On Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:30:53 -0700 (PDT), Double-A
wrote:

On Oct 16, 8:17*pm, Painius wrote:
On Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:35:07 -0700 (PDT), Double-A

wrote:
On Oct 16, 12:32 am, Painius wrote:
From Wikipedia...

"Georges Henri Joseph douard Lema tre (17 July 1894 20 June 1966)
was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the
Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). He was the first person to
propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely
misattributed to Edwin Hubble.

Yes, Hubble would have nothing to do with such nonsense!

Maybe not at first - but then, when he did come around and embrace the
proposal, Hubble gave it scientific credibility. *He looked out and
saw faraway galaxies that seemed to be rushing away from us at
tremendous speeds. *He noted that the farther away those galaxies were
from us, the faster away from us they appeared to go.


Hubble never "came around".

"Hubble believed that his count data gave a more reasonable result
concerning spatial curvature if the redshift correction was made
assuming no recession. To the very end of his writings he maintained
this position, favouring (or at the very least keeping open) the model
where no true expansion exists, and therefore that the redshift
"represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature."[23]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble

Good catch, AA! So I guess I'm guilty of doing what most people have
done? I have endowed Hubble with a discovery and belief that he did
not make nor possess. Maybe like everybody else, I don't particularly
care for his idea that the redshift represents an unrecognized
principle of Nature?

Truth is... I think he was right about that last part.

You seem to think that the "tired light" idea, which has been
thoroughly trounced, should be given another look-see? Why is that?

So he interpreted his observations of those faraway galaxies to mean
that the Universe indeed *must* be expanding. *And it was never
questioned that those faraway galaxies' behaviors had taken place
billions of years ago, that there was no way of telling what those
galaxies were doing right now, that it was the height of human hubris
to glean from those observations that the Universe is expanding NOW.

Astronomers don't have any trouble with the thought that we see our
own star, the Sun, as it was about eight minutes ago, because the Sun
is about 8 light minutes away. *They have no problem with the fact
that if the star Sirius were to blow up today, we wouldn't know about
it until about 8.6 years from now, because Sirius is 8.6 light years
away. *So why do they have so much trouble with the thought that if a
galaxy is racing away from us, that may have been what it WAS doing
billions of years ago? *How can they take that observation and
conclude that the Universe is expanding NOW???


They take measurements of the relative speeds of closer galaxies and
extrapolate. Actually, if closer galaxies seem to be moving apart
disproportionately faster than more distant galaxies, where they know
they are looking further back in time, they conclude there has been
acceleration!

Double-A

Almost, but not quite, AA. The conclusion is not that "there *has
been* acceleration", no. The conclusion is that there *IS*
acceleration of the NOW expanding Universe. I have not been able to
reconcile that conclusion with reality. How can a presently expanding
Universe be concluded by observing galaxies that are billions of light
years away, the light we observe having left those galaxies billions
of years ago?

--
Indelibly yours,
Paine @ http://astronomy.painellsworth.net/
"In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."