jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) (05/02/84)
All this talk about the "big bang" has reminded me of a question I've
wondered about. Current astronomical theory has the entire universe
receding from the earth. Measurements show that the further an
object is away the faster it is receding. All this is based on the
red shift in the light reaching us from those objects.
Basing the theory of the creation of the universe on one
uncorroborated measurement seems risky. I would ask two questions?
1 - Is there any thing besides red shift to indicate that
the universe is receding from us?
2 - Have any alternate theories been proposed to account
for the red shift?
I know at one time it was wondered if photons get "tired" and change
frequency (since they can't slow down). As I understand it this
theory is no longer popular. How about frequency shift from climbing
out of a gravity field?
Jerry Aguirre
{hplabs|fortune|ios|tolerant|allegra|tymix}!oliveb!jerrygwyn@brl-vgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (05/04/84)
1 - No, there is nothing other than the Hubble effect to indicate that distant objects are receding from us at a speed proportional to their distance from us, and then only if the assumption is made that the observed red shift is a Doppler effect. 2 - Yes, alternative explanations of the Hubble effect have been proposed. Please note that the Hubble effect is predicted for the DeSitter cosmological model, which is the natural solution for the Einstein-Schr"odinger field equations. The nice thing about this cosmology is that it describes a static universe (no expansion in any real sense) obeying the "perfect cosmological principle" (i.e. the universe looks the same (on a large scale) everywhere AND everywhen). Down with the Big Bang! Down with blindly applying General Relativity in domains where we know the field equations are wrong! Comes the revolution!