Nov 16 2006

I know that I have written about this before but I cant find it so I will repeat myself for myself perhaps to see if I can figure out where I am wrong or right. I am reading a book called the extravagant Universe by Robert Kirshner (c) 2002. I have seen this guy on many science channel programs and thats probably the only reason I checked it out not because I thought I would learn something new. Pretty much figure that whatever he talks about in this book has been summerized by him and others in these TV episodes since then. But ya know I cant help to say again that I see a flaw in the percieved age of the Universe whenever I look at Hubble Deep Field image. Consider this. Take a look at the most distant galaxy, it should be the smallest visible spec or smudge in the image. That they say is around 12 billion light years ago/away. Now the fact that it is a formed galaxy they want us to believe that it only takes 2 billion years to form a galaxy. OK, whatever as sceptical as I might be about that, that is not what I have a problem with. My issue is with the fact that we are 12 billion lights years out from it, WE have not traveled at the speed of light to get here, the question is what is our rate of travel? Is it possible that our galaxy has traveled from the point of origin of one of those faint distant galaxies? Ask yourself, how long guesstimate do you think it would take a galaxy to get from there to here? IF SO, that would put the age of just our galaxy at hundredes of thousands of times older than 12 billion. One minor problem, as far as we can tell the oldest thing in our galaxy is less than 14 billion years old. How is that possible? Are they wrong? Am I wrong, whats going on? The truth of the matter is whatever data they get, if they ever came up with a number greater than 14 billion for the age of any object in our galaxy, they would call it an error and redo the math and correct the math to get an agreeable answer that fits the current model Rather than correcting thier theory. Now I know I might be stretching it and maybe I am wrong, there really is nothing in our galaxy that is older than 12-14 billion years old... In that case what is the solution? Easy, our galaxy formed within 14 billion years. This does NOT mean that it traveled from an origin of 14 billion LY away. Know that if it HAD, that would put the age of it well beyond 14 billion years. Again the logic of it is that a galaxy is not travling at the speed of light. To add to that we are actually speeding up, meaning we were going slower in the past, putting the time required to travel from there to here greater. Granted in a big bang theory at the beginging everything was flying apart at fractions of the speed of light, and interesting question is if we buy that theory, is the big bang still going on?... and thats the reason we are still accelerating? Its hard to imagine a big bang lasting 14 billion years, but what drives expansion in an explosion? Wind I suppose you might call it, hey what other alternative is there? Dark energy? Give me a break... Why come up with some exotic force when go old fashion space winds and gravity will do the trick? And Ive talked about That before also, what space winds are, they involve light energy as well and there is plenty of that to push things around out there. Off topic now but like I said, the age of the Universe needs to be reconsidered if we can ever find some evidence that our galaxy has traveled from a point of origin 12-14 billion LY's away. Quote pg. 81 "For the universe, the time natural time scale is the expansion time, about 14 billion years, and the natural distance scale is 14 billion light-years."
UH HELLO, our galaxy did not travel at the speed of light to get here. If everything came from a single point of origin that including us out here, it would take our galaxy 14 billion years traveling at the speed of light to get here, so we would have had to travel 14 billion light-years. Far as I know matter does not travel at the speed of light, our galaxy never did and never will travel at the speed of light. Let me say it again for my own sanity, we cannot travel 14 billion light years from some point in 14 billion years unless we are traveling the speed of light!
The truth is if we came from there to here then the true age of the visible universe is on the order of 14 billion years TIMES the distance light travels in a year. (14 billion x 1LY) That is if we were always traveling at a constant rate which were are not nor have in the past. An accurate figure is impossible to know. Things were rapidly expanding at first then slowed down, now are accelerating again supposedly, maybe we never slowed down either. Maybe this is all bull and we never came from there, our galaxy formed "out here" rather than there. And by out here I mean the distance our galaxy would have traveled in 14 billion years which still puts it roughly 13.6 billion light years away from the supposed origin of the big bang. Which is to say that perhaps it could have traveled .4 billion light years in distance in 14 billion years, which is probably extrememly too fast and I suck at math but my point remains. Actually all you do is figure out how far our galaxy will travel in 1 billion years according to its current rate divided by 1 LY, and then mathmatically exclude the rate of acceleration to get a false constant rate of motion then times that by 14.

But then what did it form from? I had a theory once... Its starting to look pretty good now.

My theory as I recall was 2 fold. Imagine a universe as large as our current universe but with no visible matter. No visible matter but a completely isotropic grid of the building blocks of matter, in other words completely static, not truely static but certainly not mixed together, not interacting. The only matter we know of is in constant motion, its how matter works. Without motion, matter does not form. So lets call it a frozen in time universe. Time after all doesnt make sense unless things are moving around but time exsists non-the-less. Now, well introduce an explosion identical to the big bang anywhere we want but for understanding and comparison lets put is roughly 14 billion light years away from us. "The big bang" reinvented. But our big bang is not the same big bang because we dont require it be made of all the matter in the visible universe or even a small fraction of it, quite contrary. All we need it to do is send out a shockwave of heat and light energy, motion which stirs up and puts into motion matter that is present out here already, light energy acts as catalyst to time. See once you put static matter into motion it clumps up into bigger things. At the same token the shockwave gives rise to the thing we call expansion. Interestingly enough I reason this model gives an end result of the exact universe we observe, Identical to the standard big bang model. As you can see the matter that made up our galaxy does not have had to of come from the origin of the big bang, it just needs to have been put into motion. The energy of the big bang went into the matter that formed yes. What we have done though by using this model is solved the age and distance traveled dilema present in the old model. I like to think that the big bang was a ginourmous mass of matter that was completly disintegrated into heat and light energy by emc2 and that no "physical" matter was necessarily left over by which to fly out and form galaxies. So our big bang is not only a physical shockwave it was a heated shockwave of light energy and our static or frozen universe became in motion.


Continuing on with the book. I guess I find it rather surprising that up until the year Hubble discovered cephids at a distance of 2 million LY in another galaxy and further went on to recognize that the Universe is made up of millions of galaxies and not just our Milky Way, and its expanding not static. The only thing that history remembers is how Einsteins Constant was not needed and how the great Einstein was wrong. What I would like to hear about is comments from the scientific community about the discovery that there are these other galaxies, billions of them. They take one of or THE greatest discovery of the 20th century as if nothing and are only concerned about whether thier theories still hold up. I would not take this discovery so passive, I'm sure somebody had something to say. Up until then every man woman and child through human civilization has looked up at the stars and thought they were stars, little did they know they might have been looking at a galaxy. But then I think to myself? "Well what is there To say? Its a whole lot bigger than we thought!" Still though you get my point, going from thinking the Milky Way is the Universe to what Hubble discovered thereafter is quite a dramatic insite. What did he and others have to say about it?

Heres something I did not know but had supposed a long time back when I went to imagine or describe to the reader what empty space was made of. I reasoned even though space is a vacuum there were atoms, what else could there be?
Later I read a vacuum was void of atoms, which I took for granted but shruged it off as possible truth. In this book however I now read quote "A very good laboratory vacuum, say in the beamline of particle accelerator or the aluminizing tank at an observatory, might have 10^15 atoms in a cubic meter.

After having explained how everything can be traced back to a single point ie. reversing 14 billion years of expansion he goes on in Pg. 89 to say
"The Big Bang is not like an explosion with galaxies shot out as shrapnel. The Big Bang is not centered at a particular location - when we look in any direction, we see distant objects. The Big Bang is the moment when cosmic expansion began."
Now I dont know about you but what is this guy trying to say? As far as I know the Big Bang model certainly does have a starting location, every galaxy is "expanding" away from that point... I know because Ive seen the model time and time again on TV. If thats not what the Big Bang model is then he has some explaining to do. What it sounds like he is describing is just expansion of space that doesnt necessarily require any significant event like an explosion just a starting time when to do so. Like an inflationary model. But clearly he needs to explain where the matter came from because it certainly wasnt some big ball that spontanously expanded... gravity would prevent such a thing, heck all it would be is a massive blackhole. You litterally need a super massive explosion if you require matter to have been spread out from a central location. Bah! I hate when people purposely leave you to your own interpretation of what they just said so that you cant prove them wrong. Ha Ive done it myself many times, only though because I needed more time to explain it more.

Just think about it though, it what he says is true, we look out in any and every direction and we see out 14 billion LY's in every direction, nothing excludes us from our perspective of being near the center of the universe.
However our perspective is the same perspective from any perspective, our view is near identical to a galaxy 4 billion LY's away, that including expansion velocities of objects near and far, its an astonishing example of special relativity. So a galaxy 4 billion LY's aways has the same perspective as we do if they are using equipment identical to ours... the only difference would be that they would have to see galaxies in one direction 4 billion LY's farther away then we are able to see, and 4 billion LY's less in our direction. Truth of the matter is the universe may be far more vast than we know, we just cant see it. Which of course means we can forget trying to figure out the age of the universe cause well never know. Example being say we get better equipment and now are able to see galaxies 16 billion LY's out, all of a sudden the age of the universe just got older, all they would do is modify the Hubble constant accordingly. And everytime thereafter in the future we discover more distant galaxies, they modify the Hubble constant and a new age of the universe.. Rediculous.
HOWEVER all that aside, we are only making judgements about the universe from our only possible perspective, or the only possible perspective of another galaxy. IF we were able to step outside the universe and look at it from that perspective, then we would be able to see the universe as it truly is. In such an instance THAT is what you need to come up with a model of the Big Bang as being. So in other words, the Big Bang can never been seen with truth and clarity from our perspective if indeed the big bang is how it is imagined - a gigantic explosion from a particular location. Any single event must come from a single location to say otherwise is nonsense. Its just the fact of the matter that we cant tell where we are located relative to the big bang event because we dont know how fast we are moving relative to other galaxies and more importantly relative to an outside perspective. Its all he said she said between galaxies of who is moving away from who faster.
Had the view of the universe not been isotropic everything changes, because then you have a reference by which to gain an alternate perspective. The fact that the universe is percieved isotropic when you get to big enough scales literally tells us that there was no big bang as the author suggests. Space is just expanding. So we go from there was a big bang to no there was no big bang to maybe there was a big bang but we just cant say from our perspective, the only thing we know for Sure is that the space between galaxies is expanding. THE END.

Nov 21 2006

Ok this next part has been in my head just waiting for me to explain it and is independent of what I wrote above. Galaxies we see at the very edge of the universe, say 12 billion LY's out appear to be well formed. This does not mean that they formed within less than 1 - 2 billion years of the big bang. The light we see from them is only a fraction of the age of the universe. Our view of them is a representation of what they looked like only a fraction of the age of the universe. This is because when the universe was young galaxies were closer together and expansion was slower than the speed of light. In other words, the light we see from them has had ample time to catch up with us throughout the history of time. There is light in space from those galaxies traveling towards us right now and since the beggining, not one single photon of light from them is over a fraction of the age the universe. We are really seeing those galaxies as they appeared roughly, and its really hard to put a realistic number on this but, say 2 billion years ago... EVEN THOUGH they are at a distance of 12- 14 billion LY's away! People have not been accounting for the fact that things were close together and that the speed of light is well beyong the speed of expansion. If we rewind the universe to an age of say 2 billion years, everything was obviously closer together, imagining a galaxy at a distance of 2 billion LY's from us then, any new light emited from it would have to travel 2 billion LY's to get to us of course, (actually more because were both moving away from another) but the light that has already left it is less than 2 billion LY's and will arrive at us far earlier and we see it as it looked like more recent than the "advertised" distance from us. Now fastforward 14 billion years, let me put it this way, only if the speed of expansion is light speed will the light from those distant galaxies be 14 billion years old. If expansion is anything less then the speed of light, the light we see will be much much newer thus the age of the viewed galaxy will be much older. Dont be confused when I say older, its older because its a more recent representation of the galaxy - recent means older. It its precisely this fact that the light we see from it is more recent is the reason we see galaxies at the edge of the universe well formed.

Heres an important question, a galaxy 12 billion LY's away, if it appears to us thats where it was THEN, WHERE is it NOW? Well according to the current theory it would really be 24 LY's away - it helps to suppose light travel is instantaneous accross the galaxy. However as I said the light from that galaxy is more recent so that puts its true position far closer to us then that, just how far? TRY around 12 billion LY's away! Give or take a few billion LY's.
It really is right now where it looks like it is believe it or not. By the same token it really is as old as it looks. After all is said and done can you really imagine a galaxy forming after only 3- 800,000 years as people suggest? If all of this seems like unbeliveable crackpottery, believe me I know, I'm writting it, but I have my logic... whether or not I put it into words that makes sense to you is another question. And whether I'm only partly right on this and completely wrong on that, I'm not afraid of critisim, I welcome it. This has always been for me to understand things beyond current knowledge and theory or what has been explained to me. I'm always in search of zen, the undisputable truth of matter. Never accept what others say unless you can say it yourself. Again the KEY here is calculating how RECENT the light is NOT how old or young it is necessarily or how old or young the galaxy appears to be. Once you know how RECENT the light is THEN you can calculate how old the galaxy both appears to be and actually is in theory (and let me tell ya that is extremely difficult not knowing that varient rate of expansion over time.) Blah blah blah, "well they've always said the galaxy is 12 billion LY's away that means the light is 12 billion years old", WRONG! The "wrongness" of that doesnt even include what I wrote on the 16th... so I know its wrong ;)

Now lets talk about velocities and redshift. This goes hand in hand with the above. What makes light redshift? Something that is moving away from us or we are moving away from it or both will emit light that appears redshifted. Reverse that and light is blueshifted. The degree of "shift" helps us to calculate the velocity of things relative to us. Relative to us. If you recall what I stated above the recentness of light, youll figure out that the velocity of those distant galaxies is different. The age is different, the velocity is going to be different, simple. The degree of redshit however remains the same obviously, what you observe doesnt change! The mathmatical numbers that go with that degree of redshift DOES. In other words an object with x amount of redshift is calculated to be moving at I dunno "c" speed, well this "c" speed is going to be different now with out new understanding. This has relevance to the Hubble constant, expansion rate and overall age of the universe in turn. So lets figure it out.
We know that the velocity is going to be different with our new theory, so the question is, is both the apparent and true velocity going to be greater or smaller? And by true velocity I mean rather its velocity right now year 2006, as if we could know. - (when talking cosmic stuff we will always be dealing with the apparent).
Our options are heads or tails, heads the velocity is greater, the Hubble constant is greater and the age of the universe is younger. Or tails, the velocity is slower, the Hubble constant is less and the age of the universe is older. Greater or smaller? If we consider we are in the post big bang accelerating senerio universe then because of the fact that the light is more recent thus a more recent representation of what it is now that including age and velocity, then it's true velocity will actually be moving ##### when compared to the old theory and its apparent velocity will be ##### . I dont know that I have the answer right now...

Lets just put it this way the true velocity is greater both ways regardless, but how much greater difference? Its not a question of apparent velocity, both theories use the same apparent velocity. We need an reliable independent measurement of redshift and I believe the old theory uses exactly that. If the old theory uses it we can use it just the same. So what we are really after is being able to discern age differences between the theories not velocity differences no wonder why I couldnt answer it, I was asking the wrong question. Alright what we know is that the light and the apparent velocity as well as the age are more recent representations of the true galaxy than previously thought. Mixing all that in my head, In such a case that means that the universe is much older than previously thought.... because expansion and velocites would have been slower over time... yes yes, that adds up, the Hubble constant is much less than thought. YES! OK, now I get it. What I wrote on the 16th agrees with this nicely.

Let me just throw this out here I dont know where it goes. A galaxy at 8 billion light years away emits its image towards us. By the time is gets to us we will have moved away from it considerably due to expansion. SO it will appear to have come from an object much farther away! Say, again I hate numbers, 10 billion light years away. I mean this is a FACT. And at the same time that we recieve that image, its true position puts it at 10 billion light years PLUS its expansion away from us, so say 12 billion LY's away. IN ADDITION to this is an increase in redshift and apparent velocity of the image that has already been traveling in space. See redshift of light is not a property of the light its a peculiar condition of the motion of the objects sending and recieving it at the very moment those incidences occur. Jokingly, in other words its not as if the light sees ahead of time us moving faster and decides to redshift itself accordingly to compensate. of course you believe me cause I say so, whenever I say so you had better believe me ;) Its easy to test, take the equipment that recieves light and accelerate it away from the light, I garantee it will be more redshifted. To explain it further requires me to use the word "time" and concepts like "time dialation", I dont think we want to go there.


Dec 05 2006

The most distant galaxy from us is 15 billion LY's. 1 of two possibilities. Expansion has been going on for far longer than thought thus age of universe is far older, the actual age is unknown. Or going back to my model of the big bang where only heat and light was the big bang as far as the formation of galaxies and where galaxies actually formed out at great distances rather than expanding out there, lets do some math. Big bang is the begining of time, it will take 15 billion years for the heat and light from that to travel 15 LY's. After which time a galaxy forms roughly 15 billion LY's out. OK, truth of the matter is its not 15 billion LY's away from the big bang, its 15 billion LY's from us, and who knows where we are in turn. Lets simplify and hypothetically say that we are very near the center of the universe where the big bang originated. How long does it take for a galaxy to form? I have no idea, lets say for a mature one, 4 billion years. Ill plug this into it in a moment but the galaxies we see at 15 LY's are well formed. So 15 billion years plus the time it takes to form 4 billion PLUS the time the light from that galaxy takes to travel BACK towards us 15 billion LY's, so we sitting at 34 billion years as the lower limit best case senerio we can put on the age of the universe. However something tell me that we have no even begun to see the most distant galaxies, OR that they have formed more recently then 15 billion years in which case the light from them has not reached us YET. There could very well be, according to my model of galaxy formation, galaxies beyond 15 billion LY's out, eventually over time we would start to see them appear gradually and as they mature get brighter. At the same time that is going on expansion is still going on, so that needs to be taken into account and added to the age. Heres my ultimate point though, how can we say that we are near the center of the universe? More likely we are just as far away from the original big bang as the galaxy 15 billion LY's away from us is. Again our perspective of the universe prevents us from knowing what direction and at what distant the big bang originated. So its basically like saying take that 34 billion number and throw it out the window as the lower limit because it is highly probable that it is well beyond that number. Nevermind the oldest things we can see in the universe because it just doesnt mean squat.

I think the most useful thing we can do is figure out how long it take a galaxy to form. Just because the oldest star in a galaxy is 15 billion years old doesnt mean the galaxy is 15 billion years old. The Visible galaxy is probably YES, but the galaxy itself from a pure (borrowing the word) "dark matter" point of view is unknown. Dont misunderstand that last part, re-phrasing, the point at which the heat and light from the big bang arrive at that point in space by which a galaxy slowly starts to form FROM the "dark matter". The age of the dark matter itself prior to this is completly and utterly unknowable, its like asking how old the universe is prior to the big bang.
But when people use the word universe typically obviously they are refering to something that we can see and that emits light, a star is a starting point.

Our galaxy and our visible universe could have formed at anytime after the big bang because we have no direction and no distance to the big bang. If we Did, then and really only then could we pin point our location in the grand scheme of things and go from there to figure out some ages. Really the best we can do is start using the term "visible universe" instead of "the universe" and try and associate an age with THAT. In which case I reckon I still dont know where they get 15 billion years old from ;)

Dec 05 2006

Ive been reading "the birth of time" by "Gribbin" and Im about half way through following it word by word, and I just want to re-itterate that the ages of the oldest things we can figure and the oldest stars has nothing to do with the age of the universe or the rate of expansion because we cannot rely on a rewind model back to the big bang after all. The simple truth is that the only thing we know is roughly the upper limit on the possible age of a star from beginging to end.

Heres something ironic and a little too coincidental that I have yet to figure out why it is so. The farthest galaxy we see happens to be at a distance of 15 billion LY's. The oldest star we can figure is 15 billion years. I dont know what to say to that yet. One thing I am convinced about though even moreso after reading this book is that we do know very well how a star works and from the laws of physics can predict and estimate the lifetime of any given star. Supposedly because some stars atmospheres we see in globular clusters are mainly hydrogen and helium it is assumed that these were the very first stars formed from the big bang in the call it visible universe. So they say but Im not convinced on that idea. And like I say its one thing to know the age of the oldest stars and another to try and determine the age of the universe based on that. What they have done is gave an argument that it is the age of our galaxy, not the age of the universe, and remember we still have not answered our question of how long it takes for a galaxy and the first stars in it to form. Well maybe they have sort of figured that out, Im trying to remember the story, I dont know but Im thinking that whatever they had in mind, they greatly underestimate the
process.

Well what I really want to say is that whether the big bang was an explosion of particles of matter and galaxies formed from shrapnel of this or my model where galaxies formed from the heat and light energy arriving at a distance location and galaxies formed from the heating of isotropic matter or "space", Both ways will work, my model works both ways; the main thing is that particles of matter cant travel as fast as pure light. You see the difference when you go to figure the starting point or time of any galaxy formation.

Heres a question. According to my model, If galaxies can form from empty space, knowing that most of the universe would have been filled with light and heated then why isnt the universe completely filled with matter? Lets assume that it was all filled with matter, very fundemental and light matter at that. Its not a problem, galaxies formed the same way, matter clumps together. Expansion is the reason why the universe has empty space today. All the matter that could have been created from the primodial space pre and post big bang, has been created, at least as far as the visible universe in concerned. Both models are identical with regards to galaxy formation once you get past where the initial fundemental matter came from. Was it there or did it come flying out there is THE question. And there is a noteable difference between the use of the word fundemental matter as it applies to either model. I guess the only real thing for me to do is explain matter formation stimulated by pure light in detail, if its even possible, well anything is possible. The first step would be to precisely describe empty space pre big bang and then go from there to see if light passing over such space could form "matter", and I use the term matter very loosely.