Is the universe at least 136 billion years old, is the universe not expanding at all, did the universe begin its expansion when Hubble measured its redshift for the first time or was light twice as fast 13.5 billion years ago than it is today?

[tmdarkmatter]

Once again, I have some (maybe unusual) questions for the scientific community. I hope you can easily refute my ideas with good arguments. But first I want to mention again what we are currently supposing:

1. The limit of the visible universe is somewhere close to 13.5 billion light years away. (I am using this limit just to make my calculations easier).

2. The universe is expanding, and this expansion is pulling galaxies away from us according to the Hubble constant.

3. Whenever a galaxy is at a distance of almost 13.5 billion light years, this galaxy is moving away from us almost at the speed of light.

4. Objects that are very close to us (for example less than 1 million light years) are almost not moving away from us.

5. The speed of light is constant and has always been the same.

Now I have the following idea about light travelling from the furthest galaxies towards us: if light is travelling at speed of light but at the same time the space between this galaxy and us is expanding at a speed that is almost the speed of light, that would mean that the “effective speed of light” of this light should be close to zero. This is similar to someone walking on an escalator against the current. After some time, the escalator would move slower and slower, until finally stopping completely, when the person arrives at its destination (for example earth).

At first, I thought that there should be an acceleration of the light when it is travelling to us and that the “effective speed” should increase according to time, meaning that there is a constant acceleration (this would translate into light needing at least twice as much time to reach us than we currently think). But this is not true, because the “effective speed” would not depend on time, but on the distance light has effectively travelled. The expansion depends on the distance the light is still away from us.

Now if I imagine that the horizon of the visible universe is 13.5 billion light years away and that a galaxy is for example 13.499 billion light years away, I calculated that the light of this galaxy would move at the usual 300,000 km/s against a current of 299,977.78 km/s arising from the expansion, so the “effective speed” would be only approx. 22.22 km/s. If I now split the path of the light towards us into 13,500 segments of 1 million light years each, then I can calculate that the light would need about 13,500 billion years just to travel through the first segment. Once this light has travelled through about 1000 of these segments, it would still need about 13,5 million years to travel through each segment and once it reaches us, it would only need 1 million years to travel these 1 million light years (maximum effective speed). According to my calculations, the light would need about 136 billion years to reach us from a distance of 13.499 billion light years (about 10 times more).

But if there is a galaxy even closer to the horizon, it might need even more time until reaching infinite.

On the other side, even the light from a galaxy that is 1 billion light years closer to us than the horizon would still need 35 billion years to reach us, not 12.5 billion years.

Now please tell me what I am doing wrong. Why should the expansion of the universe not have any effect at all on the light travelling against this expansion? Was light much faster 13.5 billion years ago than it is today? Was the light coming from distant galaxies actually generated in galaxies that were much closer to us? If the universe expands, this expansion should also carry the light away from us, not only the galaxies. I hope you understand what I mean. Expansion cannot move galaxies while not moving light.

On the other hand, the (accelerated) expansion of the universe would make our universe look very odd and unnatural. It would be like a soccer field where there is one galaxy every 5 meters at the borders of the soccer field, with increasing density of galaxies in the center, with maybe 1 million galaxies at a radius of less than 5 meters from the center and a pinhead in the center containing 99,9% of all galaxies of the universe.

Please let me know what you think and don´t forget that it does not matter who I am or what I do. Everybody on this planet should have the right to ask questions. I hope that this topic will lead to a conversation with mutual respect and that somebody shows up with a good refutation, so I have peace of mind.

[Genady]

6 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

1. The limit of the visible universe is somewhere close to 13.5 billion light years away.

Not so. Observable universe - Wikipedia:

Quote

the current comoving distance to particles from which the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) was emitted, which represents the radius of the visible universe, is about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light-years); the comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light-years)

 

[Bufofrog]

23 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

On the other side, even the light from a galaxy that is 1 billion light years closer to us than the horizon would still need 35 billion years to reach us, not 12.5 billion years.

Don't forget that the light from a galaxy that is 13 billion years old was a emitted a lot closer to us than 13 light years!

Edited August 7, 2023 by Bufofrog

[exchemist]

7 hours ago, tmdarkmatter said:

Once again, I have some (maybe unusual) questions for the scientific community. I hope you can easily refute my ideas with good arguments. But first I want to mention again what we are currently supposing:

1. The limit of the visible universe is somewhere close to 13.5 billion light years away. (I am using this limit just to make my calculations easier).

2. The universe is expanding, and this expansion is pulling galaxies away from us according to the Hubble constant.

3. Whenever a galaxy is at a distance of almost 13.5 billion light years, this galaxy is moving away from us almost at the speed of light.

4. Objects that are very close to us (for example less than 1 million light years) are almost not moving away from us.

5. The speed of light is constant and has always been the same.

Now I have the following idea about light travelling from the furthest galaxies towards us: if light is travelling at speed of light but at the same time the space between this galaxy and us is expanding at a speed that is almost the speed of light, that would mean that the “effective speed of light” of this light should be close to zero. This is similar to someone walking on an escalator against the current. After some time, the escalator would move slower and slower, until finally stopping completely, when the person arrives at its destination (for example earth).

At first, I thought that there should be an acceleration of the light when it is travelling to us and that the “effective speed” should increase according to time, meaning that there is a constant acceleration (this would translate into light needing at least twice as much time to reach us than we currently think). But this is not true, because the “effective speed” would not depend on time, but on the distance light has effectively travelled. The expansion depends on the distance the light is still away from us.

Now if I imagine that the horizon of the visible universe is 13.5 billion light years away and that a galaxy is for example 13.499 billion light years away, I calculated that the light of this galaxy would move at the usual 300,000 km/s against a current of 299,977.78 km/s arising from the expansion, so the “effective speed” would be only approx. 22.22 km/s. If I now split the path of the light towards us into 13,500 segments of 1 million light years each, then I can calculate that the light would need about 13,500 billion years just to travel through the first segment. Once this light has travelled through about 1000 of these segments, it would still need about 13,5 million years to travel through each segment and once it reaches us, it would only need 1 million years to travel these 1 million light years (maximum effective speed). According to my calculations, the light would need about 136 billion years to reach us from a distance of 13.499 billion light years (about 10 times more).

But if there is a galaxy even closer to the horizon, it might need even more time until reaching infinite.

On the other side, even the light from a galaxy that is 1 billion light years closer to us than the horizon would still need 35 billion years to reach us, not 12.5 billion years.

Now please tell me what I am doing wrong. Why should the expansion of the universe not have any effect at all on the light travelling against this expansion? Was light much faster 13.5 billion years ago than it is today? Was the light coming from distant galaxies actually generated in galaxies that were much closer to us? If the universe expands, this expansion should also carry the light away from us, not only the galaxies. I hope you understand what I mean. Expansion cannot move galaxies while not moving light.

On the other hand, the (accelerated) expansion of the universe would make our universe look very odd and unnatural. It would be like a soccer field where there is one galaxy every 5 meters at the borders of the soccer field, with increasing density of galaxies in the center, with maybe 1 million galaxies at a radius of less than 5 meters from the center and a pinhead in the center containing 99,9% of all galaxies of the universe.

Please let me know what you think and don´t forget that it does not matter who I am or what I do. Everybody on this planet should have the right to ask questions. I hope that this topic will lead to a conversation with mutual respect and that somebody shows up with a good refutation, so I have peace of mind.

I’m just a chemist, but isn’t there a problem with your notion of the “effective speed” of light? Surely the speed of light is independent of the relative speeds of emitter and receiver, is it not? So for rapidly receding objects (relative to us) what happens is the speed of light still reaches us at c, but it is just red shifted.

In which case your escalator analogy would appear to be misplaced.

Edited August 8, 2023 by exchemist

[tmdarkmatter]

10 hours ago, Genady said:

Not so. Observable universe - Wikipedia:

Ok, the same calculations can be made with different horizons, but the problem remains the same. Light is still beeing carried away by expansion.

10 hours ago, Bufofrog said:

Don't forget that the light from a galaxy that is 13 billion years old was a emitted a lot closer to us than 13 light years!

So you suppose that the light was emitted closer to us and then the universe expanded. My questions in this case are: At what distance was the light emitted? What was the position of this light during all this time (light just floating and not moving?)? Why would we see tiny galaxies (dots) with their size beeing according to the estimated distance, why would we not see big galaxies corresponding the images to galaxies closer to us?

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

I’m just a chemist, but isn’t there a problem with your notion of the “effective speed” of light? Surely the speed of light is independent of the relative speeds of emitter and receiver, is it not? So for rapidly receding objects (relative to us) what happens is the speed of light still reaches us at c, but it is just red shifted.

Yes, I understand what you mean, but red shifted or not, light coming from this distance and having to cross a universe in expansion would need more time to travel this distance, even if travelling at the speed of light and beeing this speed a constant. If light is travelling through a space and I (playing god) expand this space while the light is inside of this space, I should be able to delay that light. It is very important to mention that I am not changing the speed of light, I am only modifying the distance light has to travel. Wouldn´t it be strange to say that when light is red shifted it has the right to travel faster than the speed of light? That would be a contradiction.

Edited August 8, 2023 by tmdarkmatter

[Genady]

2 hours ago, tmdarkmatter said:

At what distance was the light emitted?

The light of the cosmic microwave background was emitted from about 40 mln ly away.

Edited August 8, 2023 by Genady

[tmdarkmatter]

11 minutes ago, Genady said:

The light of the cosmic microwave background was emitted from about 40 mln ly away.

Million or billion? If million, why would this light need 13.5 billion years to reach us? Was this light carried away and then send to us?

[Genady]

1 minute ago, tmdarkmatter said:

Million or billion? If million, why would this light need 13.5 billion years to reach us? Was this light carried away and then send to us?

Million. As it was moving toward us with the speed of light, the distance in front of it that it still had to cover, kept growing. 

[tmdarkmatter]

So this is indeed light that needed 13.5 billion years to travel 40 million light years?

Shouldn´t in that case the universe have expanded faster than the speed of light?

Another issue is that all the galaxies we can currently observe would not fit into that small space and that these galaxies at the same time would not create the images of big galaxies we can see close to the horizon.

Edited August 8, 2023 by tmdarkmatter

[Genady]

1 minute ago, tmdarkmatter said:

So this is indeed light that needed 13.5 billion years to travel 40 million light years?

No. If the light had an odometer attached to it, the odometer would show that it has covered the total distance of 13.5 billion light years.

[tmdarkmatter]

7 minutes ago, Genady said:

No. If the light had an odometer attached to it, the odometer would show that it has covered the total distance of 13.5 billion light years.

And how would you explain this with the galaxies that are furthest away? Where did they start their journey?

Why would we see them as tiny dots when their light source was actually less than 40 million light years away from us?

Edited August 8, 2023 by tmdarkmatter

[Genady]

1 minute ago, tmdarkmatter said:

And how would you explain this with the galaxies that are furthest away? Where did they start their journey?

For each galaxy we measure its redshift, z. The light we see now left the galaxy, which is at the distance d from us now, when it was at the distance d/(z+1) from us.

[tmdarkmatter]

4 minutes ago, Genady said:

The light we see now left the galaxy, which is at the distance d from us now, when it was at the distance d/(z+1) from us.

But why would the image of this galaxy become a tiny dot in the sky if this image was travelling at the speed of light against the expansion?

If there is an expansion, the image would expand together with the universe.

Edited August 8, 2023 by tmdarkmatter

[Bufofrog]

3 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

But why would the image of this galaxy become a tiny dot in the sky if this image was travelling at the speed of light against the expansion?

If there is an expansion, the image would expand together with the universe.

No, the image would not "expand together with the universe".  The distance between us and the galaxy increased, so fewer photons of light from that galaxy reaches our eyes.  Isn't it kind of obvious that the farther away from a light you are the dimmer it gets, it doesn't matter that when the light was emitted it was closer to us.

[Genady]

5 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

But why would the image of this galaxy become a tiny dot in the sky if this image was travelling at the speed of light against the expansion?

If there is an expansion, the image would expand together with the universe.

The farthest galaxy observed today has a redshift of 11.6. This means that when the light was emitted it was 12.6 times closer to us than it is now. This means that the image of the galaxy that we see is 12.6 times larger than it should be for its current distance. A tiny dot enlarged 12.6 times is still a tiny dot.

[tmdarkmatter]

9 minutes ago, Genady said:

A tiny dot enlarged 12.6 times is still a tiny dot.

But this tiny dot is vissible in a universe with a radius of 13.5 billion light years, when the radius at the beginning was only 40 million light years. So this tiny dot should be much bigger considering that this galaxy was much closer to us.

We are talking about a galaxy only 30 million light years away that was pushed away from us to 13.5 billion light years. Why would its image shrink when this image was created at the beginning?

When you watch a car moving away at a high speed, this car does not get smaller immediately. It needs to drive away from us to get smaller. The acceleration alone does not change the image. The car has the same size at time 0.

Edited August 8, 2023 by tmdarkmatter

[Bufofrog]

3 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

We are talking about a galaxy only 30 million light years away that was pushed away from us to 13.5 billion light years. Why would its image shrink when this image was created at the beginning?

Because there is no possible way it would not "shrink".  You really need to think about this instead of digging in your heels.

Here is an analogy, if there was a large explosion and you were 1 mile away it would be very loud.  If on the other hand when this explosion happened you were in a jet moving close to the speed of sound away from the explosion, when the sound wave passed you at, say 10 miles from the explosion, would it be just as loud as the 1 mile distance?

[Genady]

10 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

But this tiny dot is vissible in a universe with a radius of 13.5 billion light years, when the radius at the beginning was only 40 million light years. So this tiny dot should be much bigger considering that this galaxy was much closer to us.

We are talking about a galaxy only 30 million light years away that was pushed away from us to 13.5 billion light years. Why would its image shrink when this image was created at the beginning?

Your numbers are off. The radius of the visible universe is about 46 billion light years, not 13.5 billion light years. See the very first comment above.

The galaxy did not emit light when the universe was only 40 million light years large. The cosmic microwave background light was emitted then.

As I've explained in my previous post, this tiny dot looks not "much", but 12.6 times bigger. It was not "much", but 12.6 times closer. 

[tmdarkmatter]

13 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

Here is an analogy, if there was a large explosion and you were 1 mile away it would be very loud.  If on the other hand when this explosion happened you were in a jet moving close to the speed of sound away from the explosion, when the sound wave passed you at, say 10 miles from the explosion, would it be just as loud as the 1 mile distance?

Yes, I have been thinking about this too. I think the idea that the sound is now rather quiet would mean that there was red-shifting. But the proportion of the area in front of you affected by this noise would still be the same, even if the explosion looks much smaller now.

If you walk at sunset, your shadow also becomes bigger and bigger the longer it is. So the image of these galaxies should also become bigger and bigger, compensating the expansion of the universe.

13 minutes ago, Genady said:

Your numbers are off. The radius of the visible universe is about 46 billion light years, not 13.5 billion light years. See the very first comment above.

If the radius of the visible universe is about 46 billion light years, why do we not see any galaxies that are between 13.5 billion and 46 billion light years away?

Edited August 8, 2023 by tmdarkmatter

[Genady]

14 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

If the radius of the visible universe is about 46 billion light years, why do we not see any galaxies that are between 13.5 billion and 46 billion light years away?

We see the source of the cosmic microwave background. This source is now 46 billion light years away.

[tmdarkmatter]

3 minutes ago, Genady said:

We see the source of the cosmic microwave background. This source is now 46 billion light years away.

But this distance was only estimated taking into account the red shift. By the way, did you notice that this would mean that only 3,8% of the universe contains galaxies?

[Bufofrog]

20 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

If you walk at sunset, your shadow also becomes bigger and bigger the longer it is. So the image of these galaxies should also become bigger and bigger, compensating the expansion of the universe.

You are really reaching now and just clinging to your idea.  I suggest that you do some reading about the expansion of the universe to help you understand the concept better.

[Genady]

3 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

did you notice that this would mean that only 3,8% of the universe contains galaxies?

No, your calculations are incorrect.

 

26 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

why do we not see any galaxies that are between 13.5 billion and 46 billion light years away?

We do. See e.g. List of the most distant astronomical objects - Wikipedia:

Quote

Most distant galaxy with a spectroscopically-confirmed redshift as of December 2022.^[7] These are data from Webb science in progress as of 9 December 2022, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. The estimated light-travel distance is about 13.6 billion light-years (and a proper distance of approximately 33.6 billion light-years (10.3 billion parsecs) from Earth due to the Universe's expansion since the light we now observe left it about 13.6 billion years ago)

You see, 33.6 billion light-years!

[tmdarkmatter]

17 minutes ago, Genady said:

Most distant galaxy with a spectroscopically-confirmed redshift as of December 2022.^[7] These are data from Webb science in progress as of 9 December 2022, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. The estimated light-travel distance is about 13.6 billion light-years (and a proper distance of approximately 33.6 billion light-years (10.3 billion parsecs) from Earth due to the Universe's expansion since the light we now observe left it about 13.6 billion years ago)

I think there is a huge difference between "visible universe" and "currently estimated universe taking into account that expansion is real".

17 minutes ago, Genady said:

No, your calculations are incorrect.

If we suppose that we can see the microwave background at a distance of 46 billion light years and the furthest galaxy at a distance of 13.5 billion light years, then taking these distances as radios we would get to the result that almost 96% of the universe is empty.

But if the visible galaxies should now be 33.6 billion light years away, I am wondering how far the microwave background should be away now. Maybe 200 billion light years?

This would finally confirm that the concept of a very odd and unnatural universe (soccer field with a pinhead containing 99% of the galaxies) should be true.

Edited August 8, 2023 by tmdarkmatter

[Bufofrog]

21 minutes ago, tmdarkmatter said:

This would finally confirm that the concept of a very odd and unnatural universe (soccer field with a pinhead containing 99% of the galaxies) should be true.

You are looking at this all wrong.  Another thing, how could the universe be unnatural, that's an oxymoron.