Distribution of over 4 million galaxies using redshift data. Credit ICRAR/GAMA.
Apr 14, 2016
Is it going to be a dark future?
“Don’t wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.”
— Roger Zelazny
Since the early days of cosmological speculations, especially after the introduction of Big Bang theory, three competing ideas about the ultimate fate of the Universe have evolved:
- The Universe is infinite in expanse and duration.
- The Universe began and it will end.
- The Universe cycles through multiple incarnations.
According to a recent press release, there is now evidence for thinking that the second version is correct and that the Universe will end. “The Universe has basically plonked itself down on the sofa, pulled up a blanket and is about to nod off for an eternal doze,” said Professor Simon Driver of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).
As suggested by conventional scientists, when the Universe began it was hot and blue, becoming redder as so-called “stellar evolution on the main sequence” took place and red giant stars appeared. However, the formation of hot, new blue stars has fallen off because the reserves of interstellar gas are almost all gone. The material available to create them has been radiated into space due to thermonuclear fusion reactions. Star-formation will continue to decline because there is a lack of new hydrogen and red giants will predominate; the Universe gradually becoming redder and dimmer. Ultimately, all stars will dissipate or become black holes—if they are massive enough. Stephen Hawking says that those black holes will also eventually evaporate, leaving nothing but an ever expanding space fading to nothingness.
Philosophically, a bleak concept. Irrespective of its emotional context, what science is used to support the contention?
In 2003, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image was constructed by marking out a small portion of the night sky apparently devoid of stars, pointing the Hubble Space Telescope in that direction for a long time, and then analyzing the collected light’s spectrogram. Since space telescopes use electronic detectors and not visual comparators, they can “gather” light over long periods and store the resulting data in computer memory. Over time, the data is assembled into a digital library that can be analyzed using various algorithms.
In that same region of sky, using the HUDF as a reference, astronomers from the Faint InfraRed Extragalactic Survey group were able to find 300 galaxies with extremely high redshifts, indicating an age of about 2 billion years after the Big Bang. Since the Big Bang happened approximately 13.7 billion years ago, the galaxies are considered to be very young, some of the youngest ever observed. Due to their youth and their color, the research team decided that the Universe was bluer in the past.
The new information from ICRAR involves 200,000 galaxies over 21 wavelengths from ultraviolet to far infrared. The new data is thought to support the previous study, pointing to a diminishing return. Star formation, therefore a bright, blue Universe, is weakening. However, as the authors of the paper state: “The analysis at present also includes a number of important caveats which we are looking to address in the near future.”
Big Bang cosmology (and its manifold problems) is the topic of several previous Pictures of the Day. Since it is the preeminent cosmological theory, its influence extends throughout astronomy and astrophysics. The idea that distances in space can be calculated using redshift is part and parcel of that theory. A thorough investigation into redshift was undertaken by the late Halton Arp. His conclusions were that redshift is an intrinsic property of matter and not an indication of velocity. If that is the case, then stars and galaxies are not receding from the Milky Way at tremendous speed and could be much closer than is believed. Indeed, distances to the most remotes celestial objects cannot be determined: no other “yardstick” is available.
In an Electric Universe, stellar fusion, the Big Bang and redshift, as well as stellar evolution on the main sequence are erroneous conclusions based on theories that do not adequately explain the observations. Since stars are not the balls of hot gas that is commonly thought, they are not gravity-driven and do not depend on atomic fusion for power. Gravity, density, compression, and mechanical phenomena give way to the effects of plasma.
The stars are not dense balls of hydrogen crushed into helium and electromagnetic radiation by gravity—all the fusion takes place on their surfaces. Since there are no superdense cores, their mass estimates are most likely being overstated by papers written from the consensus.
Plasma should not be taken in the conventional sense of “ionized gas.” That confused understanding of plasma depends on ideas about gas behavior and thermal ionization. Plasma is an emergent arrangement of complex forces. Phenomena such as filamentation, long-range attraction and short-range repulsion, braiding, distinctive velocities, formation of plasmoids, scalability, characteristic instabilities, etc. are all aspects of plasma.
Stars aren’t begotten through gas compression, their progenitor is charge separation. Positive ions and negative electrons move within plasma in ways not governed by gravity, although gravity might cause some heavy positive ions to create a charge surplus in one volume of space over another. When that happens, a weak electric field develops. An electric field, no matter how weak, will initiate the movement of electric charges that generate magnetic fields. Those fields interact with the magnetic fields generated by other electric currents.
Space telescope images, as well as photographs of plasma in the laboratory, reveal charge streams that form twisted pairs of filaments called Birkeland currents. Birkeland currents follow magnetic fields, drawing charged material from their surroundings. Those magnetic fields pinch ultra-fine dust and plasma into heated blobs of matter called plasmoids.
As the effect, called a “z-pinch”, increases the electric field intensifies, further increasing the z-pinch. The compressed plasma blobs form spinning electrical discharges. At first they glow as dim red dwarfs, then blazing yellow stars, and finally they might become brilliant ultraviolet arcs, driven by electricity. Stars are not “objects”, per se, they are spatial loci where concentrated electrical activity is focused.
Electric Universe advocates do not speculate about the beginning or the end of the Universe: there is no data to support either concept. Since the theories from consensus science are based on outmoded and mistaken notions about cosmology, in general, their conclusions about universal senescence and decrepitude can be dismissed.
Stephen Smith
