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Four - ANTIGRAVITY OR NETHER?

 

In May of 1999, sixty cosmologists were asked a question during a meeting, as reported in Scientific American (January 1999). "Did they believe the recent observations of distant exploding stars, which imply that the universe is growing at an ever faster rate?" Of sixty researchers present, forty said that they accepted the new findings.

This question is an important issue with cosmologists today because at least three avenues of research indicate that the universe is expanding more rapidly as time passes. The implication is that the cosmological "constant" is definitely positive and that some form of antigravity is the cause. Some physicists are theorizing that at vast distances, gravity pushes rather than pulls. Along with all the other "patches" that physicists are being forced to use for their theories, the acceptance of an accelerating expansion creates something of a crisis.

On the other hand, nether theory presupposes nether pressure as the reason for the accelerating expansion. This is not a patch, but a basic tenet if one is to believe that there actually was a big bang.

One step farther in the current cosmological controversy, on page 24 of the April 1999 issue of Scientific American is an article entitled "A Hundred Billion Years of Solitude". It states: (1) that observations of distant supernovae as well as confirmation of discrepancies in the amount of matter in space have given weight to the theory that the universe is accelerating in its expansion, and (2) that the supernova detected in October of 1998 was brighter than it should have been unless the universe's expansion were accelerating.

It further states that the observed amount of matter in the universe does not agree with the amount needed to give space a Euclidean geometry (what we think of as normal geometry). Most of the data to date indicate that space is, in fact, Euclidean. The author of the article asks, "This being the case, what would cause the universe to be expanding at an accelerating rate?" To answer this question, a new force has been hypothesized which acts like antigravity, pushing matter farther apart.

There is some data having to do with gravitational lensing that implies that the universe is not expanding at an accelerating rate. However, this disparity could be explained if the force that is causing the acceleration were varying with position or time.

Finally, the author states that we will not be able to see distant galaxies in the future if the expansion rate exceeds the speed of light.

Regarding this article, nether theory holds that nether pressure is, in fact, the accelerating force. This force varies with position and time due to the differences in pressure in gravity funnels, and due to the nether pressure changing between the outer and inner portions of the universe.

Again in Scientific American, on page 26 of the September 1999 issue, is an article entitled "Skewing the Bell Curve." In it we see the following.

The currently accepted theory of the expansion of the universe postulates a random distribution of matter. This is based upon a rapid expansion with enough irregularity to cause matter to condense in certain "random" places. However, the randomness is expected to follow a Gaussian distribution - a normal bell curve.

Supposedly, the inflating universe is driven by a quantum field which generates a kind of antigravity which causes space to bloat. This field must fade away slowly to have the desired affect, which is to produce the same value at every point in space. However, this equality violates quantum theory, meaning the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. So the best the field can do is cause a distribution of matter that follows a bell curve.

Twenty-eight studies over the last five years have corroborated the bell curve prediction. However, in the past year, four teams led by Pedro G. Ferreira (CERN), Jesus Pando (Strasbourg Observatory), Dmitri Novikov (University of Kansas), and Robert G. Crittenden (Canadian Institute of Theoretical Physics), have made studies which show a non-Gaussian distribution.

Other studies made by James Robinson (University of California at Berkeley) and his colleagues, Katsuji Koyama (Kyoto University) and his colleagues, and Jeffrey A Willick (Stanford University), using gargantuan galaxy clusters, also indicate a non-Gaussian distribution.

In my view, the fact that nether has pressure which changes with time and position, may partly explain the non-Gaussian distribution. Another reason is probably the fact that matter and antimatter annihilate one another and would have done so in the early seconds of the Big Bang in such a way as to cause a non-Gaussian distribution.

Another pertinent article, "Inconstant Constants," is on page 24 of the November 1998 issue of Scientific American. This article is concerned with the fact that universal "constants" will change as the universe expands. Here again, nether theory holds that the constants we now use will change as nether density decreases. However, it is my belief that due to our own yardstick changing and the slow rate of change of the constants, we may not be able to detect the change within our lifetimes.

The above notwithstanding, an article called "Boom or Bust" in the October issue of Scientific American, expresses doubt as to whether the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace. In essence it states the following:

There have been two key measurements used to determine the rate of expansion. The first is measuring the dimness of distant galaxies. The other is measuring the red shift of the light from these galaxies. The farthest known supernova occurred 8.4 billion years ago. Since then, the universe has supposedly doubled in size. Yet, at its current rate of expansion, as inferred by more recent supernovae, the universe should have tripled in size. Therefore the expansion rate must have increased.

This is all based upon differences in brightness of about 25 percent. However, the type of supernovae used supposedly varies this much naturally. This variation once made supernovae too unreliable to use as indicators, but it was discovered with nearer supernovae that the rate of fading could be used to compensate for variations. This made it possible to use supernovae as indicators if it is true that all distant supernovae have the same rate of fading compared to one another.

Upon checking the time it took nearer supernovae to reach maximum brightness versus the time it took for distant supernovae to reach maximum brightness, it was discovered that the distant supernovae required less time. This implies that stellar explosions have a different time frame now than they once did.

There are different formulae to compensate for variations in supernovae, and these formulae do arrive at slightly different answers. Some researchers think the variations are important and other researchers think they are not.

The distant supernovae were discovered with electronic detectors while nearer ones were discovered with photographs. Film tends to overexpose the centers of galaxies and miss any supernovae therein, skewing the sample. This undermines the compensation for supernovae diversity.

Only new studies designed to avoid these pitfalls are likely to resolve the issue.
 

At the close of the article it asks if it was premature to say that the expansion rate is accelerating. And it answers "not necessarily." Other types of evidence, such as cosmic microwave background radiation and estimates of total matter in the universe, remain unshaken. Cosmologist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University states: "The supernova evidence was never, in my view, the best evidence for cosmic acceleration. The arguments we already had are much more solid.

 

The big bang, with nether as the cause, would make the universe expand relatively slowly at first with the maximum expansion occurring at the boundary between the compressed nether and empty space. The expansion would accelerate with the rate near the center being always less than that at the boundary. There still may be, from our perspective, a detectable difference in the expansion rate between the outer and inner parts of the universe.

 

Neo-Platonism is a progressive philosophy,
and does not expect to state final conditions to men whose minds are finite.
Life is an unfoldment, and the farther we travel the more truth we can comprehend.
To understand the things that are at our door
is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.
Hypatia
 

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