OK, I'm not a physicist.
Fact is, while I devour physics type news and science popularizations, I'm still just a math geek and home business owner and former software developer who likes to think and invent crackpot theories.
But here's something that struck me one day.
Yes, about physics.
Specifically, Astrophysics.
More specifically, the Hubble Constant, and how it leads to the Big Bang theory.
The Hubble constant is a measure of the ratio of observed red-shift in the light reaching observers on Earth to the distance from earth of the objects (usually galaxies) emitting said light.
The further away something is, the more red shift. Red shift is assumed to be caused by objects moving away from us, so that the wavelengths of light are "stretched", and thus more red.
Since everything in the universe is apparently moving away from us, and the further away something is, the faster it's moving away, it's an easy guess that this is because the whole universe is stretching. The mental image often used is a huge balloon, with the galaxies painted on the surface. As the balloon is blown up, the galaxies move further from each other. The further away the galaxies are on the balloon, the faster the stretching moves the apart.
So far so good.
But, they thought, since the balloon (henceforth called "the Universe" is expanding, then at some point in the past, it must have been very, very small.
So small, in fact, that all the stuff in the universe would have been packed into an infantessimal area.
Then the balloon, excuse me, universe started expanding, and everything got further apart.
Some guy who thought this concept was stupid called it a "Big Bang". The name stuck.
There has been some success to this theory. It accurately predicts the cosmic microwave background radiation that was found around the same time by people who had no idea what they were finding.
But it also has some failures. It seems the expansion of the universe is speeding up. This is attributed to "Dark Energy", which is every bit as stupid as it sounds. It's an attempt to patch a big, glaring hole in the theory.
CRACKPOT THEORY TIME!
What if, just, what if: Instead of the red-shift being caused by the expansion of the universe, it were caused by the speed of light changing?
Yeah, crackpot, eh?
But, there's no change in the size of the universe, just how long it takes photons to get from one place to another.
Scientists attempting to measure the "curvature of the universe" i.e. the shape of the balloon, figure it's most likely completely flat. That is to say, it's not a balloon at all, but a Euclidean plane (or space, as the case may be), stretching off infinitely in all directions, filled with galaxies forever and ever.
This is -juuuust- a bit different than a balloon being blown up.
And no dark energy, just a change in the speed of light.
Remember that bit about E=mc^2? Change the speed of light, and E changes. The second law of thermodynamics says E always goes down. Always (the always bit is actually the third law). If c is getting smaller, then so is E. And red-shift happens.
Strangely enough, there's still a catastrophic energy density in the past as the speed of light was vastly different. Thus: the cosmic microwave background.
But no universal expansion, just a change in the speed of light. Nothing is being "pushed", there's no force being exerted, so no need for "dark energy". (don't confuse this with "dark matter", but with no actual expansion of the universe, we may need to re-think the model of how much gravity should be attracting other galaxies, etc. But I'm not a physicist, and have not attempted to do the math on this. We may yet be stuck with dark matter until we figure out more about how gravity works.
So, there's no Big Bang here.
Therefore, no Big Bang Theory.
All there is is the Brakes Theory of the Hubble Constant.
But maybe I should rearrange that a bit.
I want to call it the Brakes Theory of the Constant, Hubble.
That's right, BiTCH.
