On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Jason Van Patten <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 5/26/2011 3:09 PM, Jacob Albretsen wrote:
>> The further away astronomers look into space (time), the more red-shifted
>> objects appear to be. However, in the local area, you can have objects which
>> appear blue-shifted (example: Andromeda Galaxy). This is because in the
>> local area, Doppler shifts of light due to relative motion are dominate over
>> the cosmological redshift due to the expansion of the universe. However once
>> you get much further away, there is a larger cosmological redshift and
>> Doppler
>> shifts of light due to relative motion are negligible.
> If there was a big bang then the point and time when and where it
> occurred would be the center of the universe. However what is still in
> question is if the expansion of the universe is uniform to some
> mathematical formula (dubious in my opinion even if i did accept the big
> bang) and if there hasn't' been any significant gravitational (or other)
> folds to the space time fabric.
Your misunderstanding is in your suggestion that there was a unique
point in the universe in which the big bang took place. In fact, the
entire universe was a point, and the big bang occurred throughout the
entire thing as it expanded. We're not talking about an explosion
that occurred in a preexisting space, but the expansion of space from
a single point.
If you point a microwave radio telescope in any direction, you'll find
the 'cosmic background radiation' that fills space nearly uniformly.
If all matter in the universe originated at a single point in a
preexisting space, you'd expect to be able to find that "center point"
with a radio telescope, but instead the evidence actually points
towards a big bang as I described above, which leads to the nearly
uniform distribution throughout space.
--Levi
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