runarorama/Redshift

## Redshift
From a recent "Bad Astronomy" post:

"We know the Universe is expanding; everywhere we look, it appears that galaxies are rushing away from us. If we run the clock backwards, this means the Universe was smaller in the past, and at some point must have had (nearly) zero volume. This point in time is commonly referred to as the Big Bang, when the expansion of the Universe started. 13.82 billion years later, here we are."

This is pure rationalism from beginning to end. Rationalism is a philosophical approach that clings to deductive proof as the standard of knowledge. So you move from one thing to the next by syllogism, and there is no essential difference between a true premise and a false one. We look at galaxies and see that they are redshifted, redshift is caused by motion away from the observer therefore the galaxies are rushing away from us, therefore the universe is expanding, therefore it _must_ have had (nearly) zero volume at some point, therefore Big Bang. It all depends on several logical leaps of deductive reasoning, and it it is all utter nonsense.

The first leap here (not mentioned in the article, do note!) is that redshift is caused only by the observed object being in motion away from the observer. The premise is that no other cause is possible, and this is stated with absolute certainty ("we know"), even though we do not know very much about what light is, or what causes it.

Here is what we do know. Electromagnetic radiation from galaxies has element absorption bands with signatures identical to those we observe on earth. We know that hydrogen in our galaxy absorbs a certain wavelength of light, so that band will be missing in radiation signals from where hydrogen is present. We see the signature of hydrogen in faraway galaxies shifted towards the red. Some nearby galaxies are shifted towards the blue. And THIS IS ALL WE KNOW. Anything beyond that is a fun story, and not science. But science is not very exciting, so people make up stories, and several logical leaps later there is a Big Bang, a compelling creation myth that captures the imagination and sells papers.

Here's an alternative hypothesis, no less true and no less false: Galaxies that we can see were all created at roughly the same cosmological epoch. The light that we are seeing is light that was emitted earlier. The further away the galaxy, the younger it will look (all things being equal). Therefore, elements when first created are shifted towards the red and they move towards the blue as time goes on. Therefore, redshift is a function of the age of galaxies.
	From a recent "Bad Astronomy" post:

	"We know the Universe is expanding; everywhere we look, it appears that galaxies are rushing away from us. If we run the clock backwards, this means the Universe was smaller in the past, and at some point must have had (nearly) zero volume. This point in time is commonly referred to as the Big Bang, when the expansion of the Universe started. 13.82 billion years later, here we are."

	This is pure rationalism from beginning to end. Rationalism is a philosophical approach that clings to deductive proof as the standard of knowledge. So you move from one thing to the next by syllogism, and there is no essential difference between a true premise and a false one. We look at galaxies and see that they are redshifted, redshift is caused by motion away from the observer therefore the galaxies are rushing away from us, therefore the universe is expanding, therefore it _must_ have had (nearly) zero volume at some point, therefore Big Bang. It all depends on several logical leaps of deductive reasoning, and it it is all utter nonsense.

	The first leap here (not mentioned in the article, do note!) is that redshift is caused only by the observed object being in motion away from the observer. The premise is that no other cause is possible, and this is stated with absolute certainty ("we know"), even though we do not know very much about what light is, or what causes it.

	Here is what we do know. Electromagnetic radiation from galaxies has element absorption bands with signatures identical to those we observe on earth. We know that hydrogen in our galaxy absorbs a certain wavelength of light, so that band will be missing in radiation signals from where hydrogen is present. We see the signature of hydrogen in faraway galaxies shifted towards the red. Some nearby galaxies are shifted towards the blue. And THIS IS ALL WE KNOW. Anything beyond that is a fun story, and not science. But science is not very exciting, so people make up stories, and several logical leaps later there is a Big Bang, a compelling creation myth that captures the imagination and sells papers.

	Here's an alternative hypothesis, no less true and no less false: Galaxies that we can see were all created at roughly the same cosmological epoch. The light that we are seeing is light that was emitted earlier. The further away the galaxy, the younger it will look (all things being equal). Therefore, elements when first created are shifted towards the red and they move towards the blue as time goes on. Therefore, redshift is a function of the age of galaxies.