Add in all the new talk about dark matter and dark energy. Hubble interpreted redshift as an indication of an expanding universe because he had no choice—we had discarded the notion of ether. With the inclusion of matter and energy we cannot se, however, I wonder if we have to begin to question how we interpret redshift: is it merely a Doppler effect, or an interaction with intervening dark matter or dark energy? Put another way, is it just a form of scattering or something similar, and only an indicator of distance? That would have profound implications for the size or age of the universe. The second people started talking about dark matter as if it exists a lot of alarm bells startted going off in my head—space would no longer be empty, and it was the emptiness that mandated an expanding universe and a Big Bang.
Here is my interpretation.
The big bang didn’t “happen”.
The big bang is “happening”.
I spent a few years studying universal constants and their values and relationships and came up with an equation that describes universal expansion. My conclusion was that even though the universe is gaining mass (linearly with the time), it will basically end up kind of evaporating because the density of the universe is always going down.
The way out of it, at least in my theory, is that we have described gravity all wrong. Gravity is not two pieces of mass being “attracted” together.
Gravity is the result of empty space PUSHING the mass together.
There are visual aids and math I could use to show what I mean, but it’s rather complex and I don’t have the time right now.
There WILL be a revolution in physics. And it is totally understandable that many who have lived their entire lives learning the orthodox views (QM and Relativity) will fight tooth and nail to hang on to those positions.
Exciting times.
I’ve gotten the impression that “dark matter” is the astrophysical equivalent of “here there be dragons.”