I’m not sure, but I think gravitational lensing may refute it, and it seems that an experiment measuring the speed of light in both directions on a path perpendicular to our line of sight could be devised.
The expansion of spacetime means that as the object is moving away from you it is being stretched otherwise it would be getting smaller and I don’t think that is what is happening.
I asked someone who is knowledgeable in science if the universe can be confirmed to be expanding from other points, and they said it would require the ability to travel faster than the speed of light.
Interesting thought, though the distances in space are so huge, expansion of the size of a galaxy would be imperceptible to a distant observer.
Regarding the speed of light experiment, if you pointed a laser from each side towards each other, and put an observer in the middle, perhaps you could see if the light knew which way to go faster. Not that you would, as it is a ridiculous idea.
1 Like
The direction of light travel is obviously relative to the light source and the observer. An observer between 2 light sources is not measuring different directions of light travel.
If I am not mistaken, it’s super interesting that if the phenomenon were multiplied such that it could be easily measured in a room, the effect would still be imperceptible if not for the redshift.
1 Like
Moving away doesn’t require getting smaller, unless you’re referring to perspective and not actuality.
But if stars themselves were stretching the reactions in the core would change. The question then is whether the space they occupy is stretching but gravity balances that, or whether space itself doesn’t stretch in the vicinity of strong gravitation – or perhaps if those reduce to the same thing!
That depends on what you mean by “confirmed”. If you mean gather data from sufficiently disparate points, then that’s correct. If on the other hand you mean to establish it mathematically, then no; if the universe began as a singularity (and if there are no strange undiscovered basic principles involved) then expansion must be happening the same everywhere (I forget the proper term . . . which means it’s time to get horizontal with my head on a pillow).
1 Like
Not so much due to the distance but because looking far, far away is looking far back in time, and we are thus looking at the universe before it had expanded nearly so much as today.
That falls to the clock issue: the mere act of transporting identical clocks to the distant points makes it impossible to know they are synchronous.
Now if you were at point B and saw a supernova at point A and could later observe the light from that supernova arrive at a distant point C, it would be possible to measure the time from A to C – where this probably fails would be the ability to know the distance from A to C.
2 Likes
If the observer initiates two light beams in opposite directions he would be.
Hmm – what’s the shortest distance we can measure? This might actually bump up against the smallest quanta of length and other such details.
1 Like
And the observer would only be able to measure the round trip speed of each light beam
1 Like
My eyesight isn’t what it used to be… my electronics teacher from when I was in tech school once commented on how bad his eyesight was when he saw me read the color codes on a resistor. Funny how I felt his words were so far removed from my experience. I was literally light years away from him. And yet… what a dear saint he was. One time telling me, I could trust God, and I thought I probably should. But I can’t recall if that was before or after an experience I had with my father coming home.
I think I wrote about that story or co-instant as @Dale likes to call them. Let me see if I can find it.
2 Likes
I’m not sure if I went into greater detail about this story elsewhere, but this is where I can remember writing about the experience.
Edit:
There are singularities and then there are singularities.
Something which I think is kind of a big deal is how the immediate effect (or change) of a singularity that can affect change without changing will appear as if the change came from nothing.
Oh… and there also technological singularities and philosophical singularities
Edit 2.0:
I was talking with a friend at work about how we appear at the center of the universe, and in the same breath, he said it would appear that way in another galaxy.
Given what has been said about how probabilities are unable to determine whether naturalism is false, all bets are on the table, and it very well could be that we are at the center of the universe.
This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.