Geometric Time - another theory against the Big Bang

Pheran

Diamond Member
Apr 26, 2001
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I've been meaning to post this for a long time, but the current Big Bang alternative thread in OT inspired me to do so.

I've been following the work of Alexander Mayer for quite a few years now. He has a fascinating alternative theory of time that he backs up with empirical evidence. If he's right, one implication is that the entire Big Bang theory is wrong. For me the jury is still out (I'm always open to scientific evidence), but I definitely think this stuff deserves investigation - he proposes lots of experiments that can be done to verify or falsify his claims.

Fair warning, I'm posting this in Highly Technical for a reason - there's a huge PowerPoint presentation but it will be tough to get through for non-physicists.

Short preview slide deck here:

http://sensibleuniverse.net/slides

Huge full slide deck here:

http://sensibleuniverse.net/SDSS/download.html

I'll try to make a followup post with a nutshell explanation of the basic theory.
 

Pheran

Diamond Member
Apr 26, 2001
5,849
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First, a little history - not long after Einstein published his theory of special relativity in 1905, scientists Henri Poincare and Hermann Minkowski pointed out that the equations in the theory could be rewritten with a geometric interpretation, where the weird effects of relativity (time slowdown, length contraction, etc.) were explained as a rotation in 4-dimensional spacetime, with the time coordinate normal (perpendicular) to all 3 space coordinates. Einstein assumed that this was simply a mathematical formalism; in fact he once described Minkowski's work as "superfluous erudition." Mayer takes the spacetime theory one step further, by saying we've failed to recognize that Minkowski spacetime reveals something about the true nature of the universe - that time is a vector normal to space. In other words, time isn't flowing in the same "direction" everywhere in the universe. I'll first explain with an easier to understand analogy.

If you are standing on the surface of the Earth and don't already know it's a sphere, then you can make the naive assumption that it's a flat plane and that gravity points in the same direction for everyone on Earth. Of course we know this isn't true - the gravity vector on the other side of the Earth is pointing in the opposite direction. If you are in the US, people in Europe are approximately "sideways" relative to you. But nobody notices anything strange because everyone has their own local idea of "up" and "down".

Mayer argues that time is similar - that the universe is a gigantic hypersphere, and the space we live is the "surface volume" (4 dimensions are weird aren't they?!?) of the sphere. Time is always normal to space, so the time vector in any part of the universe effectively points along the radius of the hypersphere. In practice, this doesn't mean much for a small localized part of the universe (e.g. a galaxy). Just like gravity in a single city on Earth, everyone's time vector in one galaxy is pretty much pointing in the same direction.

The kicker comes when you start to get into deep-space astronomy. When you observe a distant galaxy, you are seeing photons from a region where the time vector points in a significantly different direction. In Mayer's theory, this causes a time dilation effect exactly like what happens with special relativity. So, guess what, all those photons from the distant galaxy are redshifted because of the difference in the local and remote time vectors. People who understand Big Bang theory should be getting wide-eyed right about now because the primary reason we think the Big Bang happened is that all distant galaxies are redshifted. The standard way to interpret that redshift is to assume it must be present because the galaxy is moving away from us. If all galaxies are moving away from us, then at some time in the past everything must have "exploded" from a central point, hence the Big Bang. But Mayer's theory throws all of that out the window, because those redshifts aren't caused by motion, they are caused by geometric time dilation.

That's all well and good, but where's the evidence? Mayer spends a whole lot of time talking about the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) in his slides. This is a very cool astronomy project that has produced a huge catalog of galaxies, including their luminosity and redshift. Mayer applies statistics to this collection to support his theory. The Big Bang theory uses the Hubble law, where galaxy redshift scales linearly with distance to the galaxy. But with geometric time, that relationship is not linear; it's based on a trigonometric function. Mayer argues that his geometric time equations produce a far better fit to the statistical distribution of galaxy redshifts than the linear Hubble law does. There are lots of slides showing this. Also important, those equations were not made to fit the data in any way - they follow directly from the geometric interpretation of time.

Whew, that's long and I barely scratched the surface, but I hope it's at least a little helpful.
 
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Pheran

Diamond Member
Apr 26, 2001
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Ken's question swiped from the OT thread:

But how to explain redshifts? And the fact that stars burn up light elements like hydrogen and the elements don't get replaced? And how to resolve Olbers' Paradox?

The redshift explanation is already above. Mayer has a discussion of light elements starting at slide 355 in the huge presentation. Basically light elements can be manufactured by rapidly cooling plasma jets, but the fascinating part of this is the proposed source of the jets. Mayer reanalyzes black holes in the context of the geometric time universe and comes to a startling conclusion - black holes create a wormhole through the center of the hypersphere with a "white hole" at the other end (i.e. the "opposite side" of the universe). So the mass being dumped into a black hole isn't lost, it's spit out elsewhere as a plasma jet that is capable of creating light elements. Incidentally, this also solves the problem of mass redistribution in a universe that might be infinitely old. Otherwise you'd expect all mass to end up in one giant clump or black hole.

As far as Olber's paradox, several features of this model avoid it. First, the universe is not infinite in size. Second, distant incoming light gets redshifted, thus losing power. Third, this model has an interesting feature called the cosmological redshift horizon. This limits the size of the observable universe because once the distance is too great, the remote time vector becomes perpendicular to your own. This means that any photons from that region would be infinitely redshifted so they can never reach you. This happens when you are looking "halfway" around the hypersphere (i.e. at a 90-degree radius angle). So only half the universe is potentially observable from any given location.
 
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lehtv

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Dec 8, 2010
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My novice understanding has been that we know for a fact that the universe is expanding, and that fact is the foundation of the Big Bang theory. But if the interpretation of the redshift phenomenon is the only thing that's points towards an (increasingly) expanding universe, then that is a shaky foundation indeed. Are there really no other lines of evidence that point to an expanding universe? And if so, do those lines of evidence also need to be reinterpreted, if we are to accept that the redshift is caused purely by time dilation?

And how does Mayer's theory relate to the 'multiverse' idea, is that even feasible without the Big Bang theory?
 
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Pheran

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Apr 26, 2001
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My novice understanding has been that we know for a fact that the universe is expanding, and that fact is the foundation of the Big Bang theory. But if the interpretation of the redshift phenomenon is the only thing that's points towards an (increasingly) expanding universe, then that is a shaky foundation indeed. Are there really no other lines of evidence that point to an expanding universe? And if so, do those lines of evidence also need to be reinterpreted, if we are to accept that the redshift is caused purely by time dilation?

And how does Mayer's theory relate to the 'multiverse' idea, is that even feasible without the Big Bang theory?

We have no direct way to measure the motion of a distant galaxy, so the only indicator we have for that is redshift. Until this theory, the only way we could explain that redshift is if the galaxy is moving away from us, so it was a logical assumption. So no, we do not actually "know" that the universe is expanding. The other main item that is pointed to as evidence for the Big Bang is the cosmic microwave background, which is interpreted as "afterglow" from the Big Bang explosion. Mayer does point out that the CMB needs another explanation in light of his theory.

I don't believe Mayer has anything to say, either for or against, the "multiverse" concept. The multiverse is still mostly in the realm of science fiction. Some ideas can be interpreted in the context of a multiverse, but I don't think I've ever seen someone come up with an experiment that could either prove or falsify the multiverse concept. If it can't be tested by experiment or observation, it isn't actually science.
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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Thanks for the breakdown! Curious what new explanation for CMB will emerge.
 

disappoint

Lifer
Dec 7, 2009
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I've been following the work of Alexander Mayer for quite a few years now. He has a fascinating alternative theory of time that he backs up with empirical evidence. If he's right, one implication is that the entire Big Bang theory is wrong. For me the jury is still out (I'm always open to scientific evidence), but I definitely think this stuff deserves investigation - he proposes lots of experiments that can be done to verify or falsify his claims.

Well you've got my attention! The rest of my post will have to wait till later as I have some stuff I need to do first, then read up on all of this, "digest it" and I'll let you know what I think. Sounds intriguing though. Marked for later so I don't forget.
 

njdevilsfan87

Platinum Member
Apr 19, 2007
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Where do blueshifted galaxies like the Andromeda fit into all of this? It sounds like a blueshifted galaxy should not be possible, but they are there. Andromeda and ~100 other nearby galaxies are blue shifted. Even if the hypersphere was not a perfect sphere, the best you could possibly do is have the time vector point in the same direction as the Milky Way's, and remove any redshift at all. Which then leads back to my question - how to get a blueshift from a geometric time dialation?
 
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DrPizza

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Mar 5, 2001
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Has Mayer's theory made any predictions phenomena that haven't yet been discovered? E.g., Big Bang Theory came first. CMB was predicted - if the Big Bang occurred, then there would be a CMB. Later the CMB was found.

In other words, what makes his theory testable?
 

inachu

Platinum Member
Aug 22, 2014
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There are multiple big bangs. Not just one. They happen all over the place.

I am sure one day we will come across the shadowy gaseous remnants like how we found the one closer to us. I suspect we will find them intersecting each other.
 

Pheran

Diamond Member
Apr 26, 2001
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Where do blueshifted galaxies like the Andromeda fit into all of this? It sounds like a blueshifted galaxy should not be possible, but they are there. Andromeda and ~100 other nearby galaxies are blue shifted. Even if the hypersphere was not a perfect sphere, the best you could possibly do is have the time vector point in the same direction as the Milky Way's, and remove any redshift at all. Which then leads back to my question - how to get a blueshift from a geometric time dialation?

A blueshifted galaxy is definitely possible. Remember that relative motion is still a source of spectral shift - motion away from us causes redshift, whereas motion towards us causes blueshift. Andromeda is one of our close neighbors, so in Mayer's model its geometric time dilation, and thus geometric redshift, will be small (our time vectors point mostly in the same direction). If its blueshift effect from relative motion toward us is greater than the geometric redshift, then it will appear to be blueshifted.
 
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Pheran

Diamond Member
Apr 26, 2001
5,849
48
91
Has Mayer's theory made any predictions phenomena that haven't yet been discovered? E.g., Big Bang Theory came first. CMB was predicted - if the Big Bang occurred, then there would be a CMB. Later the CMB was found.

In other words, what makes his theory testable?

He makes quite a few testable predictions. Besides the distribution of galaxies vs redshift, which he covers quite extensively in the slides, there are a number of predictions made in his related paper, Transverse Gravitational Redshift. In fact, Part II of this paper "Empirical Predictions and Evidence" is a very interesting read. In this section he makes a number of predictions and then points out earlier papers that appear to have observed, but not understood, the phenomena he predicted. For example, one of his predictions are that the photons sourced from the edge of the sun will be very slightly redshifted compared to the ones sourced from the center (see page 25). He then cites a paper from 1991 which observed this, but could not explain it. On page 29 he points out anomalies that will (and do) exist in the GPS system because of this theory.

In short, there are experiments that can be done with atomic clocks that should be able to either prove or refute his theories. The problem is that, just like relativity vs classical physics, these corrections are small and you probably aren't going to see them unless you are specifically looking for them with very accurate instruments. My worry is that these experiments aren't being done because the first reaction to anyone claiming that the Big Bang didn't happen is, "Are you nuts?"
 
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Oric

Senior member
Oct 11, 1999
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I have a good idea for a TV show

"The Geometric Time Theory"

Just for bumps
 

Biftheunderstudy

Senior member
Aug 15, 2006
375
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Hubble's expanding universe *was* the main evidence for the Big Bang. Until the CMB and its associated power spectrum were discovered. Now that is our smoking gun for Big Bang plus standard inflation.

This isn't to say that this is definitely correct, but it is certainly our leading theory by a long shot.

It would be interesting to see a full simulation done and see what kind of observations can be made. Using a inflationary Big Bang with cold dark matter as initial conditions provides shockingly accurate simulations (in a statistical sense) for example.

Any successful theory will need to match the CMB power spectrum better than the current model. Recent results from Planck are at the 20 sigma level for some parameters.
 
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