impact on our understanding. All i can do is wait and see when the new Einstein comes along to tells us. And when he does, the culprit is not necessarily spectroscopy.
The period that people believed the same thing should not make it less likely for a revolution eventually to happen. We have believed some things much longer than a couple of decades.
Kind regards, Vincent
I am not the one that is smart enough to "one day look at the same old stuff and see a whole new universe". In fact i do not even know much about astronomy. But what i can see is that there are more uncertainties in astronomy than we like to believe, which make it prone to a new revolution like relativity did. To name a couple i can think of:
1) We are not certain whether we can extrapolate relative short distance logic to billions of light years. Einstein has shown us once that we could not do it with gravity, although we first thought we could.
2) Even when extrapolating, there is not so much certainty about for instance the actual distance of stars/galaxies. The triangulation method works only relative nearby. And that other method is much less exact.
3) We infer very much from very dim light. Mass, distance, temperature, composition, speed. The dim light is prone to contamination, whether from influences nearby or far away.
4) At the very long distance we see only galaxies. Is the interpretation of middling the effects of the stars within a galaxy correct? Do old (distant) galaxies behave the same as younger (nearby) galaxies in terms of the parameters we measure? Are they actually galaxies, or some dinosaur stars from another lightyear-age? They are very old and we hardly have more than a pixel of them.
5) And of course the issue of the dark matter and dark energy does not make the current interpretation very convincing.
There are probably many more uncertainty factors that i do not know of, each of which can make things slightly different when measured and interpreted better, and at long distances make a huge impact on our understanding. All i can do is wait and see when the new Einstein comes along to tells us. And when he does, the culprit is not necessarily spectroscopy.
The period that people believed the same thing should not make it less likely for a revolution eventually to happen. We have believed some things much longer than a couple of decades.
Kind regards, Vincent
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SkyBoat
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Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
Vincent,
Very interesting response and one in which I have a number of questions I would like to ask for purposes of clarification so I better understand your perspective.
1. You use the term "extrapolate" in a way that is not quite the same as it is used in common English. So I'm curious what is the Dutch word you are translating in your head, and what other meanings it might have? For example, in your first item, I would have written: " We are not certain whether we can correlate relative short distance logic to billions of light years." And in your second item, I would have written: "Even when investigating, there is not so certainty about for instance the actual distance of stars/galaxies."
So here are my questions.
1. In what way did Einstein show us that we could not measure great distances? Einstein's theory of relativity showed that the greater the mass the greater the gravity and the greater the space-time continuum was warped around that mass. Gravitational lensing is a deep space phenomenon observed when the enormous gravitational field of a galaxy bends the space-continuum so dramatically that even light from a galaxy behind it is warped around it creating four distinct images of the galaxy called an Einstein's cross (see image below).
2.Could you explain what method would work to measure the enormous distances to the stars? Are you aware of the method of measurement called parallax?
3. Please say more about how light is contaminated. My understanding is that light, as the purest form of radiant energy, when emitted as a photon moves through space at C (the speed of light) and due to its nature as a particle/wave form is uncontaminatable. As the fastest form of energy in the universe, nothing can catch it. Of course when a photon hits a solid object, it is either absorbed or reflected. but even then, nothing can attach itself to it. What I think you are more accurately trying to say is that space is very dirty and light has to pass through all sorts of dust and other "contaminants" floating out there in space. and therefore, what we are seeing is akin to looking through a very dirty pair of glasses that distort the reality of the image. I would say you are half right, because it depends on which direction you look in the sky.
4. You raise very legitimate questions here and the answer is yes, the father back in time we look the more different the galaxies look. There is definitely an evolutionary path that is visible the deeper you look into space and therefore the further back in time. And there is a point where visible galaxies become very different than the ones that are even half the distance between us and them, The most distant galaxies are known as quasars, and they emit a distinct radiation signal that more "modern" galaxies do not. They are very small by comparison and very hot. Here is an image of a quasar shown as an Einstein's Cross (the four light points) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.:
"UZC J224030.2+032131" by ESA/Hubble & NASA - http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1204a/. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 032131.jpg
From Wikipedia:
5. Since we've already discussed dark matter, we don't need to dwell on it further.
What I would say as I anticipate your responses is that there are answers to many of your questions that have been experimentally verified many times over, so I am respectfully uncertain about your uncertainties.
Very interesting response and one in which I have a number of questions I would like to ask for purposes of clarification so I better understand your perspective.
1. You use the term "extrapolate" in a way that is not quite the same as it is used in common English. So I'm curious what is the Dutch word you are translating in your head, and what other meanings it might have? For example, in your first item, I would have written: " We are not certain whether we can correlate relative short distance logic to billions of light years." And in your second item, I would have written: "Even when investigating, there is not so certainty about for instance the actual distance of stars/galaxies."
So here are my questions.
1. In what way did Einstein show us that we could not measure great distances? Einstein's theory of relativity showed that the greater the mass the greater the gravity and the greater the space-time continuum was warped around that mass. Gravitational lensing is a deep space phenomenon observed when the enormous gravitational field of a galaxy bends the space-continuum so dramatically that even light from a galaxy behind it is warped around it creating four distinct images of the galaxy called an Einstein's cross (see image below).
2.Could you explain what method would work to measure the enormous distances to the stars? Are you aware of the method of measurement called parallax?
3. Please say more about how light is contaminated. My understanding is that light, as the purest form of radiant energy, when emitted as a photon moves through space at C (the speed of light) and due to its nature as a particle/wave form is uncontaminatable. As the fastest form of energy in the universe, nothing can catch it. Of course when a photon hits a solid object, it is either absorbed or reflected. but even then, nothing can attach itself to it. What I think you are more accurately trying to say is that space is very dirty and light has to pass through all sorts of dust and other "contaminants" floating out there in space. and therefore, what we are seeing is akin to looking through a very dirty pair of glasses that distort the reality of the image. I would say you are half right, because it depends on which direction you look in the sky.
4. You raise very legitimate questions here and the answer is yes, the father back in time we look the more different the galaxies look. There is definitely an evolutionary path that is visible the deeper you look into space and therefore the further back in time. And there is a point where visible galaxies become very different than the ones that are even half the distance between us and them, The most distant galaxies are known as quasars, and they emit a distinct radiation signal that more "modern" galaxies do not. They are very small by comparison and very hot. Here is an image of a quasar shown as an Einstein's Cross (the four light points) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.:
"UZC J224030.2+032131" by ESA/Hubble & NASA - http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1204a/. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 032131.jpg
From Wikipedia:
Quasars (/ˈkweɪzɑr/) or quasi-stellar radio sources are the most energetic and distant members of a class of objects called active galactic nuclei (AGN). Quasars are extremely luminous and were first identified as being high redshift sources of electromagnetic energy, including radio waves and visible light, that appeared to be similar to stars, rather than extended sources similar to galaxies. Their spectra contain very broad emission lines, unlike any known from stars, hence the name "quasi-stellar." Their luminosity can be 100 times greater than that of the Milky Way.[2] Most quasars were formed approximately 12 billion years ago, and they are normally caused by collisions of galaxies, with the galaxies' central black holes merging to form either a supermassive black hole[3] or a binary black hole system.
Although the true nature of these objects was controversial until the early 1980s, there is now a scientific consensus that a quasar is a compact region in the center of a massive galaxy surrounding a central supermassive black hole.[4] Its size is 10–10,000 times the Schwarzschild radius of the enclosed black hole. The energy emitted by a quasar derives from mass falling onto the accretion disc around the black hole.
5. Since we've already discussed dark matter, we don't need to dwell on it further.
What I would say as I anticipate your responses is that there are answers to many of your questions that have been experimentally verified many times over, so I am respectfully uncertain about your uncertainties.
SkyBoat
"Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real."
Donald Douglas
"Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real."
Donald Douglas
Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
Hello Skyboat,
What i used extrapolate for is "Assuming that something that works on a small scale is also valid on a large scale". If correlate means that, i should have used that word.
1) Einstein did not show us that we could not measure great distances. He showed us that some theories that work well on small scale are not doing so well on large scale. He replaced/enhanced Newtons gravity with relativity. This should learn us to be aware of probable issues at large scale we have no clue about yet.
2) Yes, parallax is the more precise method that only works relatively nearby. No, i can not find out better measure methods, as i am not a scientist. That does not take away the uncertainty of the current measuring, which i find we should not be unaware of. If for instance future better measurements show that extremely far things are much more nearby, then that can mess up the idea that the further something is the faster it moves away.
3) I did not mean that the light itself is contaminated, but that there is additional light from other sources mixed on the way here. In such case you (partly) measure properties from something else than the dot in the sky you wanted to measure.
4 and 5) are not really questions as far as i understand them.
If i understand well, you tend a bit towards: There are some issues which over time will be resolved and the universe will still be expanding. And i tend towards: There are some issues and in resolving them some dramatic change in our insight will happen. Neither of us can really prove what we think. But you probably more than me.
Kind regards, Vincent
What i used extrapolate for is "Assuming that something that works on a small scale is also valid on a large scale". If correlate means that, i should have used that word.
1) Einstein did not show us that we could not measure great distances. He showed us that some theories that work well on small scale are not doing so well on large scale. He replaced/enhanced Newtons gravity with relativity. This should learn us to be aware of probable issues at large scale we have no clue about yet.
2) Yes, parallax is the more precise method that only works relatively nearby. No, i can not find out better measure methods, as i am not a scientist. That does not take away the uncertainty of the current measuring, which i find we should not be unaware of. If for instance future better measurements show that extremely far things are much more nearby, then that can mess up the idea that the further something is the faster it moves away.
3) I did not mean that the light itself is contaminated, but that there is additional light from other sources mixed on the way here. In such case you (partly) measure properties from something else than the dot in the sky you wanted to measure.
4 and 5) are not really questions as far as i understand them.
If i understand well, you tend a bit towards: There are some issues which over time will be resolved and the universe will still be expanding. And i tend towards: There are some issues and in resolving them some dramatic change in our insight will happen. Neither of us can really prove what we think. But you probably more than me.
Kind regards, Vincent
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SkyBoat
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Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
Hello Vincent,
I was using English word “correlate” in the statistical meaning of a relationship (sometimes called Pearson’s r) between two sets of data that has a range from -1.0 to 1.0, representing a negative relationship to a positive relationship, but with the definition that “correlation does not imply causation.”
Moving on…….
I respectfully disagree with your assessment that Einstein did not show us we could not measure great distances. In fact, among his field equations published in his General Theory of Relativity is this equation:
Within it is the Lambda Λ of the cosmological constant multiplied by the ɡμν (the space-time metric), that have “a direct impact on the large-scale dynamics of the cosmos with regard to both space and time.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity. It was these very equations that created the basis to measure the enormous distances of space, including that the expansion of the universe, sometimes called the inflationary model, and the observational evidence fit what Einstein’s field theories predicted. There have been numerous attempts to prove Einstein was wrong, at times entire groups of astronomers (at one point in 1931, 100!) out to debunk him. To date, none of them have been successful.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
Additionally, in his Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein also set the stage for the large scale measurement of the universe by the description of these two postulates:
Source: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postulates_of_special_relativity
For item number two, regarding how distances in deep space are measured, it is a topic I have only a basic understanding. Essentially, astronomers have designed methodologies that allow them to study objects beyond what parallax can accurately determine. These include supernovae as standard candles, quasars because they produce an electromagnetic signal at a consistent wavelength and redshift, and a number of other techniques, among which are called the “Cosmic Distance Ladder.” I’ll just refer you to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder
Item 3, I also respectfully disagree with your understanding of the function of light being able to be mixed with other light sources and therefore contaminated along the way from its original source. Light waves, unlike sound waves, are not additive. The reason is that light as a photon has both the properties of a particle and a waveform, whereas sound is purely a waveform. Because of the Uncertainty Principle,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle one cannot predict at any moment which form a photon will possess. By inference, any other force or particle coming into contact with it cannot react fast enough to match it either as a wave or particle.
Light does have some rather mysterious qualities about it, without question. For example, when a photon is emitted from an electromagnetic source like a light bulb (or any source, for that matter), it does not speed up to C, it is immediately at C. I know that sounds implausible, but I asked a professional astronomer that question and he assured me that was one of the properties of light that we still don’t completely understand. So photons cannot be contaminated. It is absolutely against the properties of light itself for it to become something other than light (except under special conditions, which in the cosmos only take place in a supernova explosion or crossing over the event horizon of a black hole) remembering Einstein’s Postulates stated above. What our human eyes can see is light filtered through “contaminates” or primary colors to fit what our brains can perceive, but that is a function of what the light is passing through and our brain’s limitations of perceptibility, not the actual state of the photons themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
Regarding your last paragraph on our positions, I think mine would be more accurately stated that I accept the research that has been conducted by observation, experimentation, and the hard work of theoretical research by thousands of astronomers since Einstein (and many before, after all Newton was right about the laws of gravity in the mid-1700s but his universe was “small” in the sense he did not have the advantage of knowing how big it really is; but also to his credit, his invention of what we call the Newtonian telescope is the template for every large visual observatory in the world, so his gifts to astronomy are inestimable.).
The result of that work has produced a great deal of fruit that is highly reliable, while at the same time, the sheer vastness of the cosmos provides daunting challenges that we have yet to be able to understand, let alone, begin to solve. That makes astronomy, astrophysics and quantum theory always appearing to have a split personality, on the one hand claiming certain things are reliable and factual and on the other hand constantly changing and updating, rearranging, throwing things out, and generally confusing the public at large, as what happened with the whole Pluto debate a few years ago as a good example. And if you even quickly read over the Wiki page on measuring cosmic distances you will see it is a complicated topic, and still very much under constant revision.
Another thing that the general public doesn’t understand well, and the media does a dismal job explaining, IMHO, is the relationship between the very large structures shown in the beautiful photos of the Hubble Space Telescope, and the very smallest particles being generated at the CERN, not that far from where you live, compared to me. For instance, the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle” because of its properties to bind other particles to create mass, is an essential piece of the puzzle in understanding the properties of galactic superclusters and how they are arranged around each other. It might seem counterintuitive, but, the biggest things in the universe are made up of the smallest things in the universe. So the more we understand about both, the better picture we have about the whole.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
As we in the United States take a day to give thanks for the many good things and blessings in our lives, however small, I certainly am grateful for the FlightGear friends I have, and for the chance to participate in a forum like this that broadens my horizons through discussions with friends like you.
My thanks to you, Vincent,
SkyBoat
I was using English word “correlate” in the statistical meaning of a relationship (sometimes called Pearson’s r) between two sets of data that has a range from -1.0 to 1.0, representing a negative relationship to a positive relationship, but with the definition that “correlation does not imply causation.”
Moving on…….
I respectfully disagree with your assessment that Einstein did not show us we could not measure great distances. In fact, among his field equations published in his General Theory of Relativity is this equation:
Within it is the Lambda Λ of the cosmological constant multiplied by the ɡμν (the space-time metric), that have “a direct impact on the large-scale dynamics of the cosmos with regard to both space and time.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity. It was these very equations that created the basis to measure the enormous distances of space, including that the expansion of the universe, sometimes called the inflationary model, and the observational evidence fit what Einstein’s field theories predicted. There have been numerous attempts to prove Einstein was wrong, at times entire groups of astronomers (at one point in 1931, 100!) out to debunk him. To date, none of them have been successful.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
Additionally, in his Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein also set the stage for the large scale measurement of the universe by the description of these two postulates:
1. First postulate (principle of relativity)
The laws by which the states of physical systems undergo change are not affected, whether these changes of state be referred to the one or the other of two systems of coordinates in uniform translatory motion. OR: The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference.
2. Second postulate (invariance of c)
As measured in any inertial frame of reference, light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c that is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body. OR: The speed of light in free space has the same value c in all inertial frames of reference.
The two-postulate basis for special relativity is the one historically used by Einstein, and it remains the starting point today. As Einstein himself later acknowledged, the derivation[clarification needed of what?] tacitly makes use of some additional assumptions, including spatial homogeneity, isotropy, and memorylessness.[1] Also Hermann Minkowski implicitly used both postulates when he introduced the Minkowski space formulation, even though he showed that c can be seen as a space-time constant, and the identification with the speed of light is derived from optics.[2]
The Special Theory of Relativity establishes the speed of light has the “same value in all inertial frames of reference”. That means there is a cosmic speed limit. So regardless of where an observer is located in the universe, the speed of light is the same and so all the other laws of physics must abide by that law, from the smallest to the largest manifestations, from the shortest to the longest distances measured.
Source: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postulates_of_special_relativity
For item number two, regarding how distances in deep space are measured, it is a topic I have only a basic understanding. Essentially, astronomers have designed methodologies that allow them to study objects beyond what parallax can accurately determine. These include supernovae as standard candles, quasars because they produce an electromagnetic signal at a consistent wavelength and redshift, and a number of other techniques, among which are called the “Cosmic Distance Ladder.” I’ll just refer you to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder
Item 3, I also respectfully disagree with your understanding of the function of light being able to be mixed with other light sources and therefore contaminated along the way from its original source. Light waves, unlike sound waves, are not additive. The reason is that light as a photon has both the properties of a particle and a waveform, whereas sound is purely a waveform. Because of the Uncertainty Principle,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle one cannot predict at any moment which form a photon will possess. By inference, any other force or particle coming into contact with it cannot react fast enough to match it either as a wave or particle.
Light does have some rather mysterious qualities about it, without question. For example, when a photon is emitted from an electromagnetic source like a light bulb (or any source, for that matter), it does not speed up to C, it is immediately at C. I know that sounds implausible, but I asked a professional astronomer that question and he assured me that was one of the properties of light that we still don’t completely understand. So photons cannot be contaminated. It is absolutely against the properties of light itself for it to become something other than light (except under special conditions, which in the cosmos only take place in a supernova explosion or crossing over the event horizon of a black hole) remembering Einstein’s Postulates stated above. What our human eyes can see is light filtered through “contaminates” or primary colors to fit what our brains can perceive, but that is a function of what the light is passing through and our brain’s limitations of perceptibility, not the actual state of the photons themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
Regarding your last paragraph on our positions, I think mine would be more accurately stated that I accept the research that has been conducted by observation, experimentation, and the hard work of theoretical research by thousands of astronomers since Einstein (and many before, after all Newton was right about the laws of gravity in the mid-1700s but his universe was “small” in the sense he did not have the advantage of knowing how big it really is; but also to his credit, his invention of what we call the Newtonian telescope is the template for every large visual observatory in the world, so his gifts to astronomy are inestimable.).
The result of that work has produced a great deal of fruit that is highly reliable, while at the same time, the sheer vastness of the cosmos provides daunting challenges that we have yet to be able to understand, let alone, begin to solve. That makes astronomy, astrophysics and quantum theory always appearing to have a split personality, on the one hand claiming certain things are reliable and factual and on the other hand constantly changing and updating, rearranging, throwing things out, and generally confusing the public at large, as what happened with the whole Pluto debate a few years ago as a good example. And if you even quickly read over the Wiki page on measuring cosmic distances you will see it is a complicated topic, and still very much under constant revision.
Another thing that the general public doesn’t understand well, and the media does a dismal job explaining, IMHO, is the relationship between the very large structures shown in the beautiful photos of the Hubble Space Telescope, and the very smallest particles being generated at the CERN, not that far from where you live, compared to me. For instance, the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle” because of its properties to bind other particles to create mass, is an essential piece of the puzzle in understanding the properties of galactic superclusters and how they are arranged around each other. It might seem counterintuitive, but, the biggest things in the universe are made up of the smallest things in the universe. So the more we understand about both, the better picture we have about the whole.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
As we in the United States take a day to give thanks for the many good things and blessings in our lives, however small, I certainly am grateful for the FlightGear friends I have, and for the chance to participate in a forum like this that broadens my horizons through discussions with friends like you.
My thanks to you, Vincent,
SkyBoat
SkyBoat
"Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real."
Donald Douglas
"Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real."
Donald Douglas
Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
Hello Skyboat,
Thanks for all the elaborate explaining of current astronomy. I enjoy that. It makes me feel a bit in debt, because i hardly know much about validating formula's and theories myself. I have to fare on what the astronomers working on it tell me about it. And what they say the level of sureness is.
I remember now what triggered my interest in the sureness of the construct of the big bang following from the expanding universe. A couple of days ago i saw a documentary in which an astronomer said exactly the same thing as a i saw in some documentaries a few years earlier.
They say: "We measure the distance of far galaxies by the amount of red shift".
This is really turning things around in a way that can not be done. If you can say: "I measure more red shift at far galaxies", you can not simply turn that around in: "The more red shift i measure, the further a galaxy is". Then all following conclusions are based on self-fulfilling measuring. The universe then always expands.
I looked up how long distance was measured in the first place, and heard about the candles, etc..., partly understanding it. The most important information that i could understand very well, was that the people working on it said that the far distance measurement was far from very exact.
And yet, there are astronomers that turn that around and use red shift to measure distance. This got me really worried about the quality of current astronomers, and i started looking a bit into if there are more assumptions that are not so sure. And there are. Enough for me to think that very far reached conclusions like the big bang are very unsure. Leaving a lot of room for different assumptions that lead to far reached conclusions that do not include a big bang.
Now only someone has to stand up "who one day looks that the same old stuff and sees a whole new universe" as you said it so nicely. It might take a while before that happens, because everyone now starts off (from education) with a mindset preoccupied with expanding universe. You really need someone with the stubbornness and courage of Einstein to go against mainstream.
Well, that was the origin of my little quest into the sureness of the big bang.
About some things you said in your last message.
"Einstein did not show us we could not measure great distances". I did not want to state that. What i meant was to say was that i did not want to make that point earlier, but the point of needing to be aware that what works on short distance can later be proven wrong to use it at long distances. Such thing happened before. So i can only agree with what you further said about it.
About the light. I really do not mean that any light particle or wave is changed in any way. Think more in terms of diffusion, where light from different sources can seem to come from the same origin. In the atmosphere there is clearly diffusion. But also in space, as you said that light can collide with space dust or so. Or how about gravitational lensing, that bends some light straight along the path of the light coming towards us from a faint galaxy. If such galaxy were very bright this "contamination" would not be much of a problem. But with very faint light the risk of a bigger influence is higher.
Here we do not celebrate thanksgiving at all, to my knowledge. Over the years we have taken over from America some festivities i find not very interesting, like valentines day, but unfortunately not thanksgiving. I hope you have enjoyed it and wish you all the best.
Kind regards, Vincent
Thanks for all the elaborate explaining of current astronomy. I enjoy that. It makes me feel a bit in debt, because i hardly know much about validating formula's and theories myself. I have to fare on what the astronomers working on it tell me about it. And what they say the level of sureness is.
I remember now what triggered my interest in the sureness of the construct of the big bang following from the expanding universe. A couple of days ago i saw a documentary in which an astronomer said exactly the same thing as a i saw in some documentaries a few years earlier.
They say: "We measure the distance of far galaxies by the amount of red shift".
This is really turning things around in a way that can not be done. If you can say: "I measure more red shift at far galaxies", you can not simply turn that around in: "The more red shift i measure, the further a galaxy is". Then all following conclusions are based on self-fulfilling measuring. The universe then always expands.
I looked up how long distance was measured in the first place, and heard about the candles, etc..., partly understanding it. The most important information that i could understand very well, was that the people working on it said that the far distance measurement was far from very exact.
And yet, there are astronomers that turn that around and use red shift to measure distance. This got me really worried about the quality of current astronomers, and i started looking a bit into if there are more assumptions that are not so sure. And there are. Enough for me to think that very far reached conclusions like the big bang are very unsure. Leaving a lot of room for different assumptions that lead to far reached conclusions that do not include a big bang.
Now only someone has to stand up "who one day looks that the same old stuff and sees a whole new universe" as you said it so nicely. It might take a while before that happens, because everyone now starts off (from education) with a mindset preoccupied with expanding universe. You really need someone with the stubbornness and courage of Einstein to go against mainstream.
Well, that was the origin of my little quest into the sureness of the big bang.
About some things you said in your last message.
"Einstein did not show us we could not measure great distances". I did not want to state that. What i meant was to say was that i did not want to make that point earlier, but the point of needing to be aware that what works on short distance can later be proven wrong to use it at long distances. Such thing happened before. So i can only agree with what you further said about it.
About the light. I really do not mean that any light particle or wave is changed in any way. Think more in terms of diffusion, where light from different sources can seem to come from the same origin. In the atmosphere there is clearly diffusion. But also in space, as you said that light can collide with space dust or so. Or how about gravitational lensing, that bends some light straight along the path of the light coming towards us from a faint galaxy. If such galaxy were very bright this "contamination" would not be much of a problem. But with very faint light the risk of a bigger influence is higher.
Here we do not celebrate thanksgiving at all, to my knowledge. Over the years we have taken over from America some festivities i find not very interesting, like valentines day, but unfortunately not thanksgiving. I hope you have enjoyed it and wish you all the best.
Kind regards, Vincent
Re: Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?
KL-666 wrote:They say: "We measure the distance of far galaxies by the amount of red shift".
This is really turning things around in a way that can not be done. If you can say: "I measure more red shift at far galaxies", you can not simply turn that around in: "The more red shift i measure, the further a galaxy is". Then all following conclusions are based on self-fulfilling measuring. The universe then always expands.
I looked up how long distance was measured in the first place, and heard about the candles, etc..., partly understanding it. The most important information that i could understand very well, was that the people working on it said that the far distance measurement was far from very exact.
But it doesn't have to be "very exact" in order for it to show there was a big bang, just exact enough. It's like landing an airplane. You don't have to land the airplane perfectly to land it, you just need to be in the ballpark.
KL-666 wrote:the point of needing to be aware that what works on short distance can later be proven wrong to use it at long distances.
That sounds more like quantum mechanics versus classical physics to me, rather than redshift measuring distances in the universe. It seems to me you're conflating just what type of differences in scales your argument actually applies to.
KL-666 wrote:About the light. I really do not mean that any light particle or wave is changed in any way. Think more in terms of diffusion, where light from different sources can seem to come from the same origin. In the atmosphere there is clearly diffusion. But also in space, as you said that light can collide with space dust or so. Or how about gravitational lensing, that bends some light straight along the path of the light coming towards us from a faint galaxy. If such galaxy were very bright this "contamination" would not be much of a problem. But with very faint light the risk of a bigger influence is higher.
What, specifically, in physics, shows us the above?
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