I don't think space is expanding.

[Mike Helland]

Nope. If the universe we observe turned out to actually be a giant spherical video screen placed around the Solar System a light year away by aliens to mess with us, the Hubble would still have to correct for aberration to get a focused long-exposure image of the video screen's display. And if the parts of the video screen that displayed redshifted galaxies somehow emitted slower photons than the other parts, the deep field image would still be blurred due to the failure of that correction.

There would be some parallax anomalies detectable via other means that would give the Romulans' sinister plan away. But the focused deep field images taken by the Hubble during long multi-orbit exposures would still prove the consistency of the speed of incident light into the solar system from objects with different redshifts.

Ok, I'm not really disagreeing with any of that.

And here's my but...

If we assumed a galaxy was 2 billion light years away, and we calculated the angle to view it based on on that.... but the galaxy wasn't quite as far, meaning the angle shouldn't be as steep, but the photons were moving slower, meaning the angle should be steeper, that would seem to balance out.

Based on the effect you're describing, we'd need steeper angles or the photons would hit the side of the tube, but if we were overestimating distances, we're already adjusted to the steeper angles.

 

[Roboramma]

F_G = G*(m1*m2)/d^2

That's the universal law of gravitation

To calculate the Earths orbit, we need to know the mass of the Earth, the mass of the sun, and their distance.

Where is d stored?

In the gravitational field.

 

[Mike Helland]

In the gravitational field.

How so?

 

[Roboramma]

How so?

Spacetime is more curved near the Sun than far from it.

 

[Mike Helland]

Spacetime is more curved near the Sun than far from it.

Ok. Where is the mass of the sun stored?

 

[Roboramma]

I'm sorry again for being so stupid, but you're kind of confusing.

To clarify, are you denying there's a Hubble limit?

You said earlier something about someone running toward a finish line that's receding from him. If it recedes faster than he runs, he'll never reach it.

But if the racetrack is stretching evenly everywhere along its length, he never reaches a place where it starts to stretch faster than he is running: locally it's always stretching and he's continuing to run along it. Nothing's changed.

It may be worth noting that in our universe the expansion is accelerating, but it's probably worthwhile to understand constant expansion before trying to understand accelerating expansion.

 

[Roboramma]

Ok. Where is the mass of the sun stored?

In the Sun. Why?

 

[Ziggurat]

Just keeping on the internally inconsistent claim, do we agree that being inconsistent with experiment is different than being internally inconsistent?

Yes. Newtonian mechanics is internally consistent. It is inconsistent with experiment.

But no internally inconsistent theory can be consistent with experiment for long.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ok, I'm not really disagreeing with any of that.

And here's my but...

If we assumed a galaxy was 2 billion light years away, and we calculated the angle to view it based on on that.... but the galaxy wasn't quite as far, meaning the angle shouldn't be as steep, but the photons were moving slower, meaning the angle should be steeper, that would seem to balance out.

Based on the effect you're describing, we'd need steeper angles or the photons would hit the side of the tube, but if we were overestimating distances, we're already adjusted to the steeper angles.

The angle we calculate to adjust for aberration has nothing to do with the distance to a galaxy, only on the orbital speed of the earth compared to the speed of light.

It doesn’t matter if we have the distance off, your theory will ALWAYS produce the wrong angle to correct for aberration. There aren’t two corrections which can cancel, there is only one. And it won’t match.

 

[Myriad]

Ok, I'm not really disagreeing with any of that.

And here's my but...

If we assumed a galaxy was 2 billion light years away, and we calculated the angle to view it based on on that.... but the galaxy wasn't quite as far, meaning the angle shouldn't be as steep, but the photons were moving slower, meaning the angle should be steeper, that would seem to balance out.

Based on the effect you're describing, we'd need steeper angles or the photons would hit the side of the tube, but if we were overestimating distances, we're already adjusted to the steeper angles.

What you're describing is parallax, where the angles vary with the position of the telescope, and that effect depends on the distance to the object. In such cases the variation in angle with viewing position can be used to measure distances to objects. (Land surveyors do this routinely.) That phenomenon is most prominent for nearby objects. The effect diminishes rapidly with distance. We can't use parallax to measure the distances to distant galaxies, because the angular differences due to position become too small to measure even with our most precise instruments, and even from positions 186 million miles apart. (That does establish a minimum distance for such objects, though. If they were closer than some minimum order of magnitude of distance, we would be able to measure parallax.)

The orbital aberration I'm talking about (and other astronomical aberrations) do not depend on the distance to the object, and could not under any circumstances be used to measure the distance to an object.* The correction angles depend only on the motion of the tube/telescope relative to the speed of light. No estimate of the distance to the object is needed.

*We could use it to measure cosmic distances if the speed of light from distant objects differed from c, but we know from many different lines of evidence including the Hubble deep field images that it does not.

 

[Mike Helland]

You said earlier something about someone running toward a finish line that's receding from him. If it recedes faster than he runs, he'll never reach it.

But if the racetrack is stretching evenly everywhere along its length, he never reaches a place where it starts to stretch faster than he is running: locally it's always stretching and he's continuing to run along it. Nothing's changed.

He's running toward the finish line, and the finish line is getting farther away.

I'm not sure what you'd call that, but the standard model suggests this is going on all over the place.

 

[Mike Helland]

What you're describing is parallax, where the angles vary with the position of the telescope, and that effect depends on the distance to the object. In such cases the variation in angle with viewing position can be used to measure distances to objects. (Land surveyors do this routinely.) That phenomenon is most prominent for nearby objects. The effect diminishes rapidly with distance. We can't use parallax to measure the distances to distant galaxies, because the angular differences due to position become too small to measure even with our most precise instruments, and even from positions 186 million miles apart. (That does establish a minimum distance for such objects, though. If they were closer than some minimum order of magnitude of distance, we would be able to measure parallax.)

The orbital aberration I'm talking about (and other astronomical aberrations) do not depend on the distance to the object, and could not under any circumstances be used to measure the distance to an object.* The correction angles depend only on the motion of the tube/telescope relative to the speed of light. No estimate of the distance to the object is needed.

*We could use it to measure cosmic distances if the speed of light from distant objects differed from c, but we know from many different lines of evidence including the Hubble deep field images that it does not.

Ok, I think I understand most of that. Thanks for taking the time (and Ziggurat too) for the explanations.

So, let's say we have a photon headed straight to a mirror. It's going to hit the mirror headed on, 90 degrees. That photon should bounce straight backward along the path it took to the mirror.

Are you saying, that if the hypothesis predicts the light will be moving slower than c in a vacuum, that it bounces off at a different angle?

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

How do you change the speed of light? Place it in a medium?

VERY nice bit of sleight-of-hand.

Yes, you change the speed of light by placing it in a medium. But that does not produce a cumulative change, which is what you have claimed.

Also, I note that you have steadfastly ignored one of my original questions: since there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum, at what point does a volume of space become a medium, and at what density can it be referred to as a vacuum?

 

[Mike Helland]

VERY nice bit of sleight-of-hand.

Yes, you change the speed of light by placing it in a medium. But that does not produce a cumulative change, which is what you have claimed.

Also, I note that you have steadfastly ignored one of my original questions: since there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum, at what point does a volume of space become a medium, and at what density can it be referred to as a vacuum?

Good question.

Since the model has a photon, it's closer to a particle simulation than a classical universe.

Any medium in the model should be represented by its individual particles rather than a density value.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ok, I think I understand most of that. Thanks for taking the time (and Ziggurat too) for the explanations.

So, let's say we have a photon headed straight to a mirror. It's going to hit the mirror headed on, 90 degrees. That photon should bounce straight backward along the path it took to the mirror.

Are you saying, that if the hypothesis predicts the light will be moving slower than c in a vacuum, that it bounces off at a different angle?

No. He's saying that the direction it's coming in at will depend on the velocity of both the light and the mirror (in whatever frame you want to look at the question in). Yes, IF the light comes in at 90 degrees, it will always bounce back at 90 degrees. But what angle the mirror needs to be at in order to make that incident angle 90 degrees will change as the mirror and the incoming velocities change. So where you need to point the telescope would change.

But it's never at 90 degrees. If the light hits the mirror at 90 degrees, then it's just going to bounce back out of the telescope and not be detected.

 

[Mike Helland]

No. He's saying that the direction it's coming in at will depend on the velocity of both the light and the mirror (in whatever frame you want to look at the question in). Yes, IF the light comes in at 90 degrees, it will always bounce back at 90 degrees. But what angle the mirror needs to be at in order to make that incident angle 90 degrees will change as the mirror and the incoming velocities change. So where you need to point the telescope would change.

But it's never at 90 degrees. If the light hits the mirror at 90 degrees, then it's just going to bounce back out of the telescope and not be detected.

So, let's say there is city bus with a large mirror on its side.

You're standing on the sidewalk, and the bus drives by. You see yourself standing on the sidewalk.

Does the speed of the bus change what angle the mirror image bounces back to you?

 

[Ziggurat]

So, let's say there is city bus with a large mirror on its side.

You're standing on the sidewalk, and the bus drives by. You see yourself standing on the sidewalk.

Does the speed of the bus change what angle the mirror image bounces back to you?

In the bus's frame, you emit light at the bus, at an angle, as you approach it. That light is reflected off the side of the bus, at an angle. As you pass the bus, you then intercept the light that was reflected, and thus see your reflection. The angle this happens at depends on your speed in the bus's reference frame (the slower you're going, the less you have to move in order to intercept the reflection, so the closer to 90 degrees). But your speed in the bus's frame is the same thing as the bus's speed in your frame.

So yes, the angle depends on the speed of the bus. In this example, the bus is the equivalent of the telescope, NOT you.

 

[Mike Helland]

In the bus's frame, you emit light at the bus, at an angle, as you approach it. That light is reflected off the side of the bus, at an angle. As you pass the bus, you then intercept the light that was reflected, and thus see your reflection. The angle this happens at depends on your speed in the bus's reference frame (the slower you're going, the less you have to move in order to intercept the reflection, so the closer to 90 degrees). But your speed in the bus's frame is the same thing as the bus's speed in your frame.

So yes, the angle depends on the speed of the bus. In this example, the bus is the equivalent of the telescope, NOT you.

So, if the bus moves by at 1 mph, or 100 mph, how would that change the reflection?

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

Since the model has a photon, it's closer to a particle simulation than a classical universe.

Any medium in the model should be represented by its individual particles rather than a density value.

Sigh. No, it's not.

If you're going to model your interaction as being like a "particle simulation", (and why simulation?) you have to face up to the fact that, when the photon loses velocity (and momentum) the particle which it collided with must gain momentum. Furthermore, this will cause the photon to be deflected sideways, since virtually none of the collisions will be perfectly head-on.

With x-rays and electrons this is known as the Compton Effect. It is the Achilles Heel of tired light theories, since it predicts that distant galaxies will not produce sharp images, but rather become blurry in quite a short (as these things go) distance. Since distant galaxies DO produce sharp images, the idea has long since fallen into disrepute. You would do well to learn from history.

And stop fetishizing Hubble's work. Do you really think that there has been no progress in the field in the last 80 years? Oh. Silly question. You do.

 

[Mike Helland]

If you're going to model your interaction as being like a "particle simulation", (and why simulation?) you have to face up to the fact that, when the photon loses velocity (and momentum) the particle which it collided with must gain momentum. Furthermore, this will cause the photon to be deflected sideways, since virtually none of the collisions will be perfectly head-on.

With x-rays and electrons this is known as the Compton Effect. It is the Achilles Heel of tired light theories, since it predicts that distant galaxies will not produce sharp images, but rather become blurry in quite a short (as these things go) distance. Since distant galaxies DO produce sharp images, the idea has long since fallen into disrepute. You would do well to learn from history.

And stop fetishizing Hubble's work. Do you really think that there has been no progress in the field in the last 80 years? Oh. Silly question. You do.

The hypothesis has the photon slowing down without interacting with anything. So "the particle which it collided with" doesn't exist.

What the hypothesis is saying is that redshifts are part of inertia itself.

Things don't travel to infinity at constant speeds.

Seems to be a novel hypothesis.