Friday, June 29, 2012

Thinking outside the box

When most of us were children, or even not yet born, a man named Hubble found that distant stars had what is called red shift in the light that we on earth received from them. The red shift is caused by something called the doppler effect: The motion of bodies moving away from us stretches the light waves that reach us, just as a passing train's whistle seems to change pitch as it rushes away from us. This great discovery of Hubble's led to the whole notion of an expanding universe and then to the origins of the universe at the Big Bang.
But what if Hubble was wrong? Of course this very idea is like ranting against apple pie and motherhood: no one in the scientific community is likely to support the idea that there is another way of thinking about red shift.
Mainly through meditation, we Frosts have received an alternate possibility. It is what we call tired light.
Today there is consensus that a large part of the energy in the multiverse is made up of dark matter. We have no idea what dark matter is; but we do know that it acts like a fog, obscuring distant stars. So now let's imagine that the light coming toward us across the vast distances in the galaxy travels through dark matter--as it does--and that the dark matter absorbs some of the energy from the light. So far so good? Just as in the case of the doppler effect, absorbing energy from the light causes a red shift. The further the light from a distant star has to travel, the more dark matter it has to push through. Thus distant stars would appear to be moving away from us faster than stars closer to us would appear to be doing.
This simple explanation of the red shift phenomenon obviates the necessity for the much-admired Big Bang theory. It is simple; it is elementary. Having lived in foggye olde England, I (Gavin) know that a car's headlights shift into the more-yellow range when viewed through fog. Why then wouldn't light shift more into the red range when some of its energy is absorbed by the elusive dark matter?

Tired light? Remember that phrase. You heard it first from (shudder) those people, the Frosts.

2 comments:

Vinko said...

This is actually a great theory, in my opinion. I am not a scientist of any type but I do have my interests in natural world. Great to see some freethinkers out there!

Vinko said...

This is actually a great theory, in my opinion. I am not a scientist of any type but I do have my interests in natural world. Great to see some freethinkers out there!