Ozman Posted January 24, 2003 Posted January 24, 2003 "Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue."--Winston Churchill. Dr. Hubble reasoned that the "red shift" observed in the spectra of stars, that was more pronounced the greater the distance to that star, meant that the universe was expanding. Okay, I am convinced that if the universe were expanding at the rate calculated, we on Earth would observe that shift in frequency. In other words, I contend that we (Dr. Hubble) observed a phenomenon and built a theory that fits. I am not convinced that that is the only plausible explanation of the shift Any other theories? I would like to build this thread around that. I have a philosophical difference with putting all the eggs of the red-shift phenomenon into the Big Bang Basket.
fafalone Posted January 24, 2003 Posted January 24, 2003 I believe that it's possible some effects of gravitational red and blue shift might be related to limitation in the ability of our lenses; such as limitations on focus, even with non-optic basic observations like x-rays.
Ozman Posted January 24, 2003 Author Posted January 24, 2003 Okay, that's one. And it's worth some treatment. One recent astronmical obsservation (and paper) studied the light from a distant star at the instant it was opaqued by Jupiter. The purpose was to try to "observe and measure" the speed of gravity. The conclusion was that gravity and light have identical speeds. This is in great contrast to the conclusion at the end of a paper by a scientist at the Naval Observatory. He concluded that the speed of gravity was AT LEAST twenty times greater than the speed of light. His treatment of the subject made a lot of sense to this layman. Recommended reading. The recent observation used terran telescopes to look at a piece of sky so small that the best analogy I can come up with is this: They were trying to see the expression on the face of the angel that was dancing on the head of a pin twenty three miles away. I guess I'm saying that I'm not convinced that gravity and light are in lock-step. So, yes, there may be a plausible explanation in the interactions of gravity and light. Does the gravity of the emitting body affect the light frequency, the spectral emissions, of the same body? The intuitive answer is yes. I can't do the math to demonstrate it what that effect might be at the two vastly different interpretations of the speed of gravity, but that is the question that must be resolved before you could build a good gravity-light interaction explanation of the red shift.
JaKiri Posted January 24, 2003 Posted January 24, 2003 The speed of gravity paper is not getting a lot of respect from the scientific community. And it's not like we're 'putting all our eggs in the Big Bang Basket'; as soon as something else comes along that fits with current theory and can explain the red shift and make another verifiable prediction, then it will be evidence for that instead.
Ozman Posted January 24, 2003 Author Posted January 24, 2003 You mean the paper out of the Naval Research Labs or the more recent one?
Ozman Posted January 24, 2003 Author Posted January 24, 2003 Thanks, Jikiri (sorry had it wrong, it's not Meson). And I don't want to shortchange your comment about not putting all the eggs in the Big Bang Basket. I agree that when there is a well developed, alternative theory that can be used to make verifiable predictions and that meets all the other criteria to be widely accepted by the scientific community, Hubble's conclusion may have its own version of the flat Earth society. But that is the very purpose of this thread, to explore the other theories and to consider how they might be demonstrated, or what key pieces of information would either uphold or dispell that theory. Thanks for posting.
JaKiri Posted January 24, 2003 Posted January 24, 2003 Lets see what M-theory gets us.... Until I graduate ofc.
blike Posted January 24, 2003 Posted January 24, 2003 Do you have a link to the paper from the Naval Research Labs?
Ozman Posted January 24, 2003 Author Posted January 24, 2003 I don't have that link handy here, at home. I may have saved it at work.
Ozman Posted January 25, 2003 Author Posted January 25, 2003 Okay, my bad. My alzheimer's kicked in and it was the treatment (contraversial treatment, I have to add) by vanFlandern at UM/ARMY Research Lab, not at NRL. My apologies to all. http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html There is a dissenting treatment at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2002-08/msg0043393.html It's by Chris Hillman.
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