The expansion of the universe could be a mirage, a potentially controversial new study suggests.
This rethinking of the cosmos also suggests solutions for the puzzles of dark energy and dark matter, which scientists believe account for around 95% of the total energy and matter in the universe but remain shrouded in mystery.
The novel new approach is detailed in a paper published June 2 in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, by University of Geneva professor of theoretical physics Lucas Lombriser.
I’m not a physicist, but this does look like an interesting idea. And yes, I suspect a little contraversial :)
In Lombriser’s mathematical interpretation, the universe isn’t expanding but is flat and static, as Einstein once believed. The effects we observe that point to expansion are instead explained by the evolution of the masses of particles — such as protons and electrons — over time.
I find it really interesting too. I struggled to understand it though. Is he saying that stuff that is further away is made of elements with a higher (or lower) atomic number?
It’s also worth noting:
In this picture, these particles arise from a field that permeates space-time. The cosmological constant is set by the field’s mass and because this field fluctuates, the masses of the particles it gives birth to also fluctuate. The cosmological constant still varies with time, but in this model that variation is due to changing particle mass over time, not the expansion of the universe.
So… Is there a version “for dummies”?
… asking for a friend.
Everywhere we look at distant galaxies, they look like they’re moving away from us. We think this because the wavelength of the light they’ve emitted looks stretched (ie redshifted), similar to how the pitch of sound changes when an ambulance is approaching and passing you.
The fact that this is happening in all directions leads us to believe that space itself is stretching in all directions, because we don’t believe that we’re in a special part of the universe, like in the center of some event that sent all galaxies flying away from us.
If I understand this article correctly, it proposes that the redshifting could have another explanation. Looking at a distant galaxy is like “looking back in time” because the light takes time to cross the vast emptiness of space to reach us. So what if the redshifting is because the particles back when the light was emitted had different properties than they have now? The model described in the paper explains exactly how those properties could be changing in order to produce the effects that we observe.
I so dearly hope this is accurate. I’ve been against “dark energy”, “dark matter”, and “perpetually accelerating expansion” for years now. This has the potential to be a Michaelson-Morley moment, where the Ether was disproven by creating a universe that doesn’t require it.
They use gravitational waves and parallax as other sources of confirmation for expansion and I don’t see those mentioned or accounted for but I’m just a guy who reads science books for layman, what do I know…
I also don’t see, how this new model explains, that every galaxy but one moves away from us.
However, García urged caution in assessing the paper’s findings, saying it contains elements in its theoretical model that likely can’t be tested observationally, at least in the near future.
I don’t think so. It’s an interesting hypothesis that has been slung on the table to account for weird discrepancies between current models and observed reality. It suggests a paradigm shift. Suggesting ‘we’re thinking about this is in entirely the wrong way’ is an important part of the scientific process.
Yeah, but the hallmark of a useful scientific theory is that it makes testable predictions.
