For immediate release
May 1, 2014
Observations of distant galaxies provide stunning new evidence
that the Universe is not expanding
Image shows the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field,
which provided data for this new work.
Update
Oxford University societies hosted two presentations by LPPFusion President and Chief Scientist Eric Lerner in May. The Oxford University Scientific Society invited Lerner to tell them about our Focus Fusion project and the crowdfunding campaign. The presentation, a full description of where we are and the implications of our project are available here. The Oxford University Space and Astronomy Society also invited Lerner to speak about his and his colleagues’ new paper on the non-expansion of the universe. Thanks to our hosts Avi Roy, Leon Kong and Ryan MacDonald for the invitations.
New Challenge to the dominant Big Bang theory, which is suffering growing contradictions
For information: Eric Lerner
732-356-5900, 908-546-7654, eric@lppfusion.com
Renato Falomo (available after May 5)
INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova
+390498293464, renato.falomo@oapd.inaf.it
Riccardo Scarpa
Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Spain
+34 922 425 720, riccardo.scarpa@gtc.iac.es
In a startling challenge to the widely-popular Big Bang theory, new evidence, published online May 2 in the International Journal of Modern Physics, D, (and posted to Arxiv) indicates that the universe is not expanding after all. The evidence, based on detailed measurements of the size and brightness of hundreds of galaxies, adds to a growing list of observations that contradict the predictions of the increasingly complex Big Bang model.
The new research tested one of the striking predictions of the Big Bang theory: that ordinary geometry does not work at great distances. In the space around us, on earth, in the solar system and the Milky Way, as similar objects get farther away, they look fainter and smaller. Their surface brightness, that is the brightness per unit area, remains constant. In contrast, the Big Bang theory tells us that in an expanding universe objects actually should appear fainter but bigger. Thus in this theory, the surface brightness decreases with the distance. In addition, the light is stretched as the universe expanded, further dimming the light. So in an expanding universe the most distant galaxies should have hundreds of times dimmer surface brightness than similar nearby galaxies, making them actually undetectable with present-day telescopes.
The science behind the new view of cosmology also underlies breakthroughs in clean fusion energy. Learn how you can contribute.
But that is not what observations show, as demonstrated by this new investigation. The researchers—Eric J. Lerner ( LPPFusion, Inc.,USA), Dr. Renato Falomo ( INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy), and Dr. Riccardo Scarpa (Instituto de Astrofısica de Canarias, Spain)– carefully compared the size and brightness of about a thousand nearby and extremely distant galaxies, using images from the GALEX satellite for nearby ones and from the Hubble Space Telescope for distant ones. They chose the most luminous spiral galaxies for comparisons, matching the average luminosity of the near and far samples. Contrary to the prediction of the Big Bang theory, they found that the surface brightnesses of the near and far galaxies are identical. (See Figure 1).
Figure 1. Difference in surface brightness between nearby galaxies observed with GALEX and distant ones observed with Hubble Space Telescope are plotted against the redshift of the Hubble galaxies. Vertical line show statistical error bars. The data are completely consistent with no difference in surface brightness, as predicted for a non-expanding universe.(Red dots are galaxies measured in the Near UV band and Blue dots those in the Far UV band.)
These results are fully consistent with what would be expected from ordinary geometry if the Universe was not expanding, and are in contradiction with the drastic dimming of surface brightness predicted by the expanding Universe hypothesis.
“Of course, you can hypothesize that galaxies were much smaller, and thus had hundreds of times greater intrinsic surface brightness in the past, and that, just by coincidence, the Big Bang dimming exactly cancels that greater brightness at all distances to produce the illusion of a constant brightness, but that would be a very big coincidence”, comments Lerner.
That was not the only startling result of their research. In order to apply the surface brightness test, first proposed in 1930 by physicist Richard C. Tolman, the research team had to determine the actual luminosity of the galaxies, so as to match near and far galaxies.
To do that, they had to link the distance to the galaxies with their redshift– the amount that their light had shifted to the red part of the spectrum. They hypothesized that the distance is proportional to the redshift at all distances, as is well verified to be the case in the nearby Universe. They checked this relation between redshift and distance with the data on supernova brightness that has been used to measure the hypothesized accelerated expansion of the Universe
“It is amazing that the predictions of this simple formula are as good as the predictions of the expanding universe theory, which include complex corrections for hypothetical dark matter and dark energy. (See Figure 2). “, says Dr. Falomo. “Again you could take this to be merely coincidental, but it would be a second big coincidence,” says Dr. Scarpa.
Figure 2. The apparent brightness of Type 1 a supernovae (x and plus signs) are plotted against redshift (the dimmer the star, the higher the distance modulus). The predictions of the non-expanding theory (solid line) hardly differ from that of the dark matter, dark energy Big Bang theory (dashed line).
Therefore if the universe is not expanding, the redshift of light with increasing distance must be caused by some other phenomena–something that happens to the light itself as it travels through space. “We are not speculating now as to what could cause the redshift of light,” explains Lerner. ”However, such a redshift, which is not associated with expansion, could be observed with suitable spacecraft within our own solar system in the future”.
The team spent years ensuring that no errors crept into the data, that all galaxies were measured in the same way, and that even galaxies too small to be measured were taken into account, as is detailed in the paper, “UV surface brightness of galaxies from the local Universe to z ~ 5”, published in IJMPD. The work also shows that earlier studies of the surface brightness test, when consistently analyzed, support the same conclusion.
This new evidence is by no means the only recent result that challenges the Big Bang theory, a theory that after all rests on the existence of dark matter, dark energy, and inflation, three hypothetical entities whose reality is far from being proved. See background on “The Growing Case against the Big Bang Theory”.
“Questions and Answers on The Science of Surface Brightness” gives more technical details on this study. Also available are biographical sketches of the research team members, background on the connection between Eric J. Lerner’s research of fusion energy and on cosmology.
