collapsing Universe?

[RussT]

According to the current paradigm the universe is either expanding or contracting (It is dynamic) in a Hubble flow and therefore a 13.7 billion LY-380,000 yr's for the CMBR radius in our sphere. Also the universe is finite but unbounded.
When we look at our section of the universe (some 13.7 billion LY's) we see everything expanding away from us, and supposedly this started from Cosmic BB naked singularity, that also supposedly happened everywhere at once (which is unfalsifiable by itself, in other words without falsifying the whole theory).
When you look at the CMBR, in our 13.7 LY radius, the universe is either expanding or contracting with earth or the Milky Way, whichever you prefer at the center. SO, if the universe were contracting, the whole universe would be contracting to us.
Now, since the universe expanded everywhere at once from a point, when you go to a place 50/100/150 billion light years away, they would see the same CMBR there as we do here, right?

SO, if the universe is contracting, where is the gravity causing the universe to contract to?

In other words, the galaxy 100 billion light years away sees their CMBR and according to them the whole universe is contracting on them, right?

It certainly doesn't seem that this is a frame dependent scenario and that the universe is either contracting there or it should be contracting here. Which is it???

[triclon]

Think of the expansion of the unliverse like dots on an inflating balloon. No matter which dot you are looking from, it would seem the rest of the dots are all moving away from you. It would be the same for a collapsing universe, where every galaxy would seem to be getting closer to you, like how every dot on a deflating balloon gets nearer to every other dot as the balloon collapses. There would be no defined "place" that every galaxy would be moving towards, just that every galaxy would be moving closer to every other galaxy, no matter which galaxy you are observing from.

[Kwalish Kid]

Now, since the universe expanded everywhere at once from a point, when you go to a place 50/100/150 billion light years away, they would see the same CMBR there as we do here, right?

Actually, no. The specific radiation that reached that point would be different from the one that is reaching us. The radiation that reaches us moment to moment is different, too. The background radiation for any area is the radiation that happened to leave a location X years ago, where X years ago is the time when the background radiation was released (that being the first time that the density of the universe fell low enough to allow photons to get very far). Only photons from X light years away (roughly) can become the background radiation, because of the speed of light.

SO, if the universe is contracting, where is the gravity causing the universe to contract to?

Gravity works from mass to mass. So gravity is working to contract all mass to all other mass. Essentially, we represent this as a contraction of space between mass.

In other words, the galaxy 100 billion light years away sees their CMBR and according to them the whole universe is contracting on them, right?

That's pretty much how it looks from any location.

[RussT]

Think of the expansion of the unliverse like dots on an inflating balloon. No matter which dot you are looking from, it would seem the rest of the dots are all moving away from you. It would be the same for a collapsing universe, where every galaxy would seem to be getting closer to you, like how every dot on a deflating balloon gets nearer to every other dot as the balloon collapses. There would be no defined "place" that every galaxy would be moving towards, just that every galaxy would be moving closer to every other galaxy, no matter which galaxy you are observing from.

But we see the expansion in the huge Voids between the galaxy clusters so how can the contraction come back to a place that has no galaxies/Baryonic Gravity?

When we get out to the 13.7 billion-380,000 light year mark, we now ignore the voids and just say that the FLWR universe is either expanding or contracting.

And every 13.7 billion year sphere is contracting on you no matter where you are in the universe.

And of course gravity cannot cause contraction 'everywhere at once', can it?

[Kwalish Kid]

But we see the expansion in the huge Voids between the galaxy clusters so how can the contraction come back to a place that has no galaxies/Baryonic Gravity?

Simple, they will meet at that point. If you think of it in Newtonian terms, the centre of gravity for two objects is not the centre of one of the objects, it is their centre of mass, so it is somewhere on a line between their centres. (Roughly.)

When we get out to the 13.7 billion-380,000 light year mark, we now ignore the voids and just say that the FLWR universe is either expanding or contracting.

There is no mark. Rather, it just happens that we can see out that far. At that far back in time, there were no voids to speak of. Those developed later. It is the entire universe (as far as we can see) that is expanding.

And every 13.7 billion year sphere is contracting on you no matter where you are in the universe.

Well, that's how it appears. Theoretically, there could be a place incredibly distant from us that seems to be contracting when we are expanding, but that's beyond our ability to predict. As far as wee can tell, in every point of the universe, the same basic equations apply to the same basic universal density.

And of course gravity cannot cause contraction 'everywhere at once', can it?

Well, there is mass pretty much everywhere. So there is gravity everywhere. I guess you could say that different mass is pulling different things in different regions. However, even with the voids we see, the universe is still fairly homogenous, so gravity is working pretty much the same on the large scale.

[Cougar]

According to the current paradigm the universe is either expanding or contracting...

Well, no. According to current observations, the universe is expanding, not contracting.

[RussT]

The main problem is simply that we 'observe' all of the expansion in the different sized Voids and the when 'critical density' is considered in a FLWR sphere centered on us, and therefore on every 13.7 billion light year sphere, the contraction to a point, of our sphere VS that Sphere 50/100 billion light years away.

[Dave2]

The notion that the universe is expanding is based upon the assumption that the redshift proves this, and that we'd see a blue shift if the universe were collapsing. However, if you ask yourself what the universe would look like if it were collapsing, you'd come to the conclusion that it would not look much different from the way it actually does.

Think about this...

Suppose the universe had already expanded. Now the universe (or perhaps just portions thereof) has begun to collapse inward toward the center of gravity (of course, this presumes that there is a center of gravity, which modern cosmology denies, but if you make this assumption, everything seems to work out, as will hereafter be shown). Suppose for a minute that the Milky Way is one of the galaxies that has begun to collapse inward toward the center of gravity.

Envision an imaginary sphere around the center of the collapse, with the Milky Way on the surface of that sphere. All of the galaxies on the surface of the sphere will be getting closer to each other as the sphere shrinks in diameter as a result of the inward collapse. Obviously, you'll see a blue shift vis a vis those galaxies from the Milky Way.

But a couple of footnotes: You may not be able to see the most distant of those galaxies from the Milky Way because they are simply too far away. Either the light will not have yet gotten to you since the collapse began, or they are too far away, and too far between to have been detected by you. So that means that you'll be doing well to see a few galaxies that are blue shifted in your immediate neighborhood, and that is exactly what we see. We see about 100 blue shifted galaxies, all of which are quite close to us, some as far as 60 million light years away.

Now what about those galaxies that are not on the imaginary sphere?

Well, those galaxies that are farther out from the center might not yet have begun to collapse inward. So it's not surprising that they are redshifted. Even if they are collapsing inward, they would be collapsing inward at a much lower velocity since they are farther out. In short, we should be accelerating (toward the center of gravity) vis a vis those galaxies, and of course, there will be a redshift. Even more interestingly, the redshift will be increasing as we go further out. And that is exactly what we see. Modern cosmology is just now trying to understand this. The general consensus is that the universe is expanding faster as time goes on, but as we've seen, it could just as easily be that the universe is collapsing.

What about those galaxies that are interior to the imaginary sphere? Well, those galaxies will have an even greater velocity toward the center of gravity than the Milky Way because they are closer to the center of gravity. Thus, we'd also expect to see a redshift vis a vis those galaxies. And just like those further out, the redshift would be increasing as we look further away from the Milky Way towards the center of the collapse.

The long and the short of it is that the only galaxies we'd expect to see a blue shift from are a few galaxies in the immediate neighborhood of the Milky Way, and that's exactly what we see.

Of course, that one point is also consistent with the notion of an expanding universe, based upon the assumption that there is some degree of irregularity in the speed of the acceleration, which is most pronounced in the immediate vicinity of the Milky Way.

However, the one thing that distinguishes this theory from the expanding universe theory is that there is no explanation for an expanding universe whose expansion is accelerating (as postulated by modern cosmology), and that is why modern cosmology is right now scratching its collective head.

But if the universe were collapsing at least as distant from the center as the Milky Way, then a collapsing universe could explain this completely.

As an aside, the notion that a collapsing universe would exhibit a blue shift is based upon the "raisin cake" theory that every point of the expanding universe is moving away from every other point, and that if the expansion were reversed, then presumably every point would contract toward every other point. Why this should be the case, however, is not clear. Even if the raisin cake theory were true in the context of an expanding universe, why would it necessarily be true in the context of a contracting universe? Why would the universe not simply contract to its center of gravity?

Comments?

[Amber Robot]

Comments?

In which direction is the center? Also, you should be able to calculate what the redshift versus position on the sky should look like. It seems to me that your model would predict an anisotropic distribution of redshifts, but I'd like to see the calculation.

[Stomfi]

I read somewhere that even with the mass of "Dark Matter" it is not enough to cause a contraction.
Plus there is always the problem that what we can see with our puny instruments is only a local situation, i.e. it might have been a local bang, and our universe is only a small part of a relatively static whole.
We only need a bubble universe model to experiment in Einsteinian space time, we may eventually get beyond that and discover other radical "truths".

[RussT]

The key to this entire question is that the Voids, which are 10 Mpc to 25 Mpc should be expanding between the galaxy clusters at different rates BUT the critical density for the Big Crunch of of the universe converges on EACH 13.7 billion light year sphere.

So do this...draw 2 circles (each representing 13.7 billion LY's) where the outer rim of each circle touches the other, and now draw a third that touches the outer rium of the other 2.

Now, if the universe were collapsing according to how the current paradigm portrays it, how is it even possible for the galaxies at the rims of any circle to be able to collapse one way or the other?

Now, couple this with the fact that Inflation says that 'our sphere' (13.7 Billion LY's) was the size of a grapefruit when Inflation ended. SO, what was outside the grapefruit at 10^-31 (or whenever they say that Inflation ended)?

What? more Tev Energy Gamma Radiation? okay, what was outside that grapefruit, ETC, ETC??? SO, now draw a circle (13.7 Billion Ly's) inside the 3 circles so that there is an equal amount of overlapin all 3 previous circle areas. Now where does gravity decide to pull anything into a Big Crunch???

[RussT]

The notion that the universe is expanding is based upon the assumption that the redshift proves this, and that we'd see a blue shift if the universe were collapsing. However, if you ask yourself what the universe would look like if it were collapsing, you'd come to the conclusion that it would not look much different from the way it actually does.

Think about this...

Suppose the universe had already expanded. Now the universe (or perhaps just portions thereof) has begun to collapse inward toward the center of gravity (of course, this presumes that there is a center of gravity, which modern cosmology denies, but if you make this assumption, everything seems to work out, as will hereafter be shown). Suppose for a minute that the Milky Way is one of the galaxies that has begun to collapse inward toward the center of gravity.

Envision an imaginary sphere around the center of the collapse, with the Milky Way on the surface of that sphere. All of the galaxies on the surface of the sphere will be getting closer to each other as the sphere shrinks in diameter as a result of the inward collapse. Obviously, you'll see a blue shift vis a vis those galaxies from the Milky Way.

But a couple of footnotes: You may not be able to see the most distant of those galaxies from the Milky Way because they are simply too far away. Either the light will not have yet gotten to you since the collapse began, or they are too far away, and too far between to have been detected by you. So that means that you'll be doing well to see a few galaxies that are blue shifted in your immediate neighborhood, and that is exactly what we see. We see about 100 blue shifted galaxies, all of which are quite close to us, some as far as 60 million light years away.

Now what about those galaxies that are not on the imaginary sphere?

Well, those galaxies that are farther out from the center might not yet have begun to collapse inward. So it's not surprising that they are redshifted. Even if they are collapsing inward, they would be collapsing inward at a much lower velocity since they are farther out. In short, we should be accelerating (toward the center of gravity) vis a vis those galaxies, and of course, there will be a redshift. Even more interestingly, the redshift will be increasing as we go further out. And that is exactly what we see. Modern cosmology is just now trying to understand this. The general consensus is that the universe is expanding faster as time goes on, but as we've seen, it could just as easily be that the universe is collapsing.

What about those galaxies that are interior to the imaginary sphere? Well, those galaxies will have an even greater velocity toward the center of gravity than the Milky Way because they are closer to the center of gravity. Thus, we'd also expect to see a redshift vis a vis those galaxies. And just like those further out, the redshift would be increasing as we look further away from the Milky Way towards the center of the collapse.

The long and the short of it is that the only galaxies we'd expect to see a blue shift from are a few galaxies in the immediate neighborhood of the Milky Way, and that's exactly what we see.

Of course, that one point is also consistent with the notion of an expanding universe, based upon the assumption that there is some degree of irregularity in the speed of the acceleration, which is most pronounced in the immediate vicinity of the Milky Way.

However, the one thing that distinguishes this theory from the expanding universe theory is that there is no explanation for an expanding universe whose expansion is accelerating (as postulated by modern cosmology), and that is why modern cosmology is right now scratching its collective head.

But if the universe were collapsing at least as distant from the center as the Milky Way, then a collapsing universe could explain this completely.

As an aside, the notion that a collapsing universe would exhibit a blue shift is based upon the "raisin cake" theory that every point of the expanding universe is moving away from every other point, and that if the expansion were reversed, then presumably every point would contract toward every other point. Why this should be the case, however, is not clear. Even if the raisin cake theory were true in the context of an expanding universe, why would it necessarily be true in the context of a contracting universe? Why would the universe not simply contract to its center of gravity?

Comments?

Yes Dave 2, I have thought of this and seen something similar on Arps forum.

"IF" the Milky Way were heading towards a BH singularity, and all the galaxies ahead of us were heading towards it faster that we were, we would see them as redshifted, and IF this were the case and and we were going faster than all the galaxies behind us successively, then they would be redshifted as well.

There are two problems with this scenario however. 1, all of the galaxies going towards the focal point that were, (for lack of a better term right now),
on the other side of the focal point, would all be blue shifted. They would all be seen as coming toward us, and 2. it would be very difficult to be able to expain the Voids in this scenario.

The other arguement for the universe not being in a black hole (with the obsevation that the galaxies are expanding away inbetween the galaxy clusters, is that IF we were in a black hole, the galaxies would not be going toward the event horizon!

[Dave2]

1, all of the galaxies going towards the focal point that were, (for lack of a better term right now), on the other side of the focal point, would all be blue shifted. They would all be seen as coming toward us, and 2. it would be very difficult to be able to expain the Voids in this scenario.

With respect to 1, I think that is explainable by the vast distance we'd be talking about. Even if we presuppose a collapse toward the center of gravity, we'd have to assume that the universe is vast beyond imagination, or else we would not see so much uniformity no matter which direction we look. When you're looking across those vast distances, you aren't going to see anything at all if the light hasn't had time to get to you yet. Even if the light did have time to get to you, it might be so weak that it's not observable, or it might be obstructed as it passes thru the center of the universe.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 2. What voids are you talking about? To me, a bigger problem is that if this were the structure of the universe, then it would be difficult for me to explain the very high degree of uniformity in the universe. But on the other hand, I know that there are some studies that have been going on for some years (and I think Harp is one who's been pursuing them), which postulate that the universe really isn't as uniform as we all suggest. In any event, you can always explain any degree of apparent uniformity by simply assuming a larger universe, and that the nonuniform features are beyond the reach of your observational powers.

The other arguement for the universe not being in a black hole (with the obsevation that the galaxies are expanding away inbetween the galaxy clusters, is that IF we were in a black hole, the galaxies would not be going toward the event horizon!

I'm not sure that is a problem only with my argument. Afterall, the Big Bang starts with the proposition that all of the matter in the universe was at one time located in a much smaller region than what we now observe, perhaps a singularity. How it got out is really the question. And we don't know.

Maybe the answer is that it really isn't out. It's just moving around within the event horizon.

[Dave2]

2. it would be very difficult to be able to expain the Voids in this scenario.

OK, now I see your earlier post about the voids. I guess there would have to be local clumping and voids between the clumps, so you're not going to see a completely uniform collapse. My argument presupposes that there would have to be an overall center of gravity to the universe, though, which ultimately over time results in an overall collapse of all of the components toward the center. Since various components have different distance and momenta vis a vis the center of collapse, certain areas would begin to collapse before others.

Basically, though, we'd have to abandon the idea that there is no center to the universe, and that every point is just like every other. And that means that we're assuming that the universe is not infinite--just very large.

Or if you prefer, you can stick by the assumption that there is no center to the larger universe, but that what we see and call the "universe" is really only a very small self contained part of the larger infinite universe, which is comprised of many, many universes like the one we're familiar with, and that are spread throughout space well beyond what we observe.

[Dave2]

In which direction is the center? Also, you should be able to calculate what the redshift versus position on the sky should look like. It seems to me that your model would predict an anisotropic distribution of redshifts, but I'd like to see the calculation.

Agreed, it would be somewhat anisotropic. For example, you'd expect to see a greater percentage of the high red shift objects as you look outward from the center of gravity, or inward toward the center of gravity. Looking across the tangent plane of the imaginary sphere, and slightly below or above it, you'd expect to see objects that are moving roughly in the same direction that the Milky Way is moving, and at approximately the same velocity. There would be a slight blue shift along that plane, at least in the immediate neighborhood.

But I think that there is some documentation for anisotropic distribution of red shifted objects. See for example:

http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/4/109-115.pdf

The question is whether the particular distribution we see is consistent with this idea. I don't know the answer to that.

[Amber Robot]

But I think that there is some documentation for anisotropic distribution of red shifted objects. See for example:

http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/4/109-115.pdf

That paper is over 20 years old! Surely, there are more recent investigations into the large scale distribution of redshifts, say from the Sloan and/or 2dF surveys.

[Dave2]

That paper is over 20 years old! Surely, there are more recent investigations into the large scale distribution of redshifts, say from the Sloan and/or 2dF surveys.

I would hope so, but this is the only one I could find on the web.

If you can find one, I'd be very interested.

[Dave2]

That paper is over 20 years old! Surely, there are more recent investigations into the large scale distribution of redshifts, say from the Sloan and/or 2dF surveys.

The article states that there are more high red shift quasars in the Southern declination zone, fewer in the mddle, and fewest in the Northern.

Obviously, that is not consistent with the notion of a completely homogenious universe.

On the other hand, it is not really consistent (at least facially) with what I suggested either.

I said that there would be more high reshifted objects looking out from or in toward the center. Obviously, that is not what this paper says we see, so now I am rethinking it.

If you accept the analysis of the paper, as well as my model, then it would seem to suggest that the "plane" argued by my model is roughly the middle declination zone.

Whichever direction the plane cuts thru the Earth, it must divide the Earth in half. Thus, you can't come up with a theory that has the plane severing Northern declination zone from the Southern and middle. Assuming that the plane cuts the Earth in half, it must be that there are more high red shifted objects when you look inward or when you look outward. The middle zone reflects an averaging of the two.

The analysis might be obscured if the plane cuts thru the Earth at an angle, because the paper does not analyze the distribution in relation to a plane cut at an angle. It might also depend on what you consider to be a "high red shift quasar."

Halton Arp also wrote a paper or two on the distribution of high red shift quasars, but they don't really tell me much. He was trying to argue that quasars are a local phenomenon, not a cosmological one. So his arguments really did not respond to mine.