Or that various of our assumptions are distorted.
For example, as Omega=1, then “space” is contracting into galaxies in proportion to which it is expanding between them, so the notion of the overall universe expanding is effectively disproven, as the expansion is being cancelled by the gravity. Einstein originally proposed the cosmological constant to balance out gravity and keep it from collapsing space, so it would seem that what Hubble actually found was proof of this.
Consider the ball on a rubber sheet analogy of gravity. Now place the sheet over water, such that whatever is displaced by the ball, pushes the sheet up where there are no balls. This would model that relationship. Basically a cosmic convection cycle of energy expanding out, as mass falls in.
The assumption is that the universe must be expanding, because the only way to redshift the light is if the source is receding, but this only applies to single spectrum light. Multi-spectrum light “packets” do redshift over distance, as the higher spectrums dissipate faster than the lower ones, but this raises the issue of the irreducibility of the photon, or are we sampling a wave front, rather than detecting photons that have traveled billions of lightyears.
Keep in mind that the Big Bang Theory is not allowed to be falsified, as whenever there is a gap between prediction and observation, some enormous, otherwise invisible force of nature is proposed and everyone dances around it.
What if accountants could just write in a figure and call it ‘dark money,’ whenever they found a gap in the books?
Before inflation, dark matter and dark energy, the original patch was when they realized this redshift increases proportionally in all directions, creating the impression that we are at the center of the universe. So it was changed from an expansion in space, to an expansion of space, because “spacetime!” Which totally ignores the premise of “spacetime” and GR, that the speed of light is always measured as a Constant. If it is being redshifted, obviously this intergalactic light is not Constant to intergalactic space.
Essentially two metrics of space are being derived from the same light. One based on the spectrum and one based on the speed. Since the universe is supposedly expanding relative to the speed, that would make speed the actual denominator.
Now we are at the center of our point of view, so an optical effect might be worth considering. Possibly one which compounds on itself, explaining the curvature of the rate, currently explained by dark energy.
Then again, there is the issue of spacetime.
As mobile, intentional organisms, with a narrative based civilization, we naturally think of time as the point of the present, moving along this narrative progression, from past to future, yet the logical, physical cause is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
So there is no physical “dimension” of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it. Aka, causality and conservation of energy.
Time then, is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc. We could use ideal gas laws to correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought, so we can be more objective about them.
Think frequencies and amplitudes.
The three dimensions of space are basically a mapping device of space, like longitude, latitude and altitude, not foundational to it.
If you remove all physical properties from space, it still has the non-physical qualities of infinity, because there is nothing to bound it, and equilibrium, which is implicit in GR, as the frame with the fastest clock and longest ruler is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum. The unmoving void of absolute zero.
So space is the absolute and the infinite.
What fills space, energy and the forms it manifests, reflect these parameters, as energy radiates toward infinity, while mass/form coalesces towards equilibrium, where the positives and negatives sum out and the energy radiates back out.
The logical fallacy of God, monotheism, is that a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the desire of the gut and heart, radiating out, than the judgement of the head, coalescing in.
We tend to conflate the absolute with the ideal, as they are both superficially reductionist. Yet the ideal is an illusion. The cake we want to both have and eat.
The problem is that we let the mathematicians, as masters of order, rule. They only understand patterns, not the processes generating them.
Keep in mind that epicycles were brilliant math, but the crystalline spheres were lousy physics. Spacetime is the modern equivalent of crystalline spheres. No amount of mathematical faerie dust will have us time traveling through wormholes in the fabric of spacetime.
The map is not the territory. If you want to understand the territory, don’t take the map as anything more than a useful tool.
Process goes past to future, while patterns go future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts go future to past. Or lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. The feedback is the patterns define and direct the process.
The meaning of anything is a function of its context. Nodes and networks.
Thermodynamics. Cosmic convection cycles.
