When we examine the spectrum (rainbow) of the light arriving from distant galaxies we see that it is redshifted. Redshift means that characteristic features in this spectrum (the absorption lines) are not where they should be had they been emitted by a stationary galaxy. They have been shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. ‘The redshift’ means that light from a distant galaxy has been stretched (it has a longer wavelength than it should have). In ‘Big Bang’ cosmology, this ‘stretching of light’ is explained by the Doppler effect, i.e. the galaxy is moving away from us. The faster the galaxy is moving away from us, the more the light emitted by it is stretched and the greater the redshift. By measuring the red shift we can determine the recession velocity of the galaxy.
How far a galaxy is away from us is measured in different ways – usually on the principal that the further away a star or galaxy is, the dimmer it appears to be to us on Earth (its apparent brightness is less). The brightness of certain stars (Cepheid variables) is not constant but pulses - they go bright, dim, bright, dim, with a regular period. Henrietta Leavit and her team at Harvard found a relationship between the absolute brightness of these Cepheid variables (how bright they really are) and the period with which they pulse. The greater the absolute magnitude of a star (How bright it really is) the longer the period - it takes longer to go bright, dim, bright.
So, to sum up, find a Cepheid variable in your galaxy, measure its period. This tells you how bright it really is (its absolute magnitude). Measure how bright it appears to be to us on Earth (apparent magnitude) and then you can calculate how far away it is.
Nowadays they also use supernovae Ia. A supernova is a star that explodes, but what is special about this type of supernovae is that they all explode with the same brightness. Find a supernova Ia in your galaxy and measure its apparent magnitude (how bright it appears to us on Earth). We know how bright it should be so we can calculate how far it is away.
Hubble measured the recession velocities of several galaxies by determining their redshifts and used Cepheid variables to dertermine how far away they where. From this he discovered the 'Hubble Law'.
The Hubble law tells us that the recession velocity (v) of a galaxy is proportional to how far the galaxy is away from us (d). That is, a galaxy twice as far away is moving away from us twice as fast. The constant of proportionality is the Hubble constant, H.
v = Hd or (velocity of galaxy) = (Hubble constant)x(distance from Earth to galaxy)
Cosmologists explain this as saying that the Universe was created in one ‘Big Bang’ at a certain time and at and a certain place a long time ago. The faster that the matter was flung out of the Big Bang, the further it will have traveled in the same time. Hence galaxies going twice as fast will have traveled twice as far in the same time - the Hubble law. This expansion is termed ‘the expanding Universe’. The Hubble law gives us the rate of the expansion and the ‘Hubble time’ is the age of the Universe - determined by assuming that the Universe has been expanding at the same rate all the time. The Hubble time gives us approximately the age of the Universe. It also gives a point of creation and so the Big Bang theory and the expanding Universe are well liked by both scientists and the Church.
This is why the Hubble constant, H is such an important constant. It gives us ‘creation’ and also ‘He who knows H, knows how old the Universe is’.
The Big Bang theory is often quoted as ‘proven’ and, it must be said, it is accepted as correct by a very large proportion of the scientists around today. However there are a few ‘heretics’ around. Halton Arp is one of the best known ‘dissenter’ with several excellent books on the subject and, as you have already guessed, I am another.
It must be said that no one is arguing against the experimental evidence of redshift and the Hubble law, it is the interpretation of this experimental evidence that we disagree with. We say that redshift is caused by something else.
In my case I believe in tired light, first proposed by Zwicky in 1929. Light is not a continuous wave like the waves in the sea, but light comes in little packets or quanta of energy called photons. The energy of each little packet or quanta depends upon its frequency. The higher the frequency of the light the more energy each photon has (blue light has a higher frequency than red light so photons of blue light have more energy than photons of red light).
Tired light devotees like me think that as the photons of light emitted by distant galaxies travel through space they bump into things, atoms, molecules or particles and lose energy. As they lose energy, the frequency of each photon reduces and their wavelength increases - they become redder. They are redshifted because they lose energy as they travel - hence ‘tired light’. It is sometimes known as ‘light friction’ – but not often.
Tired light is ‘laughed at’ by Big bang cosmologists because they have built their reputations on an expanding Universe and they believe that they have totally disproved it on the grounds of a) no one knows how or what the photons of light interact with, b) tired light has been unable to explain the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), c) tired light has been unable to explain why distant supernova take longer to go dimmer than they should do and d) tired light does not predict the reduction in surface brightness of stars the further away they are. However, watch this space!
The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) is microwave radiation that is everywhere in space. In Big Bang cosmology it is said to be the ‘echo of the Big Bang’.
Why Ashmore’s Paradox’ is important is that ‘it draws attention to an immediately accessible, but wholly/largely unnoticed, fact or relationship - and then politely says 'but that isn't really compatible with our standard model, is it?' (to quote Julian, a long and suffering friend of mine who has had to listen to the development of this theory over many years and joined me in drinking the copious amounts of lubrication needed to develop a new theory!)
That is, what Ashmore’s Paradox tells you is that you can take out your calculator and pull up three very common constants, combine them and, in a matter of seconds, find the Hubble constant. No one has noticed it before, but now it has been seen, it can be immediately checked.
But, in the ‘Big Bang’ theory you should not be able to do this – at all. There should be no way that the Hubble constant can be linked to the electron. A team of international scientists have just completed an eight year study using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to measure the Hubble constant - and, what did they come up with? You guessed, a Hubble constant with an uncertainty range including hr/m for the electron. Reiss Kirshner and Press used Supernovae to determine the Hubble constant and what did they come up with? You guessed hr/m for the electron in each cubic metre of space. Lots of others have done the same and come up with the same result (they are listed on a page within this web site). I am not decrying the work of these scientists. They are infinitely better scientists than I. Their experimental results are a credit to them and needed for my theory as much as anyone else’s. It is the interpretation put on these results that the paradox puts in doubt.
Tired light has no problem with the paradox. Tired light is all about light interacting with particles. So we are quite happy that the Hubble constant is related to the electron – a particle well known for its interactions with light. This is how I came across the paradox. Working through my tired light theory I calculated the Hubble constant and showed that it is related to hr/m for the electron.
I hope this explains what this web site is about and why it is important - apologies for going on a bit. I started out writing a brief paragraph for the ‘home page’ to include all the variations of the ‘key words’ so that the search engines would home in on the site - and ended up with half a book.
