Wondering about wild grapes

Monday, October 17, 2011

Wondering about the age of the universe.

Scientists and astronomers think they have the age of our universe all figured out. I am not too sure about that. Just lately they found some galaxies that they said (according to their red-shift) what they were seeing was only a few million years from the “big bang” and the furthest of any other thing that has ever been seen. I am not so sure that they are right, but just little ole me couldn’t be right, could I? Remember my blog http://dizzydick.blogspot.com/2011/10/wondering-why-this-sounds-familiar.html where I talked about the theory that our universe is a brane (membrane)? That theory may be the answer to the question I am going to pose here today. But for the sake of this blog, let us assume that the “big bang” theory is correct and this universe started from a point where a terrific explosion occurred.



For the sake of this argument, I am going to assume that since everything started from an explosion and that there was nothing around to direct that explosion, that it spewed matter in all directions. Now, I am going to show you a sketch and to keep it simple, it is only in 2D, but the same would apply if I had made it in three dimensions. After you look at this sketch, I am going to explain why they may be wrong in their conclusions of the age of the universe.
The big red circle is where the “big bang” occurred. The blue circle is our own galaxy and the magenta circle is the far away galaxies that they just spotted. This sketch shows distance-1 to be equal to distance-2. That would mean that our galaxy and the far away galaxy are the same age but the direction of their travel was different. So, when the far away galaxy is viewed, it is further away from us than the original point of the “big bang”. Now tell me, how can astronomers tell how old the universe is just by observing another galaxy. In my sketch, the far away galaxy is 1.6 times as far away from us as the “big bang” and therefore would appear older than the beginning. Does this make sense to you? Maybe I just woke up too Dizzy this morning. . .



You all have a good day and a good week, you hear?

10 comments:

  1. HUH? All I know for sure about the age of the Universe is. It was here when I got here 65 years ago . :-) That's all that matters to me. :-)

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  2. Seems to my feeble brain that your explanation makes more sense!

    I'm no rocket scientist but it does seem more logical!

    I need more coffee! And another cookie!

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  3. Shouldn't it be possible to figure out the starting point? If the direction of travel of the galaxies could be determined, just backtrack to the common point. Of course, we can't actually watch distant objects moving around on human time scales, but moving galaxies should have left evidence in their wake.

    Once the common point is discovered, then the math should be fairly simple to figure out how long stuff's been flying out.

    Then again, I'm making all kinds of assumptions here.

    Good fun.

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  4. Ben, I am pushing 69 and it has been around for that long, and I know some people who are even older than I am. Some are bloggers, too, but won’t mention their names (grin).

    HJ, it makes sense of the universe is a bubble ore a disk that expanded from the center, with other universe theories, it may not.

    6bears, that sounds easy but galaxies do circle each other and many tend to congregate it groups. Now maybe tracking the movement of these groups would work. It was almost 400,000 years before photons escaped and between 100 and 200 million years before the first stars formed, if you can believe the theories. The universe is now about 13.75 billion years old, as best as they can guess. Now with the expansion going on, everything is moving away from us and from each other.

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  5. This is above my pay grade Dizzy. I aint even sure what day a the week it is.

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  6. Hobo, when you are retired, you don't need to know which day of the week it is, in fact I sometimes don't which year it is.

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  7. I'm still coming to terms with the notion that one and one equals, don't tell me, I'll figure it out, in fact the answer is on the tip of my tongue... but I like the big bang theory DD...

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  8. TFT, OK I will not tell you. I like big bangs, too.

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  9. I'm somewhat partial to "Turtles all the way down".

    "Turtles all the way down" is a jocular expression of the infinite regress problem in cosmology posed by the "unmoved mover" paradox. The phrase was popularized by Stephen Hawking in 1988. The "turtle" metaphor in the anecdote represents a popular notion of a "primitive cosmological myth", viz. the flat earth supported on the back of a World Turtle.

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  10. edlfrey, and maybe there are turtles all the way up, too.

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