I don't think space is expanding.

[Mike Helland]

No. Basic scholarship. It is up to the person proposing an idea to support their idea.
Mike Helland, where does the energy lost by red shifted photons in your idea go?

Energy is conserved in this theory, so the energy is jettisoned into space.

If you want the conservation of energy, vote the for the decelerating photon hypothesis. You won't get it in an expanding universe.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

If you want the conservation of energy, vote the for the decelerating photon hypothesis. You won't get it in an expanding universe.

The sentence I highlighted is not true.

Although exact, closed-form solutions to Einstein's field equations are notoriously difficult to find, several such solutions are known and have been known for decades. Of those solutions, the ones that are directly relevant to this thread are the FLRW solutions that describe an expanding universe. Those solutions satisfy

T^αβ_;β = 0​

where T is the stress-energy tensor. If Mike Helland understood Einstein's theories of relativity, he'd know that equation says mass-energy is conserved in that family of expanding universes.

Anticipating a possible quibble, that differential equation says energy is conserved locally. On the other hand, that equation holds everywhere, so local conservation of energy holds everywhere, which is as close as you can get to a global statement of conservation of energy in the FLRW solutions, for which there is no inertial frame of reference that can be used globally.

Which leads to the following general remarks about why we see so many non-physicists arguing with Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Special relativity is accessible to anyone with a decent understanding of high school math and a genuine desire to learn. The mathematics of general relativity is considerably more difficult, to such an extent that one of the most widely used textbooks (Misner/Thorne/Wheeler) never actually defines the notion of a spacetime manifold, which is of course central to GR. If you've hefted that book, you know MTW didn't omit that definition because they were trying to fit within a page count; they omitted it because they were trying to make the textbook more accessible to physics majors and graduate students, who might prefer informality to mathematical rigor.

So we see a lot of people who arrive at some limited understanding of special relativity, but are simply unable to deal with the mathematics of general relativity. Instead of putting in the effort needed to learn the relevant mathematics, they try to develop intuition about GR by reading popular accounts and attempting to relate what they read to their understanding of special relativity, which is already likely to be flawed. That doesn't work. After all, it took Einstein a full decade to make the leap from special to general relativity, with a lot of help from other physicists and from professional mathematicians; even so, Einstein made some mistakes along the way, which you can see in some of his earliest papers on GR. GR is not easy to understand. It wasn't easy even for Einstein.

I devise an even more "complete" model of light and matter that produces QED, Fermat's least time principle, Snell's law and also shows that a "reinvigorated" photon would reflect at the same angle as a photon that always traveled at c.

Of course. When you do that we’ll take you seriously. Until then, not so much.

Before Mike Helland can be taken seriously, he will have to devise not only an entirely new theory of quantum electrodynamics, but will have to devise replacements for all four of these theories:

• quantum electrodynamics (QED)
• classical electromagnetism
• special relativity
• general relativity

Those four theories are among the best-attested and most important theories in all of physics. The ideas that Mike Helland has been promoting in this thread contradict all four of those theories.

To be fair, classical electromagnetism and special relativity are special cases of general relativity. When If Mike Helland can devise replacements for both QED and GR that match observation and experiment at least as well as the currently accepted theories of QED and GR, then (and only then) can he be taken seriously.

Until then:

 

[Mike Helland]

The sentence I highlighted is not true.

...

Before Mike Helland can be taken seriously, he will have to devise not only an entirely new theory of quantum electrodynamics, but will have to devise replacements for all four of these theories:

• quantum electrodynamics (QED)
• classical electromagnetism
• special relativity
• general relativity

Those four theories are among the best-attested and most important theories in all of physics. The ideas that Mike Helland has been promoting in this thread contradict all four of those theories.

To be fair, classical electromagnetism and special relativity are special cases of general relativity. When If Mike Helland can devise replacements for both QED and GR that match observation and experiment at least as well as the currently accepted theories of QED and GR, then (and only then) can he be taken seriously.

Until then:

Ok.

How about this.

The speed of a photon is c/(1+HD)².

That means it is always c locally.

It's only not c to remote observers, which seems to be the case in GR anyways.

*edit* So D is the distance to the observer, not the source.

That's consistent with SR and Maxwell and the rest.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ok.

How about this.

The speed of a photon is c/(1+HD)².

That means it is always c locally.

It's only not c to remote observers, which seems to be the case in GR anyways.

You obviously don’t even understand what “locally” means, because light is NOT always locally c in your theory, not even with that equation.

 

[Mike Helland]

You obviously don’t even understand what “locally” means, because light is NOT always locally c in your theory, not even with that equation.

Fair enough.

This interpretation says that the redshifted universe to an observer is literally redshifted.

When you move to a different part of the universe, it unredshifts, and the part you can came from redshifts.

 

[Mike Helland]

So, to an observer, a galaxy emits light at the observed energy, and a speed lower than c.

It gains speed and wavelength as it approaches.

Problems solved?

 

[hecd2]

So, to an observer, a galaxy emits light at the observed energy, and a speed lower than c.

It gains speed and wavelength as it approaches.

Problems solved?

So the light "knows" when emitted how far away its observer is going to be? It's a terrible idea.

 

[Steve]

So the light "knows" when emitted how far away its observer is going to be? It's a terrible idea.

Light is quite agreeable and hates to disappoint. It will adjust its speed to match whatever is expected of it.

 

[Ziggurat]

Fair enough.

This interpretation says that the redshifted universe to an observer is literally redshifted.

When you move to a different part of the universe, it unredshifts, and the part you can came from redshifts.

So, to an observer, a galaxy emits light at the observed energy, and a speed lower than c.

It gains speed and wavelength as it approaches.

Problems solved?

Your description is not coherent enough to even evaluate.

 

[Mike Helland]

So the light "knows" when emitted how far away its observer is going to be? It's a terrible idea.

Not quite.

The geometry of the universe redshifts it farther away from you.

 

[Mike Helland]

Your description is not coherent enough to even evaluate.

The idea is you take the observed values of energy you make, and plug them into the model, instead of the corrected values.

Seems obvious in retrospect.

 

[Ziggurat]

The idea is you take the observed values of energy you make, and plug them into the model, instead of the corrected values.

Seems obvious in retrospect.

You still aren't explaining yourself in a comprehensible manner, starting with the fact that I'm not even sure which model you're talking about.

 

[hecd2]

Not quite.

The geometry of the universe redshifts it farther away from you.

What does that mean? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

 

[Mike Helland]

You still aren't explaining yourself in a comprehensible manner, starting with the fact that I'm not even sure which model you're talking about.

Ok.

In a model of spacetime, with us as an observer, in the distant universe, where z=1, clocks run at half speed.

Instead of putting in the pre-redshifted galaxies, and getting the redshifts out of the model, we put in the observed redshifts.

In this case, by the time the photon reaches us, it's traveling at c.

 

[hecd2]

In a model of spacetime, with us as an observer, in the distant universe, where z=1, clocks run at half speed.

Why? How? This makes no sense.

 

[Mike Helland]

Why? How? This makes no sense.

Why?

Because of observations. The redshifts.

How?

Clocks run slower the farther away they are from you.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ok.

In a model of spacetime, with us as an observer, in the distant universe, where z=1, clocks run at half speed.

Again, what model? This one detail does not suffice to describe a model. Among other obvious holes, did clocks run slower because of their location, or because everything everywhere ran slower in the past? And what's the actual math that describes it?

 

[Mike Helland]

Again, what model? This one detail does not suffice to describe a model. Among other obvious holes, did clocks run slower because of their location, or because everything everywhere ran slower in the past? And what's the actual math that describes it?

Start with special relativity. Minkowski spacetime.

Then say that photons start out on the null geodesic, v=c (*edit* nope, that can no longer be true. it ends on the null geodesic near the observer), but every starting point for a photon has its own unique path through space time, according to v=c/(1+HD)².

This makes all the connections between significantly distant events not strictly light-like.

 

[Ziggurat]

Clocks run slower the farther away they are from you.

Let's consider what that would actually mean.

In general relativity, two clocks which are stationary with respect to each other can run at different speeds when they are at different gravitational potentials. If clocks run slower the farther from us they are, that would mean that we are somehow at a gravitational potential maximum, with the surrounding universe at a lower potential. Aside from the fact that it would be quite the coincidence for us to be at the center of the universe, that would also mean everything should be getting pulled away from us, which brings us indirectly back to an expanding universe, at least effectively.

But we now face another problem with this model: the shell theorem. You cannot get the visible universe pulling away from us by a shell of mass surrounding it. You would need negative mass in the center (where we are) pushing it outwards.

Your ignorance of physics makes you incapable of understanding the implications of your own ideas.

 

[Mike Helland]

In general relativity, two clocks which are stationary with respect to each other can run at different speeds when they are at different gravitational potentials. If clocks run slower the farther from us they are, that would mean that we are somehow at a gravitational potential maximum, with the surrounding universe at a lower potential.

Yes! 100%

If the photon and the graviton fall off by distance twice (once for the traditional inverse square law, second for the Hubble inverse square law), the maximum electromagnetic and gravitational always be where you are.

This explains the flatness of the universe.