Alternative interpretation of accelerating Universe data

[riteshs]

[At the outset, I want to express my sincere gratitude and heartfelt congratulations to this community for this unmatched openness in welcoming unconventional ideas. I completely understand that most such ideas would be flawed, however, absolute restriction of such ideas as done the mainstream academia is detrimental to science and is borne out of an inflated sense of self-worth, in my humble opinion.]

I went through the velocity-distance data for Type Ia supernovae. I have tried to come up with an alternative model which potentially resolves some observational peculiarities.

The idea at its fundamental level is this: The velocity-distance data for Type Ia Supernovae have been traditionally plotted to pass through origin. This models an accelerating Universe as conventionally concluded. However, when we allow for an intercept in the velocity-distance plot, in other words when we allow for an extra-Hubble-Lemaitre (eHL) velocity, we, interestingly, potentially resolve the following three long-persisting intrigues:

1. 'Crisis in Cosmology': Allowing for an eHL velocity also allows us to model the rate of expansion as measured by the Planck collaboration (67.4 km/s) thus removing the existing 'tension' between values of the Hubble-Lemaitre constant. The rest of the velocity vector, that remains unaccounted for by the Hubble-Lemaitre velocity (67.4 \times Distance), is the eHL velocity.

2. Counter-intuitive accelerating expansion of the Universe: It turns out, amazingly, that allowing for eHL velocities in the model turns the observational data for accelerating expansion into one for decelerating expansion. How this happens is illustrated in detail in the section titled 'Decelerating Universe?' in the complete article: https://vixra.org/pdf/2003.0196v1.pdf

3. Direct observational evidence for reheating and inflation: Allowing for eHL velocities also permits it to be a potential direct remnant of explosive particle creation during reheating and inflation. Such a direct observational evidence was long sought by the Astronomy community.

I do not claim to have given sufficient evidence for the correctness of my model over others. Far from it. However, given that this model potentially resolves some longstanding peculiarities in theory and observations, I humbly believe that the Astronomy community would not be disadvantaged in going through this model.

[Jim]

Welcome to the Forum, riteshs!

You're certainly welcome to present and defend your non-mainstream ideas here. If you haven't already, you should read the Rules for Posting with particular attention to Rule 13A. You'll also want to read Advice for ATM Idea Advocates and Advice for ATM Theory Supporters as well.

Remember that while links to other reference or resource materials are allowed you are required to defend your ideas here. You will need to address relevant questions in a timely manner. And, most important, keep it civil.

[Cougar]

...The idea at its fundamental level is this....

Does your model account for the observations that during the first several billion years of expansion, the expansion rate was slowing, and then at a certain point, the expansion began to accelerate?

[Reality Check]

[...1. 'Crisis in Cosmology':

Your ATM idea needs to be more that what you think, riteshs.
If you can resolve the Hubble constant tension then you need to match an measured value for the Hubble constant. Assertions are not science. Ditto for other unsupported assertions and misunderstanding about cosmology.
An accelerating expansion of the Universe is textbook cosmology. A positive cosmological constant in GR will act as a negative pressure and accelerate expansion.
"Direct observational evidence for reheating and inflation" is wrong. We cannot directly observe reheating or inflation because they happened for an an extremely short time in the early universe. We can test inflation indirectly. Reheating is the process whereby the inflaton's energy density is converted back into conventional matter after inflation, re-entering the standard big bang theory.

Looking at your PDF:
Hubble's law has been known to be a prediction for GR since 1927. Hubble produced the first widely published observational evidence for it in 1929 by plotting redshift against distance. This has been confirmed to high z mostly through supernovae data.
You plot supernovae between z = 01 and 0.8. It is no surprise that you get close to the value of Hubble's constant from the same method. But you assume that the trends need not meet the origin. This is wrong. By definition the recessional speed and redshift of the Milky Way is zero. What your idea predicts is that the Milky Way is receding from us with an "extra-Hubble-Lemaitre (eHL) velocity"!

If we ignore the intercept is not zero error, then an non-zero intercept does not say that the universe is accelerating or decelerating. You still have plotted a straight line "Hubble's law" and thus constant expansion. We found the acceleration by analyzing supernovae data well beyond z = 0.8 and seeing that the data did not match models with constant expansion and did match models with a positive cosmological constant.

A small mistake: You talk about inflation and cite Weinberg 1972 when inflation was proposed in 1981 by Guth.

[riteshs]

Does your model account for the observations that during the first several billion years of expansion, the expansion rate was slowing, and then at a certain point, the expansion began to accelerate?

The model makes no claims about the expansion history of the Universe. Its limited scope is modelling the currently observed recession velocities while allowing for an extra-Hubble-Lemaitre (eHL) velocity, that is a velocity over and above the Hubble-Lemaitre flow.

When we allow for such a velocity, we resolve the observed 'Hubble tension'.

Also, amazingly, when we allow for eHL velocities, the data for accelerating Universe changes into one for decelerating Universe. This somewhat peculiar sounding statement is actually quite straightforward. It is illustrated in detail in the section titled 'Decelerating Universe?' in the complete article: https://vixra.org/pdf/2003.0196v1.pdf

[riteshs]

Thank you for your most kind and detailed critique, especially spending time and effort even when you thought that almost all of my idea is wrong. The respectful consideration that you give to my thoughts and ideas, even though they are wrong according to you, is most rare and somewhat overwhelming.

"Direct observational evidence for reheating and inflation" is wrong. We cannot directly observe reheating or inflation because they happened for an an extremely short time in the early universe. We can test inflation indirectly. Reheating is the process whereby the inflaton's energy density is converted back into conventional matter after inflation, re-entering the standard big bang theory.

I understand preheating and reheating to some extent. My proposition that the eHL velocities, that I have proposed, could be accounted for as being a remnant of explosive particle creation during reheating, was primarily a speculation, unsupported by any data. The only argument that I have made in support of my speculation is this:

For a phenomenon to be observed throughout the Universe, as eHL velocities potentially are, it needs to have its origins close to the beginning of the Universe, when the Universe was small and Universe-scale events were physically possible. One such candidate physical process involving extreme energies is Inflation. Specifically, the process of Reheating during Inflation has been predicted to involve explosive creation of matter. It is not illogical to expect that some of the extreme energies involved in those processes got manifested as kinetic energy of matter in the Universe.

I request you to ignore this speculation if you feel it is too big a leap. In my opinion as well, it has not much scientific value except as a seed for ideas, and hence, I have only passingly mentioned it in the article.

But you assume that the trends need not meet the origin.

Yes, this is the gist of my idea.

This is wrong. By definition the recessional speed and redshift of the Milky Way is zero. What your idea predicts is that the Milky Way is receding from us with an "extra-Hubble-Lemaitre (eHL) velocity"!

I beg your reconsideration. I make no attempt to predict eHL velocity of any body. My proposition is just that the observed recession velocities may contain a component which is over and above the Hubble-Lemaitre flow. These eHL velocities would be a result of all other physical processes except the Hubble-Lemaitre expansion. In a gravitationally bound system such as the Milky Way or the Andromeda, the eHL velocities could well be zero or negative because of the effect of gravity. However, when these eHL velocities are plotted for distant galaxies, they show a general decelerating trend with time, meaning that they were highest for oldest galaxies. This implies a potential cause close to the beginning of the Universe when physical processes could affect the entire Universe.

If we ignore the intercept is not zero error, then an non-zero intercept does not say that the universe is accelerating or decelerating. You still have plotted a straight line "Hubble's law" and thus constant expansion.

Pardon my being unclear. When we plot the eHL velocities with redshift, we get the following graph (Figure 4 in the original article: https://vixra.org/pdf/2003.0196v1.pdf). This graph, surprisingly, shows a decelerating Universe rather than an accelerating one, since it shows that older, more distant supernovae have greater eHL velocities.

A small mistake: You talk about inflation and cite Weinberg 1972 when inflation was proposed in 1981 by Guth.

I cited Weinberg 1972 in support of the belief that the early Universe was much hotter and denser, and involved extreme energies. I didn't cite him in support of the theory of inflation. However, I will remove it if you suggest so.

[Hornblower]

If I interpret your model correctly, its expression for radial velocity has a fixed term independent of distance or direction. That appears to make it unique to our viewpoint, and the pattern would be quite different in other parts of the universe. In other words you appear to be rejecting the cosmological principle.

[riteshs]

If I interpret your model correctly, its expression for radial velocity has a fixed term independent of distance or direction. That appears to make it unique to our viewpoint, and the pattern would be quite different in other parts of the universe. In other words you appear to be rejecting the cosmological principle.

Thank you for the excellent observation. Yes, the equation for eHL velocity as proposed by me, {v}_{e} = v - {v}_{H} = v - HD, appears to violate the cosmological principle.

However, note that I make no comment about the nature of the eHL velocity {v}_{e}. My only proposition is that the observed recession velocity \displaystyle{v} may not entirely be a result of the Hubble-Lemaitre expansion, governed by the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker equations.

Indeed, when we plot the eHL velocities with redshift, they do seem to be some function of distance, as seen in the graph below (Figure 4 in the original article: https://vixra.org/pdf/2003.0196v1.pdf):

[Hornblower]

Nothing you have posted so far will convince me that your eHL term is anything but an artifact of a flawed act of statistically connecting the supernova dots. I stand by my opinion that a plot of a cosmologically valid model will go through the origin, no matter what sort of curve it takes to fit the dots. The fact that you find accelerating expansion to be counter-intuitive does not sway me a bit. To me, SR, GR, and any non-Euclidean space model are non- or counter-intuitive, but I do not reject them for that reason. The universe is what it is and does what it does, and it does not care if mortal human beings such as you and I have conceptual difficulty in making sense of it. We need to be humble enough to admit that our intuition may not be perfect for cosmic-scale phenomena.

[Reality Check]

Thank you for your most kind and detailed critique, especially spending time and effort even when you thought that almost all of my idea is wrong. The respectful consideration that you give to my thoughts and ideas, even though they are wrong according to you, is most rare and somewhat overwhelming.....

Thanks for your kind words, riteshs. However you have misunderstood the fundamental error in the PDF. Redshift z is defined as the redshift relative to us which is by definition zero for us. The distance of galaxies D is relative to us which is by definition zero for us. Thus every plot of redshift z versus distance D has a point at the origin. It is impossible for any trend to not pass through the origin. By not adding the point that always is at the origin, you have come to the wrong conclusion that your trends do not cross the origin.

Another error is that data exists for galaxies for z < 0.1* (supernova are not the only standard candles for distance) . If you added HST Key H0 data for z down to 0.01 or even Hubble's original data to your plot, you will see that your trends would get close to the origin even without the required point there.
* Figure 1 says "140 Supernovae with 0.1 < z < 0.5" but the caption says "Data for 166 Type Ia supernovae with redshift 0.01<��<0.08 from the Union 2.1 compilation courtesy the Supernova Cosmology Project (Suzuki et al. 2012)". The plot startss at just above 50 Mpc which suggests z = 0.1.

A small mistake is stating that an accelerating expansion of the universe is found from plotting your z range when it originally came from a slightly different range of z. And that range should be different today.
Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant by Adam G. Riess, et. al. (1998): "We present observations of 10 type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) between 0.16 < z < 0.62."
Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae by S. Perlmutter et. al (1999): "at redshifts between 0.18 and 0.83".

If we ignore what z and D are and that we have data for z < 0.1, finding a "Hubble's law" with a non-zero intercept means we have constant expansion with no acceleration in mainstream cosmology. What you need is an alternative cosmology to make a match to the data.

[riteshs]

Nothing you have posted so far will convince me that your eHL term is anything but an artifact of a flawed act of statistically connecting the supernova dots. I stand by my opinion that a plot of a cosmologically valid model will go through the origin, no matter what sort of curve it takes to fit the dots. The fact that you find accelerating expansion to be counter-intuitive does not sway me a bit. To me, SR, GR, and any non-Euclidean space model are non- or counter-intuitive, but I do not reject them for that reason. The universe is what it is and does what it does, and it does not care if mortal human beings such as you and I have conceptual difficulty in making sense of it. We need to be humble enough to admit that our intuition may not be perfect for cosmic-scale phenomena.

Thank you for your kind reply.

As you know, I have proposed that the model that v = v_H + v_e = HD + v_e

I request you to reconsider your opinion that v_e is necessarily 0 for the model to be consistent with the cosmological principle.

The classical equation for the observed recession velocity, v(D) = v_H(D) = HD, is expected to be not completely accurate, for it ignores the potential time variance of the recession velocity v, making it only a function of the distance D.
Indeed, studying this effect of time on the recession velocity was the original goal of the Supernova Cosmology Project as well as the High-Z Supernova Search Project, and they had expected to find a decelerating expansion.

I have updated the article to include a more complete mathematical treatment to address your question (see section titled 'Nature of the eHL velocity'): https://vixra.org/pdf/2003.0196v2.pdf

A gist of the idea is inserted below (using an image because I am unable to embed equations on this forum):

https://i.paste.pics/af550f7021912d4...2201e72fd5.png

[Hornblower]

I am sorry, but I am unable to grasp what you are saying in your technical presentation. I stand by my opinion.

[riteshs]

I am sorry, but I am unable to grasp what you are saying in your technical presentation. I stand by my opinion.

I am sorry for not being sufficiently clear.

My argument was this: If v = HD is the only possible cosmological model, how do we observe an accelerating Universe? Or how had the Supernova Cosmology Project as well as the High-Z Supernova Search Project expected to observe a decelerating Universe?

By predicting a decelerating Universe, or by observing an accelerating Universe, the scientists are predicting/observing nothing but a deviation from v = HD.

Including the deviation, we can express the relationship as v = HD + v_e.

My only idea is that instead of assuming v_e positive today and 0 at the beginning of the Universe (as done by the accelerating Universe school of thought), if we assume v_e to be a positive value at the beginning, we can do away with many cosmological peculiarities including Dark Energy and the 'tension' in the Hubble-Lemaitre constant.

[Reality Check]

My argument was this: If v = HD is the only possible cosmological model, how do we observe an accelerating Universe? ...

Hubble's law ("v = HD") is a consequence of the mainstream cosmological model when the cosmological constant is zero. What happened was analysis of supernovae data to see if the data matched the model predictions when the cosmological constant is zero. They did not. The data matched a positive cosmological constant. A positive cosmological constant produces an acceleration of the expansion. The data shows an acceleration of the expansion. Hubble's law becomes "v = HD +at".

This mainstream science is irrelevant to the thread and moot because the fatal flaw in your idea is obvious. Our z is zero. Our D is zero. Every plot of z versus D must have a point at (0,0). Thus: However you have misunderstood the fundamental error in the PDF from 4 days ago.

[riteshs]

Thank you for your kind reply. I am grateful for your instructive and informative earlier post as well. I was preparing a detailed reply to it.

Hubble's law ("v = HD") is a consequence of the mainstream cosmological model when the cosmological constant is zero. What happened was analysis of supernovae data to see if the data matched the model predictions when the cosmological constant is zero. They did not. The data matched a positive cosmological constant. A positive cosmological constant produces an acceleration of the expansion. The data shows an acceleration of the expansion. Hubble's law becomes "v = HD +at".

Perfect, I completely concur. More generally, we can model the recession velocity with the following equation (Equation 2 in https://vixra.org/pdf/2003.0196v2.pdf):



where a(D,t) is the acceleration function and T is the age of the Universe with T>D. E(D,t) represents velocity vector components from other possible physical processes.

I just group these additional terms over and above the Hubble-Lemaitre velocity, v_H = HD, into an extra-Hubble_Lemaitre (eHL) velocity v_e.

Thus, we have (Equation 3 in https://vixra.org/pdf/2003.0196v2.pdf):



As you very well understand, v_e = at has always been a part of even the current cosmological models. The only difference with my idea is that the current models predict v_e to have been 0 at the beginning of the Universe. Therefore, v_e attains a positive value in the present time thus making the peculiar observation of an accelerating Universe.

However, my model shows that if v_e is assumed to be a positive value at the beginning of the Universe, it explains the major peculiarities of accelerating expansion as well as the 'tension' in the Hubble-Lemaitre constant. Once v_e is permitted to be positive, we can model it to be decreasing with time, while also simultaneously modelling the rate of expansion (the Hubble-Lemaitre constant) as being equal to that measured by the Planck Collaboration.

This mainstream science is irrelevant to the thread and moot because the fatal flaw in your idea is obvious. Our z is zero. Our D is zero. Every plot of z versus D must have a point at (0,0). Thus: However you have misunderstood the fundamental error in the PDF from 4 days ago.

I pray your kind reconsideration. v_e as proposed by me is not a constant. It is a function of D and t, as detailed above. We can clearly see this in the plot for observed eHL velocities (Figure 4 in https://vixra.org/pdf/2003.0196v2.pdf):

[Reality Check]

...

Repeating an obviously wrong idea says to me that you do not understand the reason why it is wrong after a couple of clear expansions. So some formal questions, riteshs.
IF01: What is D in Hubble's law? What values is it for the nearest galaxies that you omit to plot?
IF02: What is z in Hubble's law? What values is it for the nearest galaxies that you omit to plot?

The textbook answer that I gave you that z and D are zero locally. We have no cosmological redshift z within the Milky Way (gravitational bound objects do not undergo the expansion of the universe). D is the distance to a galaxy which is zero for the Milky Way. The reason that you get a non-zero intercept is because you ignore this fact and almost cherry pick your data to only in the range of z = 0.1 to 0.8. This is the range in the first observations that discovered that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. They were not interested in nearby galaxies.

One more time: Read the Wikipedia Hubble's law article, riteshs. My link goes straight to the section with a graph of Hubble's Law for the HST Key H0 Group fitted type Ia supernovae for redshifts between 0.01 and 0.1. That data passes through the origin.

[PetersCreek]

This appears to have been abandoned by the OP. Closed.