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Originally Posted by leeroy
Tom,
Thanks for the encouraging reply. Although I'm not on chapter 6 yet, here is what the author says on his book summary page on his web site:
Is Our Universe Truly Expanding?
The concept of a universe that is not only expanding, but accelerating its expansion due to mysterious "Dark Energy" is yet another clearly flawed belief. But further, it is a belief that our scientists already know better than to follow since it is based on the completely unsupported assumption that distant Red-Shifted light is explained by the same Doppler Effect as shifted sound frequencies. But light is such a completely different phenomenon than sound that this is an extremely speculative assumption. But also, light is widely known to be Red Shifted by other far simpler causes, such as merely passing through plastics and gases of all sorts. The fact that light appears Red-Shifted after traveling billions of light years through space, which is filled with all manner of radiation, particles, and materials should surprise no scientifically educated individual, and lends no particular credibility to the belief in an ever-accelerating expanding universe with no known power source, driven by some sort of mysterious "Dark Energy".
I'm not sure if he considers "radiation, particles, and materials" space debris or not, but that's the way I took it.
I don't know if the author is on the right path or not, but one thing is for sure he does present some interesting ideas and makes you think about currently held beliefs about how things work within the bounds of our knowledge. To me science is about considering and researching possibilities, even if they seem strange. And if anything, hopefully I'll come away with a better understanding of physics in general after reading his book.
Lee
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Friend Lee,
Thank you for your kind reply and for clarifying what McCutcheon says about the Hubble redshift.
Until I read his claims about the effect, I was willing to give him the benefit of at least a little doubt, but no more. He says that "light is widely known to be Red Shifted by other far simpler causes, such as merely passing through plastics and gases of all sorts." To which I can only reply, "Aaarrrghh!!!" I mean ... who are these vague, nebulous authorities who allegedly 'widely know' that light can be red-shifted by passing through plastics, etc.? (
It can't!) So much for proof.
I must now categorically state: He is either ignorant or dishonest. If he actually believes his claim, then he is ignorant or has deceived himself. If (as I suspect) he knows better, then he is intellectually dishonest and is counting on the reader's unfamiliarity with the Doppler effect to get away with it. He implies that the Doppler effect for light has been extrapolated from its known effect on sound waves, and that it is therefore an "assumption" that is "unsupported" and "extremely speculative." As CraigD would put it: "Baloney." (Please note the six red flags he lists at the beginning of his posting.)i
The Doppler effect for electromagnetic waves (light, etc.) was discovered by the French physicist Fizeau back in 1848. In the intervening 157 years, it has been abundantly proven. It is routinely relied on in the space program. To give just one example: The Galileo probe was able to reveal the mass of the Jovian moon Amalthea by means of the measurable Doppler shift in the probe's radio signals - increasing as it approached the moon, then decreasing as it receded from it.
Yes, it is necessary to stretch the mind and not be slavishly bound to traditional models. But that doesn't make every heterodox idea right, or justify the rude dismissal and reckless disregard for ideas that have proven their worth - even if in time they will be superseded. Newton's greatness lay not just in conceiving the law of universal gravitation and then writing a book. He mathematically developed his model and established proofs based on actual measurements of the celestial bodies. Then and only then, he published his
Principia - twenty years after he had his first inking of universal gravitation. McCutcheon is no Newton.
Thanks again, Lee, for sharing your thoughts.
Tom Palmer
