Piltdown man

Thank you Martin. I consider myself admonished. I will now try to find a new memory and someold books.

Forgive me. You are quite right, love conquers all. But when, after registering, and labouriously single finger typing on a keyboard that seems to have mobile letters, I submit reply and it tells me that I cannot do that, please refresh page, which I don't know how to do, when I return all is lost, I confess to a mild sense of frustration. This also happened several times on your sister site. To answer Martin, I have no idea where I read that, but it was some years back, (20 plus), when arguments were still raging re the age of the universe. This question was not meant to be argumentative, but a genuine "do they still exist, or did they never?"

Re posts 10 and 11. Quite so. So why the assertion that the universe is expanding when the red-shift displayed could equally well state collapse. "Acceleration" is another example of less than accurate reporting. If the universe is collapsing, then in some directions it would indeed be acceleration. If not, then it is an increase in the rate at which galaxies are moving apart, and this is how it should have been reported.

Why, when I type a reply, does this wretched site cut me off?

It is good that other ideas can be discussed, but like all others, you are making it more complex than it needs to be. There was no crunch, and there will be no crunch. Ours is a single use, one-off, throwaway universe. It is a universe of two parts, the small and the large. There is only one mystery; and that is "why are there any forces?" And all of these are contained within the atom. The large scale universe is simply an overlarge handful of dust whose bid for freedom has been thwarted, and controlled by, gravity. The large scale movements are not difficult to figure out. Indeed, explaining how our solar system works is far more complicated!

The question is as stated. Why was the fact that galaxies could be seen to be exhibiting red-shift in degrees that increased with distance, reported as evidence that the univere is expanding, when it could not possibly have been known which were moving away from us, and from which were we moving away?

Are you, Martin, saying that you are unaware what the event was that led to the circumstance that resulted in the "big bang?"

Are you saying that there are no brown dwarfs, or that there are very few. Is it the case that what were thought to be brown dwarfs, were also calculated to be at least 18 billion years old, and hence required a fair degree of "jiggery-pokery" in order to accomodate the lower age that the universe is thought to be?

It matters not that GR predicted a dynamic universe, even though Einstein didn't realise the full implication of his equations. The point is that there was no possible way that it could have been known which galaxies we were moving away from, and which were moving away from us. Consider the "raisin bread" analogy. All raisins are moving apart, but there is an overall movement in one direction, away from the baking tray. The analogy is in fact, only half a universe, the other half is beneath the baking tray. There are two points away from which all could be moving. The first is the centre, in the event of an all expanding universe. The second is the point of maximum expansion from which all could be retreating. A moments thought and it will be seen that red-shift will be exhibited in both scenarios.

The discovery that galaxies, or island universes, were exhibiting red-shift in degrees that increased with distance, showed that the universe was/is not static. But it could show that the universe is either expanding, or collapsing, or, more likely, a mixture of both. Why then, and by whom, was it decided to go with the expanding option. Could it have been more acceptable to have "Gods" work grow larger, and perhaps more magnificent, than for it to be seen as possibly collapsing?