Expert: James Gort - 1/2/2011

Question
Hello James,

I have been reading on the quantized red shift discovered by William Tifft in the 70s.  From what I've read, there are "spherical shells" of galaxies that are receding away from the Milky Way in increments of approx. 72km/sec.  The part I don't understand is, unless we're in the center of the universe (impossible?), how else can there be equal red shift in every direction?  Also, why the increments?

In other words, given the raisin bread analogy, shouldn't the raisins on the "other side" of the Big Bang be moving away from us much faster than the raisins on our side?  

Recent thought: maybe the BB didn't happen from a known, plottable point in space, but the galaxies simply entered these (our) dimensions with the BB accounting for space expanding equally in every direction?  Only way for that to work with the red shift data set and corresponding concentric spherical shells of galaxies, however, would be if the universe is infinite in all directions, with no possible "center".  What are your thoughts?

Answer
Hi Charles,

First, I don't think that the Tifft quantization of redshift is widely accepted.  I believe that there were some flaws in the statistical method used, which make the conclusions suspect.  That's not to say there isn't something at work here.  But it could easily be some periodicity in the observational method itself, the data reduction method used, or in the actual topology of the universe.  As far as I know, the jury is still out.

But referring to the raisin analogy, the comparison doesn't hold very well, because a raisin bread is in 3-dimensional space (we'll ignore time!), and the universe is expanding in space-time.  The expansion didn't happen from a plottable point in space.  The expansion WAS the creation / expansion of space-time, which occurred at ALL POINTS in the universe at once.  A little more on this might be helpful:

First of all, I want to remind you that the origin of the universe by a "Big Bang" is very much still a theory, and there are alternative theories.  Some observations do not support an expanding universe or the Big Bang.  There are several references concerning this, but perhaps the most authoritative person is Halton Arp, a leading astronomer and researcher on galaxies, who wrote "Seeing Red".  That book is highly recommended to get an alternative view.  Or read "A Different Approach to Cosmology" by Hoyle, Burbidge, and Narlikar.  Another great book which gives a scientific view on how the universe has always been in a steady state.

The Big Bang, if it occurred, wasn't a "Bang" at all.  Many people think of it as an explosion, where all matter was in some place (you mentioned a "point") and then violently exploded outward into space.  This WAS NOT the Big Bang.  The Big Bang was the expansion of space-time into "nothingness".  (The region outside of space-time is not defined).  So the expansion didn't originate "somewhere", it originated "everywhere", because everything that exists today was part of the expansion.  We were PART OF the Big Bang.  It didn't happen at a distant "place" from us, it happen TO US.  This is difficult to understand.  In this respect, it's not like the expanding balloon or raisin bread analogy.  A balloon (or loaf of bread) has a center.  The universe has no center (and least in three dimensions) and no edge, because it didn't originate in a point.  It originated in "all points" - all space was involved.  It was the expansion of space itself!

With powerful telescopes, we can actually look "back in time" and see young galaxies forming not too long after the Big Bang.  We might even find the conditions for life there (but it would be long before life would actually form there).  If there were humanoids in those galaxies NOW (which is billions of years later) and if they had powerful telescopes, they could also see our young galaxy (the Milky Way) forming, billions of years ago - before life formed here on earth.   It's a hard concept to imagine, but we're just as "close" to the Big Bang as that distant young galaxy is.

So those are my thoughts.  According to Arp and Burbidge, the universe is fairly static (not expanding).  I'll keep an open mind on that (in spite of the "prevailing opinion").  But if the universe IS expanding, try to envision it as an expansion of space-time, rather than an expanding balloon.  I hope that helps.

Cheers,

Prof. James Gort