Eureka
Eureka...
Concerning the tension between the two camps (cosmologists v astronomers) over the 9% discrepancy between their calculations for the Hubble constant as drawn from the cosmic microwave background or astronomical observations.
I believe the issue is resolved by realising that part of the redshifting of both observations is due to a background gravitational redshift from a surrounding infinite multicosmos universe. This theory, that I have had since 1994, also predicted an accelerating expansion for our visible cosmos.
We start with a review of Olbers' Paradox (but skip to the end if you want the answer first).
Olbers' Paradox
Olbers' paradox, aka the paradox of the night sky's darkness, is the thought if the universe is infinite, eternal and 'static', with stars and radiating objects throughout. then the night sky should not be dark but extremely bright, as every line of sight would see a radiating surface. Furthermore, beyond the first surfaces there would be infinite more and so the heat and brightness would vaporize everything.
Many theories have been proposed as to why the night sky is yet dark. The original most obvious answer was that the paradox/ night sky's darkness simply shows the universe cannot be infinite. This was accepted when it was generally assumed that the universe was static (and eternal). Even Albert Einstein followed the assumption of a static universe for a while. But then astronomers, most famously Edwin Hubble, in the 20th century discovered a progressive redshift in the light coming from distant stars, which told us the visible universe was expanding. This ended the assumption of a static universe in favour of a 'Big Bang' which would give the universe a beginning or finite age.
This allowed a new answer to Olbers paradox; that if the universe was of a finite age and (knowing) light takes time to travel, then only objects within a certain finite range could be seen, so beyond that all would be dark.
Curiously, long before this new answer to Olbers' ancient paradox was realised by scientists in the 20th century, the 19th century poet Edgar Allen Poe had published the idea in one of his last works, an essay called Eureka! Perhaps there is some poetry in a poet so associated with darkness, also being a fathomer of a reason for darkness in the universe.
Before the end of the 20th century however (1998) there was a discovery that shook any sense 'being on the verge of understanding everything', when astronomers Perlmutter, Riess and Schmidt were the first to see (from supernovae type 1(a) observations) that the visible universe must be accelerating apart. It had been generally assumed that the rate of expansion must be slowing down, due to the effect of gravity. The mysterious reason for the accelerating expansion has not yet been agreed.
In the following years then there has been a change of view or certainty about things. The big bang once being thought to be the start of the universe - now more consider that a universe may have already existed before the big bang, and maybe there would be some physical evidence for such other/ previous or beyond universes. And more are thinking and talking about a multiverse or many other universes not just beyond and before ours but sharing the same space in different realities. It's modern/quantum physics that allows these imaginative ideas. But if the multiverse idea allows infinite other universes/ bangs or cosmoses in infinite space, and some fraction of them are similar to ours, we may have to reconsider the answer to Olbers, paradox.
Firstly, can an infinite multi/universe be 'static'?
We could say that any other (sub-)universes like ours would be expanding within themselves like ours, but would there be a pan-universal pattern of expansion, so the spaces between universes or cosmoses/bangs are also expanding?
Well, according to relativity, which implies an infinite universe, infinite space does not have a fixed background; it is a context/reference frame that goes with the observer. That means that if a new cosmos or bang should emerge elsewhere in infinite space there is no reason why its reference frame or point of origin should be static relative to our own. It could be moving at any speed from zero to infinity. But then according to relativity again, anything moving at greater than the speed of light relative to the observer is unreal; it does not share the same reality. This means that, in a multiverse, although there may be infinite others around or flying past, we can only share a reality strand with those that are more or less static relative to our sub-universe, so there is no overall expansion between sub-universes that are real to each other. (Things that are not real to each other are simply a part of each other's infinite background energy; the energy of the vacuum or 'empty' space.
Another question is. where sub-universes are real to each other, how can they not interfere with each other, with disastrous consequences - imagine another big bang starting in your living room.
This can be answered by considering probability. If two sub-universes are going to manifest as real to each other then not only would they have to be not moving relative to each other but they should also share precisely the same constants. Coming out of the infinite energy and variety of the background multiverse. it is a matter of sheer chance if they share the same constants, and the chance is infinitesimally small. That does not mean it cannot occur, it just means that the emergence of like cosmoses or sub-universes are probably very far apart - but that still means an infinite strand of them can stretch across the infinity.
So, this consideration of multiversal reality (born out of quantum physics) relativity and probability brings us back to a reality in which the observer may see an infinite static universe, according to the Olbers reasoning. So Olbers' paradox resurfaces as a true paradox, not avoided by some circumstantial properties of our visible universe.
Now, in understanding Olbers paradox as a true paradox, the answer we find may be far more complete. And the answer I propose goes to the heart of mathematics and physics.
The paradox in the paradox
On thinking about Olbers paradox, it occurred to me that the famous paradox results in another counter paradox (which seems not to have occurred to anyone else).
According to the Olbers' paradox every point of reference/observation would be subject to extreme light and radiation. But then we consider that all radiation or light that is received must be emitted from somewhere, so there should be a balance between light radiation that can theoretically be received and that which is emitted. And then we see and know that emitters/sources of radiation are not in every place, and indeed in the universe they are mostly very far apart, And those that do emit radiation do not emit the intensity of radiation that Olbers paradox says they (and every other point in space) should theoretically receive. This counter paradox (an imbalance between emitted and received radiation) says there must be some basic inherent problem with the Olbers paradox. What can that be?
Actually, we already know there is a conceptual problem in reasoning how much radiation any object emits. We know that any object, e.g. a candle, emits a finite amount of radiation at a finite rate. But then if we start thinking of the directions in which the candle emits its light then they are infinite, so the sum total of its emitted light can be reasoned to be infinite. In reality however light and radiation are emitted and received as quanta. Quanta are of certain amounts of energy, so for them to be from a source of finite energy there must in effect be a finite limitation on the conceivably number directions. Without that limitation quantum physics calculations say infinite or unquantifiable energy is pumped out by anything that shines, whether brightly or dimly.
So, if we understand that there must in effect, in reality, be a limitation on the number of directions or places from and to which radiation can be emitted or received, or an effective 'quantization' of time and space, how does this affect the Olbers paradox?
Now the sky, instead of being an infinite number of directions from which light/ radiation is coming from, must be a finite number of directions, as if there is a limit to the power of resolution. A limit to the power of resolution means that a single line of sight that stretches out to infinity will at some very far but finite range come from a volume of space that is vast enough to contain many of the like universes which we might see according to Olbers paradox. However if we consider a mass of sub-universes as a single source we also consider that there is a collective gravitational redshift from any mass. And if there is an overall mean density across the infinite universe (as would be determined by probability) then there is a scale at which the mass to radius ratio of the collective object exceeds the requirement for it's radiation to be gravitationally redshifted to the zero frequency, like a black hole (because as you scale things up the mass or volume increases cubically compared to the radius). Ultimately then, it is the existence of Gravity and gravitational redshift which answers the true Olbers paradox.
Now, if the darkness of the surrounding infinity is explained by a gravitational red/ black shift, then there should also be a progressive gravitational redshift towards that far extreme, from the observer's point of view. That would add a part to the Hubble redshift, from which is deduced the expansion rate of the visible universe (due to a Doppler effect). It would also add a part to the cosmic microwave background radiation.
In the case of the Hubble redshift, a subtraction of a part attributable to the gravity shift from afar means a less high Hubble constant i.e. a visible universe that is not expanding so fast and is therefore calculably older.
In the case of the cosmic microwave background a subtraction of some of the redshift means a slightly warmer background than we deduce, and therefore a big bang time that is not so far back i.e. a younger visible universe.
As such, this background gravity shift could explain why there appears to be a 9% gulf or discrepancy between the Hubble constant as deduced from astronomical observations and that deduced from the cosmic microwave background, with the astronomy saying the visible universe is expanding faster and is younger than the cmbr cosmology. Take out the background gravity shift and the two calculations may converge and agree on a value for the Hubble constant.
The divergence between the two calculations could thus help to calculate the power of the background gravitational redshift and therefore to consider the density of objects/cosmoses beyond our visible universe. In so doing it may also test my other theory that the accelerating expansion of our visible universe is caused by its gravitational relationship with a surrounding infinite multi-cosmos universe. Where there is a strong gravitational redshift there should also be a gravitational pull. I reasoned that the visible universe should be accelerating apart on this basis in 1994, before the supportive astronomical observations emerged.
So...According to my theory a gravitational redshift of a certain value (9%) comes from an object of a certain mass to radius ratio but does not say at what distance that object is. The distance to the object (and its mass) determines what rate of acceleration it yields according to the inverse square law, so if we know the rate of (cosmic) acceleration then we know what the M /d squared value must be of the 'distant pulling object'. The distance d value cannot be determined (and therefore also the mass) but has to be far, for the near same rate of cosmic acceleration to appear to stretch across the visible universe. It also has to be far for the distant collective mass object of the certain mass to radius ratio to be in effect a singular object to our cosmos.
If we consider a certain distance then we can get a figure for what mass should be there to yield the acceleration. And given that mass we can work out what size or radius of space it has to occupy to yield the gravitational redshift (of 9%). That would also give us a mass to volume ratio, or density of matter in that distant space, which may be close to an average density of matter in the infinite universe. And then one can consider whether that value is realistic, according to whatever theory one may have for the distribution of matter/things/cosmoses/bangs across infinite space and time.
Using the gravity shift equation...
… I calculate that the Mass/radius ratio required for an object to effect a 9% redshift is around 10 to the power of 26 ( kgs/m)
And if I guess that the density of gravitational matter overall in the greater infinite universe will be half of that within the visible universe/our cosmos then that is about 10 to the power of -27 (kgs/m3)
Note that for there to be a certain density there should be an equilibrium between cosmoses coming into being (in bangs) and matter being destroyed/returned to the infinite background energy).
For a low density of matter to achieve a high matter or mass to radius ratio we scale up the size of the object, as every extension of radius will result in a square increase in the mass to radius ratio (as volume increases cubically with radius). The 53 powers of ten between the density and mass to radius ratio can then be made up from a radius of the square root of that figure, which is 3.3 x 10 to the power 26 metres, which happens to be about double the radius of the visible universe. In other words an object 8x the volume of the visible universe and with half the density of mass (or four cosmoses equal in size and density to ours but interspaced so that collectively they are in 8x the volume. Whatever).
Consider that that 9% gravity redshift from that theoretical object will become less in its effect on the Hubble shift of our own cosmos, however we are not yet taking into account additional power given to the gravity redshift from the infinite universe beyond (towards the black wall/ maximum redshift). Also, we are not looking for a figure as high as 9% to bridge the gap to CMB calculation as that will also be affected by the gravity shift to move towards the agreement with astronomical observations. So maybe only a 4 to 5% calculable shift is needed, in which case I could reduce my guesstimation for the density of matter in the surrounding infinite universe to a third or less, which becomes more realistic (for me). This then puts the theory nicely inside the ball park, or even the actual basket, to explain the discrepancy.
OBJECTIONS?
Now, if the observable evidence supports the theory, why would one object to it?
One reason is the thought that a gravitational redshift will only happen where light is travelling from a place of more gravity ( a deeper gravity trough) to a place of less gravity, but if the infinite universe has a overall average/consistent density then one place with respect to another will not have more gravity/a deeper trough. This same issue exists in whether one considers a source of light/radiation individually or as a part of a greater whole. Individually it may have a certain calculable gravitational redshift for its light but if seen as part of a greater whole (i.e. from a distance as part of a singular object) then its light will be subject to a different calculable redshift. The fact that the maths seems to be uncertain here does not mean that there is no physical outcome. Maybe maths cannot always determine the physics or maybe there is a better maths to model the physics. Anyway, the theory says that, at a distance, each observer sees the other distant object as part of a deeper gravity well, so there is an equality between them.
The same theory/principle also explains the accelerating expansion of the cosmos, as being due the gravity. Each object in its own individual scenario will not be subject to a gravitational vector from the surrounding infinite universe of mass. It sees itself as static relative to that. However it sees the far distant object as somewhere on the downward slope towards a deep gravity well. So it must see that object as falling away. If all objects are defined as being static but defining others as moving/ falling away then the shared/agreed impression is that the spatial context is expanding, in an acceleration (though really things are just moving apart). This is what the accelerating expansion looks like.
To work out what the rates of acceleration should be, according to this theory, I use other formulae
(in another paper).
M J Bridger
