Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Universe not Expanding at Accelerated Rate

(originally posted Oct 5th, was edited Oct. 13th to remove some ignorance)

So I'm reading an article on LiveScience.com, where it tells how the Nobel prize winning scientists determined that the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. They used Type 1a supernova, which all have the same light signiature, a rising and falling set of frequencies, or colors. Similar to identifying a short song, like a wolf call, where guys use a whistle to indicate a woman is hot. This whistle starts with a note that rises sharply, ends abruptly, is followed by a pause, then is followed by an extended, slowly falling note.

And LiveScience.com said that all the type 1a supernova have the same pattern, and same frequencies, so measuring their red shift (Doppler shift) will tell you the distance from the Earth to the supernova. The nobel winners determined that all the closer supernova have a disproortionately large red shift, so they are moving away from us faster than they should be. And since light from closer supernova has been traveling for a much shorter time, then they are more recent supernova. Since more recent supernova are traveling faster than they should be, then they are speeding up.



And conversely, supernova that are further away are traveling about the right speed. Since their light left their supernova billions of years earlier, and since they are traveling at the right speed, then the Universe was expanding more slowly billions of years ago.

Now for my concerns.

If the red shift determines the distance to the Earth, then how do you know that "closer supernova have a disproportionately large red shift"? That's like saying "closer supernova are further away".

You would either:

1) Need a second metric to determine the distance to the Earth.

or

2) Assume that all supernova (and their galaxies) are proportionately distributed throughout the galaxy.

Turns out that there are other metrics to determine distance to other galaxies, one of them is using the apparent brightness of cepheid variables, which all emit the same energy. So, that kills my entire theory. However, let's continue as if the nobel winning scientists did not use another metric. (I'm sure they did, but maybe I'm on to something here.)

Option 2 leaves us viewing a Universe where all the closer galaxies are further away than they should be. And distant galaxies are about right.



Guess what this appears like? This is like looking at the Universe in a car's side-view mirror with a label on it saying "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear". The car's mirror has a shape that makes things look that way. Perhaps the Mily Way is shaped the same, and this shape is acting as a lens, possibly a gravitational lens, as Einstein showed that gravity bends light, or possibly something else entirely, since the cosmos has a way of surprising us.

The proof of such a claim is to examine the supernova from many distant galaxies whose light is being bent by a gravitational lens: a large galaxy or a galactic cluster. If this light indicates that the galaxies beyond the lens seem to have a disproportionate distribution, then perhaps the Universe is not expanding at an accelerated rate.

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