A COSMIC CONUNDRUM;Is it time to re-evaluate the basic tenets of astrophysics?
By utilizing the power and the symmetry of two space telescopes, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space observatory, scientists attempted the most accurate measurements of the universe's rate of expansion, only to have their calculations reveal a conundrum of cosmic proportions.
"..as the measurements have become more precise, the team’s determination of the Hubble constant has become more and more at odds with the measurements from another space observatory, ESA’s Planck mission, which is coming up with a different predicted value for the Hubble constant.".~NASA.gov
Before we proceed with this article, there are those, such as myself, who find many claims of astrophysicists to be of a questionable nature and scientifically unfalsifiable, The Hubble Constant is one of those claims. The Hubble Constant is named after Edwin Hubble who observed a pattern in redshift in deep space objects that could be interpreted as the rate of the universe expanding. At least Abbe Georges Lemaitre who first conceived of the "Hypothesis of the Primaeval Atom", which Sir Fred Hoyle derided by calling it "A Big Bang" to journalists who ran with it, believed and then derived the mathematical formula that is known as The Hubble Constant. This worked well for Lemaitre for it gave him a supposed line of evidence for his "Big Bang Theory". By using this "constant" they then calculated the alleged age of the universe giving us the present day belief of 13.5 billion years. This is a clear case of two unverifiable, and more importantly, unfalsifiable hypothesis being married to support one another as a proof of each other.
Decades later, Hubble's one-time assistant, Halton Arp, an esteemed astronomer in his own right, released images of what he called peculiar galaxies and suggested that redshift may also be a component of an object's age as many of the galaxies and quasars in these images had vastly different redshift values, suggesting great distances separating them, yet, also clear in the images are bands of matter and energy connecting the two object of vastly different redshift values. By this time the Hubble constant had become accepted by consensus as the standard and like many who dare to challenge the consensus, Arp was derided, denied telescope time just for doing what a scientist is supposed to do, follow the data. If redshift was a constant representing universe expanding these 'peculiar objects' of Arp's(of which there are many) should not be connected and in relative space, but separated by millions of light years. Refutations of his claims amounted to ad hoc explanations which bordered on being infantile. More importantly, he was ignored and his observations not considered. Could this present cosmic conundrum be evidence that Arp was in fact correct?
Planck mapped, what they claim is the primaeval universe allegedly 360,000 years after the theoretical big bang by measuring the size of the ripples in the Cosmic Microwave Background(CMB) that they believe was produced by the big bang fireball.
"The fine details of these ripples encode how much dark matter and normal matter there is, the trajectory of the universe at that time, and other cosmological parameters."~NASA.gov
The only problem with NASA making such a statement is that every search for dark matter has come up empty and papers have been published in peer review journals by those searching for dark matter suggesting that there simply is not any dark matter. Dark matter was an imaginative creation attempting to explain another conundrum with the standard model regarding the rotation of galaxies. Google "search for dark matter comes up empty" reveals a number of links to articles on reputable websites stating as such. Personally, the whole dark matter creation was not necessary and, in my opinion, jumped the gun. Rather than reference "dark matter" with all its strange and unfalsifiable qualities, I prefer to suggest the missing mass in galaxies is the product of hidden normal matter.
“With the addition of this new Gaia and Hubble Space Telescope data, we now have a serious tension with the Cosmic Microwave Background data,” said Planck team member and lead analyst George Efstathiou of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology in Cambridge, England.
“The tension seems to have grown into a full-blown incompatibility between our views of the early and late time universe...At this point, clearly, it’s not simply some gross error in any one measurement. ... We are very perplexed.”~Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
"The two major methods of measuring this number give incompatible results. One method is direct, building a cosmic “distance ladder” from measurements of stars in our local universe. The other method uses the CMB to measure the trajectory of the universe shortly after the big bang and then uses physics to describe the universe and extrapolate to the present expansion rate. Together, the measurements should provide an end-to-end test of our basic understanding of the so-called “Standard Model” of the universe. However, the pieces don’t fit."~NASA.gov
The belief is among the astrophysicists involved is that this conundrum may lead to some "new physics" or that dark matter/energy is more exotic than previously imagined. This is one of those puzzles that really should send astrophysicists back to the drawing board to re-evaluate the standard model at its core, at its beginning for many are the assumptions that have been via consensus believed to be fact;
- Is gravity truly the driving force of the universe?
This theory was born of the consensus belief of a century ago that space was empty and that there are no other forces at play. Even though a century ago Kristen Birkeland posited the existence of electric currents in space and was derided for it due to this consensus belief. Derided to such a degree that he committed suicide. Six decades later Birkeland was proven correct with the observation of such currents in the ionosphere. Since then there are many reports of "magnetic flux tubes or ropes" which can only be the product of electric current. The electric field is 10^39 times more powerful than gravity. And many anomalous observation not predicted by the gravity model are perfectly in line with the Electric model and were even predicted by proponents of the Electric model prior to being observed.
The creation of dark matter came from the failure of the gravity model to predict the behaviour of galaxies' rotations. Many strange and unfalsifiable deep space objects are born from the gravity model such as "neutron stars" and " black holes" and while certainly highly energetic objects have been observed in deep space, the concepts used to explain them truly have no basis as far as observations go. Neutrons have never been observed to survive on their own for more than 13-15 minutes in the lab as they break down to an electron, a proton and a neutrino. And black holes, something that Einstein was against, were born of mathematics and then were placed upon the highly energetic objects that now bare that name. Both these deep space objects are explainable within the electric model of the universe, as well, the explanation has a basis in plasma physics and have been observed in plasma labs.
But one of the problems with science today is that many have based their reputations on a theory and to question the theory is to question their reputation. And it is such reputations that get them their positions in prestigious universities or makes them celebrities of science. Where is the scientist whose reputation is based on an honest desire to simply know the truth, who cares not for his/her past achievements, but continues to question his/her own conclusions with the scepticism that is supposed to be a driving force of science? I am not alone in this for there are many within science who believe similarly, that we need to go back and re-evaluate the foundational concepts and beliefs and this is not just limited to astrophysics but is also true for quantum mechanics as it seems the present state of science has become highly convoluted and seems to be in a dire need for Occam's Razor.
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Written by Freddie Thornton
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