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Faster Than Light: Part One
Dec
15, 2009
How big is the Universe? How old
is it?Today,
cosmology is dominated by the Big
Bang theory. The theory's major
premise is that there was once a
void containing no matter, no space,
and no time. For some reason not
explained by the scientists who
support the theory, an irruption of
energy from another realm of
existence replaced the void with
what eventually became the present
Universe.
The Big Bang theory was postulated
because the astronomer Edwin Hubble,
using the 100-inch telescope at Mt.
Wilson observatory, believed that he
had observed remote galaxies
receding from the Milky Way. The
most surprising piece of his
recorded data was not the recession
itself, but the high velocities
associated with his measurements.
According to his calculations, some
galaxies were traveling away from
his observatory at thousands of
kilometers per second.
Hubble arrived at his conclusion
because of what was later to be
called the "redshift" of light
frequencies in spectrograms from his
galactic images. Adapting the
Doppler effect (named for the
Austrian physicist Christian
Doppler, who came up with the idea
in 1842) to the spectra of various
galaxies, Hubble thought that the
change in location of particular
elemental signatures called
Fraunhofer lines (for the German
physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer)
indicated that the lightwaves had
been shifted toward the red end of
the spectrum by an apparent
recessional velocity.
Fraunhofer lines are supposed to
occur at specific frequencies
identified in the spectrum by the
kind of element that is absorbing
the light. If they are in a
different location, then they have
been Doppler-shifted because of the
element's acceleration. This forms
the backbone of galactic-scale
distance calculations and the
supposed speed of recession that the
galaxies display. Using this system
of "redshift" some galaxies are
measured to be moving away from
Earth at an unbelievable 90 percent
of light-speed.
All that we see and experience is
supposed to have been born in the
Big Bang explosion, so the original
inertia imparted to the Universe
came from that preternatural event.
Since the distances and the
recessional velocities of objects
are correlated with a time-scale,
something like a galaxy or a
quasi-stellar object (QSO) that is
10 billion light-years away is also
thought to be as it was 10 billion
years ago. Astronomers are seeing
ancient light that has been
traveling through space for 10
billion years before finally
impinging on their detectors.
The current estimate for the age of
the Universe is 13.7 billion years,
based on data from powerful
telescopes that are supposed to be
capable of detecting galaxies that
approach that distance from Earth.
As mentioned, distance and time are
thought to be related to each other
because of redshift, so as far as we
can see into the Universe provides
information that determines how old
we perceive it to be. In other
words, the diameter of the
observable Universe should be
approximately 27.4 billion
light-years.
There is a conundrum associated with
that figure, however. According to a
current
press release, the Universe is
thought to be 156 billion
light-years in diameter and not 27.4
billion! How can this be? The
answer, according to theoretical
physicists, is inflation.
Astrophysicists of the recent past
were dismayed when their
observations seemed to indicate
greater complexity in the early
Universe than should exist. As the
principle of inflation states,
though, it is not merely the
acceleration from the Big Bang that
is affecting the spectra of remote
galaxies and QSOs, but that the
space in which they are embedded is
expanding.
If it requires X amount of time for
a galaxy to form and the Universe is
Y years old, then a galaxy should
not exist at time-distances less
than Y minus X. When such formations
were seen, as far as the relevant
theories are concerned, some other
explanation had to be added to the
Big Bang hypothesis to account for
them.
So, objects that appear to be
redshifted to extreme distances may
not be as old as their spectra
suggest: they are moving along with
the expansion of space. Indeed, as
the inflationary theory proposes,
they are not as old as they appear
to be, they are simply "farther
away." This dichotomy seems to
demand that the early Universe was
expanding faster than the speed of
light, since its "size" is more than
11 times greater than its age.
Edwin Hubble's observations of
galactic distances versus speed of
recession led to another quandary:
galaxies that are far enough away
would move so fast that their
velocities would exceed the speed of
light. This is known as the
universal horizon, or the Hubble
radius. It is the point beyond which
our instruments can never see,
because the light from over that
horizon will never catch up to the
greater than light speed expansion
of space.
The theory of Special Relativity
(SR) does not allow any object to
reach the speed of light, let alone
exceed it, so how do space
scientists deal with the dilemma?
They do so by ignoring the
restrictions of SR and resorting
instead to the General Theory of
relativity where such restrictions
do not exist. Since no information
can be transmitted from beyond the
Hubble radius, no violation of
relativity occurs.
How did these twists and turns in
ideas, as well as the warping of
time and space come about? They are
the direct result of the assumption
that redshift correlates with
distance. Modern cosmological
systems are all built, without
exception, on that assumption. What
if Hubble's original premise was
flawed? What if redshift is really a
red herring? Where then shall we
turn for an explanation of what we
observe? We turn to the work of
Halton Arp, an astronomer whose
reputation should be at least the
equal of Edwin Hubble's.
Stephen Smith
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