2007-01-26 08:41:25 · 6 answers · asked by goring 6 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Just because things are moving away from us and each other people assume the universe is expanding. I don't believe that theory but rather believe the universe is stretching. Just as a trampoline stretches when a weight is placed on it. The tramponline itself doesn't expand, just the material.
2007-01-26 08:52:37 · answer #1 · answered by aorton27 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
This is a good question I just discussed this with my family recently.
Lets see, in 2000 scientists had recovered all the observational evidence that were needed to confirm the metric expansion of the universe.
Before that was discovered they had Edwin Hubble... and a few other observational theory's that I don't know.
And I'm sure your familiar with Edwin Hubble's law
I believe he was the first to introduce the theory by observation.
The Copernican Principle tested... "uniform cooling of the cosmic microwave background over billions of years is explainable only if the universe is experiencing a metric expansion."
There have been a lot of models to demonstrate the theory on a smaller scale that are interesting and worth looking at.
All in all though I think there is room to be a skeptic if you want because in my opinion there is no way to truly identify the way "it all" works.
"The metric expansion of space is a key part of science's current understanding of the universe, whereby spacetime itself is described by a metric which changes over time in such a way that the spatial dimensions appear to grow or stretch as the universe gets older. It explains how the universe expands in the Big Bang model, a feature of our universe supported by all cosmological experiments, astrophysics calculations, and measurements to date." -wikipedia
2007-01-26 17:15:10 · answer #2 · answered by Katrina 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Some people do question that. (See the source for a particularly convincing case presented by one such person.) They assume the red shift in the light of distant galaxies does not really indicate motion, but don't really say how the red shift would be produced. One idea is that light somehow gets tired over the long trip, but nobody has come up with any experiment that could prove that. So most scientists are still convinced that the red shift indicates a true motion away from the observer.
2007-01-26 17:16:00 · answer #3 · answered by campbelp2002 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
We can visually see things moving away from different points in the universe in every direction so we know it is expanding at everypoint. Even if it is stretching (see above answer) the area is still getting larger which is the definition of expansion. I think to completely understand all of this we need to look at it in higher dimensions, since we live in a 3D world we cant comprehend this.
2007-01-26 16:55:22 · answer #4 · answered by E 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If it is not expanding it would not be an optical illusion it would be an error of interpretation
2007-01-27 09:26:12 · answer #5 · answered by Billy Butthead 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
good point ... just like orbits are not so much a circle as an oval, maybe the galaxy is spinning in the "tide is going out" mode at the time of calculation
2007-01-26 16:54:16 · answer #6 · answered by wizebloke 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋