9 ms·

What if the cause of the cosmological redshift is continuous photon decay? Not galactic recession, but photon hubbling, or tired light? www.bigcircusmodel.org

timmg 5y ago
I'm not smart enough to know if that makes any sense at all. But it's a very intriguing idea. I'd never heard of it before.
- gnulinux 5y ago
  If it were the case, photon decay would be measurable. https://physicsworld.com/a/what-is-the-lifetime-of-a-photon/ https://physicsworld.com/a/what-is-the-lifetime-of-a-photon/
  - sahil50 5y ago
    E_measured / E_emitted = e^(-d / H'c) e is 2.718... d is distance of travel H' is 13.83 billion years, the continuous decay rate Rough calculations https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13aRdc1gZmsA3F-gKt5sKxPi3s9Pd4IHpgD5dlMao-cM/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13aRdc1gZmsA3F-gKt5sK... Data from https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/Library/Distances/ https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/Library/Distances/
rootbear 5y ago
This idea has been around almost a hundred year. It is not supported by the evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light
- sahil50 5y ago
  What if I could rebut all the rebuttals? - The analysis of supernovae light curves is calibrated in a way that presumes galactic recession. More detail here https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237 https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237. - The 2.7 K cosmic background radiation is consistent with non-expansionary, non-big-bang models. Cosmic temperature was predicted 50 years before Penzias and Wilson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Timeline_of_prediction,_discovery_and_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti... - The mechanism for photon energy loss (can we call this "photon hubbling"?) is not scattering by free electrons. I speculate it is the cost of traveling, of a photon forging its way through spacetime. E_t / E_0 = e^(-Ht). In the act of moving, the photon is warping spacetime. It doesn't travel for free.
Filligree 5y ago
It’s intuitively a reach, because photons don’t move. From a four dimensional perspective—which is the correct one, let’s not forget—the distance between a photon’s emission and absorption event is always zero. “Tired light” would require the photon to spontaneously lose energy based on the Manhattan distance of the path it takes. That distance can be arbitrarily large, sure—a photon can cover the entire universe before absorption—but it isn’t the path the photon actually takes, so it’s difficult to imagine why it would matter.
- hvidgaard 5y ago
  > From a four dimensional perspective—which is the correct one, let’s not forget—the distance between a photon’s emission and absorption event is always zero. That would require the emission and absorption events location in the space to be the same would it not? Or do you mean that a photon does not experience time, so relative to the photon it simply travel instantaneously from emitting coordinate to absorption coordinate?
  - gizmo686 5y ago
    The distance metric for flat spacetime is given by: ds^2 = dx^2 + dy^s + dz^2 - cdt^2 For a particle traveling at the speed of light, this gives ds=0.
  - creata 5y ago
    > That would require the emission and absorption events location in the space to be the same would it not? I think they're referring to the distance in Minkowski space,[0] where the time component and space component cancel out for light. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime#Spacetime_interval https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime#Spacetime_interval
- sahil50 5y ago
  Where does your claim that photons don't move come from? Very simply, the Sun is 8 minutes from the Earth. The photon is most definitely moving from the Sun to the Earth.
mojuba 5y ago
Sorry for meta, but to downvoters: please don't downvote a what-if question that - well, questions an established theory in a casual conversation. A lot of interesting, disruptive things in science start with a question!
- czzr 5y ago
  Without taking a position on downvoting - this is true for new interesting questions, at some point you have to move past ones already eliminated as reasonable possibilities.
  - smrk007 5y ago
    OTOH, I think this position is relevant only from the perspective of new scientific inquiry — it’s worth asking questions that have already be asked when learning / acquiring knowledge! Sure, someone could find this information on Google, but misinformation too, so I think it’s worth asking in this sort of environment so we can all more deeply understand existing theory, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  This seems very much like a disingenuous what-if - not a desire to actually seek an answer, but an attempt to convince people into believing what they do by posting a link to a very biased site.
- gliptic 5y ago
  While the comment says "What if", the site linked is more "All physics is wrong, this is how it is" and presents some model that has been disproven by evidence over and over. I think crank physics isn't worth discussing when presented in that fashion.
- sahil50 5y ago
  Thank you
sandgiant 5y ago
Not supported by data. There is plenty observational evidence that the redshift is due to cosmic expansion, e.g. galaxy surface brightness evolution, CMB, time dilation, the list goes on. The website you link poses a number of unsubstantiated claims without any answer to the numerous problems it raises. Then he links to this hilarious notebook; https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1K1qoUFvqZp1fWbpcKJWq63nflgwS0ZHh?usp=sharing https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1K1qoUFvqZp1fWbpcKJW... I don't mean to sound rude but this doesn't look like the work of someone who has spend any considerable amount of time actually studying the Universe.
- sahil50 5y ago
  What if I could rebut all the rebuttals? - The analysis of supernovae light curves is calibrated in a way that presumes galactic recession. More detail here https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237 https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237. - The 2.7 K cosmic background radiation is consistent with non-expansionary, non-big-bang models. Cosmic temperature was predicted 50 years before Penzias and Wilson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti... - The mechanism for photon energy loss (can we call this "photon hubbling"?) is not scattering by free electrons. I speculate it is the cost of traveling, of a photon forging its way through spacetime. E_t / E_0 = e^(-Ht). In the act of moving, the photon is warping spacetime. It doesn't travel for free. And, what's your view on Dirac's large numbers hypothesis?
pfdietz 5y ago
This would not give blackbody radiation, and is ruled out by observation. http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm
- sahil50 5y ago
  What if I could rebut all the rebuttals? - The analysis of supernovae light curves is calibrated in a way that presumes galactic recession. More detail here https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237 https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237. - The 2.7 K cosmic background radiation is consistent with non-expansionary, non-big-bang models. Cosmic temperature was predicted 50 years before Penzias and Wilson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti... - The mechanism for photon energy loss (can we call this "photon hubbling"?) is not scattering by free electrons. I speculate it is the cost of traveling, of a photon forging its way through spacetime. E_t / E_0 = e^(-Ht). In the act of moving, the photon is warping spacetime. It doesn't travel for free.
  - jakear 5y ago
    Please don’t repeat the same comment over and over, it comes off as spam even though that’s not what you intended. This doesn’t even address this particular parent’s question. Better would be to make the comment once, where it is most appropriate, then give specific responses to other threads, perhaps linking to the one comment if it’s relevant.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    The supernova light curve data is red shift vs. timescale of the light curve. This doesn't make any assumption about galactic recession. And it's incompatible with tired light models. No, the CMBR is not consistent with non-expansionary models. Tired light may get the shape of the CMBR spectrum right, but it fails to get the intensity right unless there's an extreme coincidence that we just happen to be living at exactly the right moment. This was all explained in the page you think you were rebutting, so please go re-read it, this time for comprehension.
bsedlm 5y ago
Reminds me of Cyclic Conformal Cosmology theory (backed by Roger Penrose). As far as I can tell, the CCC theory says that the big bang did happen but that the universe is cyclical. i.e. once the universe reaches 'heat death' another big bang happens.
- sahil50 5y ago
  Penrose's observations of evaporated black holes in the cosmic background radiation map are really interesting. This is a big reason to think there are structures older than 13.8 billion years.
jermaustin1 5y ago
I'm not smart enough to understand most of cosmology or astrophysics, but the way that site is presented makes me feel that it is quackery. The fact that there are only a handful of sentences makes me feel it is trying to appeal to people with low science literacy. I'm not trying to discount it, but that home page with 12 photos of various galaxies, and then 4 blurbs of text, then a full screen YouTube video just feels "unscientific".

timmg 5y ago

I'm not smart enough to know if that makes any sense at all. But it's a very intriguing idea. I'd never heard of it before.

gnulinux 5y ago
If it were the case, photon decay would be measurable. https://physicsworld.com/a/what-is-the-lifetime-of-a-photon/ https://physicsworld.com/a/what-is-the-lifetime-of-a-photon/
- sahil50 5y ago
  E_measured / E_emitted = e^(-d / H'c) e is 2.718... d is distance of travel H' is 13.83 billion years, the continuous decay rate Rough calculations https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13aRdc1gZmsA3F-gKt5sKxPi3s9Pd4IHpgD5dlMao-cM/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13aRdc1gZmsA3F-gKt5sK... Data from https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/Library/Distances/ https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/Library/Distances/

rootbear 5y ago

This idea has been around almost a hundred year. It is not supported by the evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light

sahil50 5y ago
What if I could rebut all the rebuttals? - The analysis of supernovae light curves is calibrated in a way that presumes galactic recession. More detail here https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237 https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237. - The 2.7 K cosmic background radiation is consistent with non-expansionary, non-big-bang models. Cosmic temperature was predicted 50 years before Penzias and Wilson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Timeline_of_prediction,_discovery_and_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti... - The mechanism for photon energy loss (can we call this "photon hubbling"?) is not scattering by free electrons. I speculate it is the cost of traveling, of a photon forging its way through spacetime. E_t / E_0 = e^(-Ht). In the act of moving, the photon is warping spacetime. It doesn't travel for free.

Filligree 5y ago

It’s intuitively a reach, because photons don’t move. From a four dimensional perspective—which is the correct one, let’s not forget—the distance between a photon’s emission and absorption event is always zero. “Tired light” would require the photon to spontaneously lose energy based on the Manhattan distance of the path it takes. That distance can be arbitrarily large, sure—a photon can cover the entire universe before absorption—but it isn’t the path the photon actually takes, so it’s difficult to imagine why it would matter.

hvidgaard 5y ago
> From a four dimensional perspective—which is the correct one, let’s not forget—the distance between a photon’s emission and absorption event is always zero. That would require the emission and absorption events location in the space to be the same would it not? Or do you mean that a photon does not experience time, so relative to the photon it simply travel instantaneously from emitting coordinate to absorption coordinate?
- gizmo686 5y ago
  The distance metric for flat spacetime is given by: ds^2 = dx^2 + dy^s + dz^2 - cdt^2 For a particle traveling at the speed of light, this gives ds=0.
- creata 5y ago
  > That would require the emission and absorption events location in the space to be the same would it not? I think they're referring to the distance in Minkowski space,[0] where the time component and space component cancel out for light. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime#Spacetime_interval https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime#Spacetime_interval
sahil50 5y ago
Where does your claim that photons don't move come from? Very simply, the Sun is 8 minutes from the Earth. The photon is most definitely moving from the Sun to the Earth.

mojuba 5y ago

Sorry for meta, but to downvoters: please don't downvote a what-if question that - well, questions an established theory in a casual conversation. A lot of interesting, disruptive things in science start with a question!

czzr 5y ago
Without taking a position on downvoting - this is true for new interesting questions, at some point you have to move past ones already eliminated as reasonable possibilities.
- smrk007 5y ago
  OTOH, I think this position is relevant only from the perspective of new scientific inquiry — it’s worth asking questions that have already be asked when learning / acquiring knowledge! Sure, someone could find this information on Google, but misinformation too, so I think it’s worth asking in this sort of environment so we can all more deeply understand existing theory, etc.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
This seems very much like a disingenuous what-if - not a desire to actually seek an answer, but an attempt to convince people into believing what they do by posting a link to a very biased site.
gliptic 5y ago
While the comment says "What if", the site linked is more "All physics is wrong, this is how it is" and presents some model that has been disproven by evidence over and over. I think crank physics isn't worth discussing when presented in that fashion.
sahil50 5y ago
Thank you

sandgiant 5y ago

Not supported by data. There is plenty observational evidence that the redshift is due to cosmic expansion, e.g. galaxy surface brightness evolution, CMB, time dilation, the list goes on. The website you link poses a number of unsubstantiated claims without any answer to the numerous problems it raises. Then he links to this hilarious notebook; https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1K1qoUFvqZp1fWbpcKJWq63nflgwS0ZHh?usp=sharing https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1K1qoUFvqZp1fWbpcKJW... I don't mean to sound rude but this doesn't look like the work of someone who has spend any considerable amount of time actually studying the Universe.

sahil50 5y ago
What if I could rebut all the rebuttals? - The analysis of supernovae light curves is calibrated in a way that presumes galactic recession. More detail here https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237 https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237. - The 2.7 K cosmic background radiation is consistent with non-expansionary, non-big-bang models. Cosmic temperature was predicted 50 years before Penzias and Wilson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti... - The mechanism for photon energy loss (can we call this "photon hubbling"?) is not scattering by free electrons. I speculate it is the cost of traveling, of a photon forging its way through spacetime. E_t / E_0 = e^(-Ht). In the act of moving, the photon is warping spacetime. It doesn't travel for free. And, what's your view on Dirac's large numbers hypothesis?

pfdietz 5y ago

This would not give blackbody radiation, and is ruled out by observation. http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm

sahil50 5y ago
What if I could rebut all the rebuttals? - The analysis of supernovae light curves is calibrated in a way that presumes galactic recession. More detail here https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237 https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11237. - The 2.7 K cosmic background radiation is consistent with non-expansionary, non-big-bang models. Cosmic temperature was predicted 50 years before Penzias and Wilson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Ti... - The mechanism for photon energy loss (can we call this "photon hubbling"?) is not scattering by free electrons. I speculate it is the cost of traveling, of a photon forging its way through spacetime. E_t / E_0 = e^(-Ht). In the act of moving, the photon is warping spacetime. It doesn't travel for free.
- jakear 5y ago
  Please don’t repeat the same comment over and over, it comes off as spam even though that’s not what you intended. This doesn’t even address this particular parent’s question. Better would be to make the comment once, where it is most appropriate, then give specific responses to other threads, perhaps linking to the one comment if it’s relevant.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  The supernova light curve data is red shift vs. timescale of the light curve. This doesn't make any assumption about galactic recession. And it's incompatible with tired light models. No, the CMBR is not consistent with non-expansionary models. Tired light may get the shape of the CMBR spectrum right, but it fails to get the intensity right unless there's an extreme coincidence that we just happen to be living at exactly the right moment. This was all explained in the page you think you were rebutting, so please go re-read it, this time for comprehension.

bsedlm 5y ago

Reminds me of Cyclic Conformal Cosmology theory (backed by Roger Penrose). As far as I can tell, the CCC theory says that the big bang did happen but that the universe is cyclical. i.e. once the universe reaches 'heat death' another big bang happens.

sahil50 5y ago
Penrose's observations of evaporated black holes in the cosmic background radiation map are really interesting. This is a big reason to think there are structures older than 13.8 billion years.

jermaustin1 5y ago

I'm not smart enough to understand most of cosmology or astrophysics, but the way that site is presented makes me feel that it is quackery. The fact that there are only a handful of sentences makes me feel it is trying to appeal to people with low science literacy. I'm not trying to discount it, but that home page with 12 photos of various galaxies, and then 4 blurbs of text, then a full screen YouTube video just feels "unscientific".