An elegant formula describing the Universe

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote> The radius of the visible universe isn't constant - it grows every time we build a new telescope. Shouldn't your equation have a factor for telescope power?
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When I say "visible universe" I am not talking about technical limit of how powerful a telescope you have, I am talking about physical limit of how far you can see. Telescopes are no more than a sensitive device that collects photons coming from the deep of the universe and extract information from those photons.

If there is NOT a single photon arriving at the earth from more than 14.2 billion light years away, then there is nothing a telescope, however powerful, can do about it, the information is simply not there to be collected. And that is what I mean visible universe. And indeed that is the case we observe today. The further a photon came from, the more energy it would have lost by the time it reaches us. Photons from 14.2 billion light years away would have been red shifted to zero frequency and hence no longer carries any information.

The big bangers think that the red shift is due to an expanding universe. But I think there is something fundamental, both in philosophy and in physics, that says that a photon simply can NOT travel an arbitrarily infinite distance without losing energy.

Anthony MAi,

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote><b>But I think there is something fundamental, both in philosophy and in physics, that says that a photon simply can NOT travel an arbitrarily infinite distance without losing energy.</b><hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>


The is commonaly referred to as "The Tired LIght Theory", I too believe it has substantial merit.





Knowing to believe only half of what you hear is a sign of intelligence. Knowing which half to believe can make you a genius.

I don't like the tired light theory at all but I do agree the cause of cosmic redshift is something other than expansion velocity. The whole of BB modeling is faith based on thr belief the cosmic redshift is what they say it is so you are bucking the faithful here.

Hi all,

I too think a lot about 'tired light', also I think about 'gravitation lensing' affecting the measurement. But in my heart I feel the redshift is a fairly true measurement, but only if the Universe is doing the opposite of expansion. And because of distance and time, we are moving faster now, then the objects we are measuring were then.

Could someone please tell me if this holds any merit. Just think of all the laws of the Big Bang, but instead visualize if the opposite is actually happening and we are actually moving to a zero point in the centre of the universe.

Would the 'red shift' measure, be the same?

Thanks, PoPpAScience

It's a very natural thought that photons will lose energy after traveling extremely long distances. But there can be many possible explainations of how that can happen. "Tired light" is just one of them.

My explanation is that it is simply a gravitational effect.

Some believe "action at a distance", i.e., gravitational force propagates at infinite speed, or at least much faster than light speed. I don't think so, the natural speed limit of information propagation is light speed and no one disputes that. Should gravitational force propagate faster than light speed, then it can be used to propagate information at faster than light speed but that breaks the causuality. Neither should gravitational force propagate slower than light speed because then you would obtain information regarding the whereabout of an object, before you feel its gravity, which is also a contradiction.

So gravity force propagates at light speed.

Now let's look at a photon being generated and propagates towards a certain direction. Obviously, not the whole universe will know about the birth of that photon right away. The sphere of "news broadcast" about the photon will start to spread from the original point where the photon is created, and quickly expands outwards in light speed.

Clearly, in the direction where the photon is going, no body knows about the photon prior to its arrival. But behind the photon, every thing within a huge sphere which centers at the birth place of the photon would all know about the photon already.

So the net result is the photon experiences NO forward gravity force, but it experiences a backward gravity force from all matters enclosed in that big sphere right behind the photon. The net effect of such a gravity force is that the photon will lose its energy.

If you do a little calculation, based on the assumption that at the radius of the visible universe, the photon will have lost all of its energy to gravitational potential, then you get the same black hole formula which says that:
R = 2*G*M/C^2

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
[AM]: So gravity force propagates at light speed.
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Does it? It turns out that considerable delay in the gravitational force propagation would cause planet orbits to be unstable. Tom van Flandern has comprehensive expositions about this topic here on Meta Research.