So this topic may be misleading... It is not as much whether the galaxies are getting further away from us at a faster rate.. it is more the question of why.. I have been watching Stephen Hawking's new documentary on the Discovery Channel and found some interesting things.
First was the idea of a train moving at 99.9 percent the speed of light around the earth. If this were possible and was moving in the orbit of the earth, then if we could look inside the train the people would all be moving in extreme slow motion... to them we would be moving in extremely fast motion. For every 100 years that passed for those of us outside the train only one week would pass for those inside...
Then the theory was later mentioned about the fact that dark matter is "pushing" the galaxies apart and spreading out the universe... I will up front not deny that the universe is expanding... It always has been....
However, is it really expanding at increasing speed? I ask this for a few reasons... we know that Speed and Mass even on our own planet or just outside our planet in our orbit can effect our perception of time, and objects can fractionally move into the future... not enough to ever notice..
So.. take into account the unknown properties of dark matter... then take into account that each galaxy not only has... well lets do this for earth... the mass of the earth, the mass of everything near the earth with gravitational effect... other planets, stars, and ultimately, the black hole of our galaxy.. so outside of that there is the mysterious dark matter, and then each other galaxy has its own unique properties...
So.. What if the galaxies have always been moving at the same speed apart from each other as they have always been as far as universal time is concerned... not "earth" time mind you, but universal... As far as earth time is concerned, what if we are actually watching the galaxies travel into the future? In that case then yes, they would be moving away from us faster than before... but not because of a Dark Matter pushing them physically, but because we can't measure it based on our Earth perception of space and time...
Just like when 100 years pass on earth in the same time as a train traveling 99.9 percent the speed of light travels in 7 days... what if for example every 7 days of earth time accounts for 100 years of movement of another galaxy...
I do not have the scientific or mathematical background to even come close to pondering this.. However, I assume the show on discovery channel I was just watching was not only created for entertainment purposes, but to get ideas and off the wall theories floating around so they can be disproven, or so that maybe, just maybe someone might find enough interest in it to look into it with their own expertise...
I will be very interested to know what others opinions are on this matter.
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So I was just given a great example to compare with the universe expansion. The following is the example, followed by my theory:
EXAMPLE:
think of a rubber sheet
it's suspended above the ground
and you put random balls on it
they make little dimples
depending on how big they are
on that sheet there are little tiny ants
the ants run at.. say.. 0.1 mph
they run AWAY from one another
so their relative speed from one another is double, right?
0.1 left, 0.1 to the right ==> they move away from one another at 0.2 mph
constant.
now we take this sheet of rubber and stretch it
obviously, we stretch it FASTER then the ants move
so the distance will grow
but the ants aren't moving faster, they still move, each, at 0.1mph
but it seems to them, when they look back, that their friend moves at INSANE speed
because *space* stretched.
THEORY:
This hasn't taken into consideration the whole idea of distortion of time based on mass of the earth, etc...
as far as the rubber and dimples and ants.. my theory is that they are still moving at 0.1 away from each other but while our earth's mass and mass of our galaxy is distorting our perception of time..these other galaxies are moving say 3 times that before we think it should have moved the 0.1, causing us to perceive it as moving faster....
see, we think it moves say 0.8 for example... and it actually has... but whereas we think it moved it in the time it should have moved 0.2, its just that time has been distorted and our perception is off...
maybe this is making more sense... any ideas?
