What if the universe isn't actually expanding?

>>8396660
Was having similar thoughts:
What if the big bang isn't real?
Could it be possible that the universe just seems to become smaller/hotter when you look far back in time?
Maybe the universe has been going on like this for ever, but we stuck with that strange theory.
Tbqh i find the big bang hard to believe.

>>8396660
House MD had a whole episode on Occam's Razor.

>>8396895
You means Occam's Razor of Limited Imagination

>>8396896
House MD best show ever.

>>8396891
the farther back in time you look the less likely you are to make an accurate hypothesis, I'd venture to guess the majority of accepted theories today will be jokes a century from now

>>8397008
>I'd venture to guess
Lrn2theory fgt pls

>>8396891
The Big Bang had been proposed and then the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation pretty much proved it.

>>8396895
I cant stand occams razor.
The thought of something being the simplest solution is totally subjective.
Also, the one thing that is actually most important is to find a solution which fits into the system one has built before.
Fuck occam and shove that razor up your arse.

>>8397082
I don't see how that is so.
But... i am no physician yet, so i wouldn't know.
Anyway, reasoning tells me there could be another reason for the microwave background radiation.

To be honest i believe most real scientist see the big bang theory as what it is, a fascinating theory.
I just don't get why everyone focusses so much on it when there are so many other fascinating possibilities...

>>8397103
>Anyway, reasoning tells me there could be another reason for the microwave background radiation.

literally no other reason other than them being red shifted via expansion of the universe

>>8396891
>What if the big bang isn't real?
Then you have find an alternative explanation for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background
and
http://www.geocentrismdebunked.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Multipole-Moment-2.jpg

>>8397097
>occams razor

But Wait, There's More!

What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
- Hitchens' Razor

>>8397106
I believe in the big bounce.

File: BAO.png (36KB, 574x574px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 574x574px

>Is there any other evidence for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe other than the exponential relationship between redshift and distance?

You need to be more specific about what you're arguing, the acceleration of the expansion of the universe of the expansion. Yes there is strong evidence for the expansion of the universe beyond the Hubble diagram. One of the most powerful pieces is the cosmic microwave background, it's powerful because while standard cosmology can explain it's spectrum and the patterns in it's anisotropies no tried light model has been shown to match the data even more than a decade after WMAP1. The best piece of evidence in my opinion is not the CMB but Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, the same sound waves that caused fluctuations and correlations on the CMB were frozen into the clustering of galaxies. It shows itself in the modern universe as a characteristic bump in the clustering of galaxies. This was predicted by the standard expanding universe model and hasn't even been explained by any tried light model, nobody is really working on them. Sadly because none of them explain the existence of BAO they can't use the radius of the BAO feature as a cosmological test which is done in standard cosmology. I'm pretty sure it would kill any model left.

The evidence overwhelmingly favours expansion.

>Is it possible that space is simply consistently attenuating photons over time?

That’s called tried light, it was popular back in Hubble's time. The problem is even 100 years later there is no known or proposed scattering mechanism which could explain how redshift a) independent of wavelength or b) doesn't cause images to blur which is not observed.

Tired light is dead, at least for now.

>>8397103
>To be honest i believe most real scientist see the big bang theory as what it is, a fascinating theory.
As a cosmology post grad student I'm not aware of any serious work on tired light models. It's dead.

>>8396660
is light losing energy as it travels through space a viable explanation?

>>8397186
nice explanation. very interesting.

>>8396895

i think "energy dissipating over time" is a much simpler explaination than "the fabric of space and time is stretching itself in four dimensions"

>>8397186

OP here, Just letting you know that you are quoting two separate people.

Thanks for your insight, and especially the terminology!

I started reading up on tired light as you mentioned it, and am currently trying to figure out why it's incompatible with the big bang.

You're very probably right, I just tried to philosophize a different solution to the problem because I don't like the implications a potential exploitation of that effect has. (alcubierre and all that)

I'm gonna read up on BAOs so I can understand what they actually are/imply.

>>8397150
It's an abandoned and dead idea

https://youtu.be/IcxptIJS7kQ?t=38m10s

Just one more theory that will be in the garbage.

>>8397272
Tried light seeks to explain redshift without expansion, no expansion means no Big Bang. You could technically have both but without good reason to suggest that or a mechanism for tired light it's not a sensible suggestion.

>>8397313

why would no expansion mean no big bang?

>>8397334
If there's no expansion then there was never any expansion. The Big Bang was the universe expanding.

I z the compression factor?

>>8397440

no?

an explosion can happen without the substrate space stretching, or is that wrong?

if the big bang accelerated matter to near light speed we could even have a CMB.

This would however mean that the CMB will have to evolve and that it should eventually be possible to see the entire universe and ascertain its center.

>>8397272
It's not incompatible per se, but evidence for the big bang comes from our observations of the expanding universe. If it isn't expanding, there's no need for a big bang. Problem is, as explained before, thered have to be something else that explains the redshift we observe as we haven't observed light spontaneously losing energy. If it was a property of light itself, then all of modern physics would be wrong (light not quantized). This suggests there's something interacting with the light.

The alcubierre drive doesn't have anything to do with the metric expansion of space, it's a solution to general relativity in which negative mass exists (which hasn't been observed or predicted)

Afaik, there's no way to manipulate the expansion of spacetime.

>>8397762
An explosion wouldn't cause a CMB visible in every direction and highly isotopic.

>>8397762
The big bang wasn't an explosion.
There were no particles, it was all energy.

>>8397146
Pseudo-philosophy, very much like pseudo-science and just as useful.