Can the biggest thing there ever was get even bigger?
I just read that the universe – you know, EVERYTHING – may not be expanding, as most astrophysicists have believed and continue to believe.
For decades, the thinking has been that the universe is expanding – somehow getting bigger – because of little clues they read into how light shifts when things expand.
“Longstanding hypotheses suggest that redshift — the stretching of light wavelengths toward the redder end of the color spectrum as an object moves away from the viewer — is an indicator of an expanding universe because further-off galaxies have higher redshift than those closer to us.”
That’s a quote from the article, which was published in the journal “Classical and Quantum Gravity.”
And what’s more, other studies suggest the universe is not only expanding, but is expanding at an accelerating rate.
OK. I’m not an astrophysicist, nor do I play one on TV. But as an interested layman, I’m somehow comforted by this news about a non-expanding universe.
I mean, IF the universe IS expanding, wouldn’t that include EVERYTHING in it is also expanding? As in you – and me?
Sometimes I DO feel that I AM expanding, and my bathroom scale tends to back that up. If I am part of an expanding universe – and it IS also speeding up in that expansion – it’s going to make it so much harder to lose weight.
But enough about ME.
Remember that little guy with the wild hair, Albert Einstein? He was considered a pretty smart dude, and he argued against an expanding universe.
Going against Einstein seems like a bad idea to me. Still, universe studiers have generally discounted Al’s concept in the decades since his death, advocating for the expanding universe theory.
But these are the same people, by and large, who estimate that 80 percent of the mass of the universe is occupied by so-called “dark matter,” something that no one has ever really satisfactorily explained to me.
And how did they come up with that "80 percent" figure anyway?
But here’s the larger issue, I believe: How can the universe – something so big that it’s implied to contain EVERYTHING – get even bigger?
These astrophysicists spend their days thinking up new ways to better understand the universe -- and end up giving us non-astro shlubs new concepts we really can't understand.
I DO envy them. They sit in their labs and observatories and make their observations and submit their reports and collect their grant money.
Wish I had that kind of gig.
For me, I do enjoy reading about these new theories of creation and universe activity. But whether the universe is actually expanding -- or not -- isn't going to make much of a difference in my life.
So go ahead, universe.
Expand.
Or not.
See if I care.
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