Common ideas about type 1a supernovae. Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss. Click to enlarge.
Aug 4, 2017
Is the Universe expanding?
“As a general scientific principle, it is undesirable to depend crucially on what is unobservable to explain what is observable, as happens frequently in Big Bang cosmology.”
— Halton Arp
Electric Universe theory states that stars are born where regions of space accumulate dense electric charge. Rather than nebular condensates that eventually ignite with thermonuclear reactions, stars are concentrations of electricity that result from Birkeland currents and electric charge separation.
If that idea has merit, then size and luminosity can reveal little, if anything, about stars. Red giant stars, for instance, are big because of low electrical stress in the circuits that connect them to the galaxy. Blue-white stars are under such extreme electrical stress that they could explode if there is a breakdown in their double-layer envelopes. The mere fact of a star’s age (impossible to determine from observations) is no indicator of a potential supernova.
Consensus cosmologists ignore electricity as an active force. For example, a supernova known as 1987a exhibits all the signs of an electrical discharge: X-rays from ion excitation, a range of energy curves, and bursts of extreme ultraviolet light are all phenomena that are associated with lightning bolts. Supernovae are most likely breakdowns in a capacitor-like system that was discussed in a recent Picture of the Day. If that is so, then they are flashes of cosmic lightning not nuclear explosions and “core rebound”. That theory of electrical detonation throws cosmological expansion theories down the rabbit hole.
Along with a mistaken notion about stellar evolution, redshift is another problematic theory that has inhibited astrophysics since Edwin Hubble first identified what he thought was a Doppler effect in photographs of faint galaxies. Many years ago, as a counter to time-speed-distance theories about redshift, astronomer Halton Arp proposed that it is an intrinsic property of matter, and that it can change over time. He submitted many observations that did not fit with galactic acceleration models, including high redshift objects in front of low redshift objects, and celestial objects with different redshifts connected by bridges and filaments of luminous matter.
The redshift theory leads to a conclusion that the Universe is expanding, a conclusion that is challenged by Electric Universe theory. Redshift and gravity are foundations that prop-up Big Bang cosmology. Since light is conventionally thought to shift toward the red when galaxies are receding from the observer, they are interpreted to be far away. The farther away they are, the faster they move and the greater their redshifts, so the Universe is thought to be expanding.
Gravity rules the Universe in Big Bang cosmology. One of the most profound mysteries in astrophysics is that, if gravity is the only controlling force, the initial inertial moment applied to the monobloc by a Big Bang explosion must eventually slow down—an inescapable conclusion. However, two astronomers, Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt, thought that the expansion of the Universe is not slowing down, it is accelerating. When they plotted redshifted “velocities of recession” to supernovae, like the aforementioned 1987a, their figures suggested that the expansion rate of the Universe is greater today than it used to be.
From an Electric Universe perspective, that idea is based on the absurd notion that type 1a supernovae can be used as “galactic candles”, meaning that they must exhibit the same energy curves and brightness no matter where they are found. Since Perlmutter and Schmidt saw type 1a supernovae in distant galaxies that were “dimmer than they ought to be,” they concluded that those galaxies were accelerating, leading to the theory of dark energy, an unknown force that is causing the Universe to “speed up” as it ages.
However, as mentioned above, if electricity is brought into the discussion, luminosity has nothing to do with distance, nor does it have anything to do with the characteristics of type 1a supernovae. Stellar explosions are shorts in the circuits that provide them with energy. Stars are externally powered by Birkeland currents, so their lives and their deaths have nothing to do with nuclear cores or fusion, in general.
Electric Universe advocate, Wal Thornhill wrote:
“Based on Arp’s discovery and the electric model of galaxies and stars, both stars and supernovae type 1a are naturally dimmer, and the supernovae more short-lived, in high-redshift galaxies than in low-redshift galaxies because of the smaller galactic power density and lower mass (energy) of all subatomic particles making up the former.”
Stephen Smith
