Hubble tension is now in our cosmic backyard, sending cosmology into crisis

Feb 16, 2024
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Has anyone tried Lorentz contracting the redshift based measurements?

Using V(r) = c × tanh(Hr/c) for Hubble's Law predicts this sort of thing, along with the appearance that the expansion rate is increasing. Besides objects appearing brighter than expected using V(r)=Hr, they should also appear more massive than expected.
 
Jun 7, 2021
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It seems to me that there is a very simple explanation -- The laws of physics are slowly changing as the universe ages. This is a continuing process. Perhaps they were changing faster when the universe was young, but they are still slowly changing today. It could be simply that physical constants (including the speed of light and the Hubble "constant") are changing, or there could be changes to the more basic laws of Physics.

Nearly 14 years ago, I published a paper "A Common-Plinth Approach to Relativity and Quantum". The Discussion Page is at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/943. To download the full Essay, click on "Download Essay PDF File" on that Discussion Page.

I argue that the universe has nine spatial dimensions organized into three aethers of three dimensions apiece. One of those aethers provides the three spatial dimensions we are familiar with. As these three dimensions expand, the other six contract. I also posit that the laws of Physics depend on the ratios of the sizes of the aethers, and, as the universe ages, these ratios change, and thereby the laws of Physics change.
 
Jan 22, 2025
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This is not a Law. It is an observation and will likely change. Newton, on the other hand, will be here forever, Quantum theory notwithstanding.
Furthermore ,JZL above is on the right track. There are not three dimensions of space but only one, Volume, as points, lines and surfaces do not exist except in our mathematical minds. The four dimensions of space are as Einstein uses in his equation: Energy, mass, time and one part of volume, length.
 
Jul 6, 2024
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To have a perspective on this, it is worth to remember that this is not the first time we have Hubble tension. Throughout the 1990s, the problem was that measurement results were either around 50 or around 100. In the early 2000s, not only did measurement precision improve, but it was found that there were biases in both sets of measurements. This could easily repeat now, instead of us needing completely new physics. It is tough to find a bias with the standard candles nearby, though: there would need to be an effect to make them all brighter with distance/age. (The opposite could be explained by some weak dark matter - photon interaction.)
 
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I’m happy to put on a dunce hat if someone can explain to me why a slower expansion rate in the past, especially at Recombination, is a problem. It was the discovery of acceleration that gave us DE, so…

What good is acceleration if you never go faster?

The first expansion model (Lemaitre, 1927) showed an increasing expansion rate over time due to the assumed vacuum energy as first noted by Einstein’s cosmological constant.

It was Reiss, however, who was the first to announce DE in 1995(?), and is lead author in the paper, so I’m confident it’s me that’s missing the meat on the tension bones.
 

SAE

Jan 22, 2025
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Firstly, as a new replicant let me say Howdy. Secondly, as an art museum professional I've gained the bulk of my cosmological knowledge from 'Starry Night'. I don't fully grasp how a "Coma" cluster can be so tense, but has the concept of launching antidepressants into it been considered? Or making them avaible to cosmologists? I should also state I am not a medical professional.
 
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Surely by now, the physicists and followers of cosmology, realize that the shift of light is not Doppler.

So what is it? This is fundamental. We can not verify this waveform.

I suggest that the frequency of light is not an alternation of direction or polarity.

I suggest the frequency is presence. An intermittence rate. Blinking.

A duty cycle shift. The ONLY avenue of space propagation. Thru empty space.
 
Light would always be seen and measured as incident, but the incidence might be curved. The 13 billion light line is a curve. The curve being undetectable.

And why following light to a star is always the longest route.

And trans warp navigation impossible. We can’t see or measure where anything is.

Curve….. an elongated distance. Doesn’t a curve have a tension? A gradient of distortion.
 
Feb 16, 2024
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V(r) = c × tanh(Hr/c) relieves the "tension" in Hubble's Law. I don't know for sure why nobody will even try it out. (I suspect there's no grant money in it.) It's derived from the equation:
f(a+b) = (f(a)+f(b)) / (1 - (f(a)*f(b)) / c^2) )^.5
which applies relativistic addition of velocities to Hubble's Law.

It's really a very simple explanation. I brought this up at Cornell in the '80s, but nobody would even look at it. This was even before this recent "tension" came to light. It describes an infinite and eternal universe which appears to have a "red limit" when using Newtonian addition of velocities. Objects in the distance will also appear to be more massive than they "should" be.

Lorentz contracting the distance measured by redshift might explain why the Coma galaxies appear brighter than they "should" be.

I have yet to see or hear any explanation WHY relativity doesn't apply to recessional velocities. Why would one kind of increasing distance be different from any other kind? I see no reason to insist on it, and it looks like it could resolve the appearance of contradictory observations. If somebody here knows, please tell me WHY.
 
Nov 20, 2024
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Is there such a thing as a "relativistic mirage", where we are fooled by "something" caused by "something else"?

Thinking here on a grand scale. For instance, could the mass of the entire Universe fool us into the wrong conclusions of something we are looking at on smaller scales? Doesn't have to deal with dark energy, but it could.

Anything realistic will do!
 
Jan 2, 2024
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Maybe it is quite simple: Using the CMB gives a 'direct' measurement via wavelength increase whereas the Standard Candles type approach measures spacetime over a curvature (of an n-sphere)
 
Nov 20, 2024
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Two very good notions. But.........

How can we know that the CMB is a 'direct' measurement when there is nothing to verify the accurate impact of the mass of the Universe on its 'evolution'? Isn't red shift of the CMB essential to its de-convolution and thereby its interpretation? It seems possible that 'direct' is not so direct (to say nothing about its de-convolution). It all seems rather murky.

This is way out of my area, but the concept of a cosmic mirage is hard to shake.
 
Feb 16, 2024
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In our case, the mirage is caused by bad assumptions.

#1 Hubble's Law is linear. That is, if object B is x times farther away than object A, then it is receding x times faster than B.

Which leads us to:
#2 The universe is finite in space, time, mass, and every way else. Even if it is infinite, there's that "red limit" of exceeding the speed of light (??!) that cuts us off in our own little bubble. Remote parts of the universe are causally disconnected.

Which leads us to:
#3 An expanding universe must be increasing in size and decreasing in density, and must be embedded in at least a 4-dimensional space.

#4 There must be some sort of force or principle that overcomes gravity to cause the expansion.

So here we go:
Point #1. Hubble's Law is a hyperbolic tangent function multiplied by the speed of light. In the light of relativity, this is the assumption we should have started with.

Point #2. We can infer the universe is infinite in every way, and completely causally connected. No "red limit"; no need to break the speed of light.

Point #3. An infinite universe doesn't need an extra dimension to "expand into". That's an assumption we don't have to make. We can still have a "Big Bang" scenario, but it starts infinity time ago, with an infinite super dense universe. Not infinitesimal, but infinite. The age and size of the universe is always infinity.

Point #4. The distribution of infinite gravity sources cause the universal gravity field to be generally close to zero, rather like being near the center of a planet, where the gravity is zero. There is still an apparent "red limit", but all of the infinite universe appears compressed into that finite space. It looks less like a place where galaxies fade beyond view, and more like an event horizon shielded by a neutronium wall, which all the remote supermassive galaxies are getting compressed into at nearly the speed of light. We never see the matter pass through the event horizon to nowhere, because of the time dilation approaching infinity.

In other words, it looks like the entire infinite universe is inside an inside-out black hole, with it's event horizon at the "red limit" distance.

We've been mapping our infinite and completely observable universe into the finite "red limit" space. That's only one step for for a mathematician. Now we're confusing the map with the territory. So when we measure time relative to the "big bang", we're getting the dates wrong. We need to put our zero time back to the present, use negative years like we used to, and adjust to fit the hyperbolic tangent function.
 
Until there is a consensus that this is a validated and robust problem for LCDM, it remains too early to say.

That consensus is not there yet.

Different measurement methods gets different results, and it is a fact that their increased precision has moved the survey results into a 5+ sigma tension. But it remains to be seen if, say, the methods have no bias.

Meanwhile, when surveys integrate all the data the LCDM model as such it comes up as robust. It is merely the Hubble constant value that is not, and conversely the surveys most often prefer the Hubble constant value that is not relying on the so called cosmic distance ladder.

The latest paper that has produced a result has tried to verify that cosmic distance ladder calibration. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.14546 By using the JWST results they tighten an interesting object distance (to the Coma cluster) that can be estimated by many non-ladder and ladder methods. But the discrepancy between them (the overlap in uncertainties from methods) is at my eyeballing 3.6 sigma and still far from the 5 sigma tension level. They don’t present and discuss that crucial tension but choose a one-sided range (which, say, looks better if you want to make click bait press material for the paper).

We should also not forget that 2 out of 3 distance ladder based supernova methods disagree with the one that gives tension and was used in the paper. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-analysis-webb-universe-expansion-hubble.html One of the alternate methods is also presented in the paper and - at admittedly worse precision in this particular estimate of the Coma cluster - it comfortably accommodates the non-ladder method results.

It seems that improved precision is not the answer to solving the Hubble tension. While astronomers still aren’t sure, the results of this paper suggest that the Hubble tension might not be due to inaccurate measurements, but might actually reflect some intrinsic difference between the two measurement methods.
https://astrobites.org/2025/01/10/coma-hubble-tension/
 
Has anyone tried Lorentz contracting the redshift based measurements?
Surely by now, the physicists and followers of cosmology, realize that the shift of light is not Doppler.
I have yet to see or hear any explanation WHY relativity doesn't apply to recessional velocities.
I’m happy to put on a dunce hat if someone can explain to me why a slower expansion rate in the past, especially at Recombination, is a problem. It was the discovery of acceleration that gave us DE,

Cosmological redshift is not a Doppler shift, and no physicist has claimed that in a century, I think. But is caused by photons being stretched by traveling through expanding space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift Photon travel description is based on the Lorentz metric so it is accounted for. (Massless particles can travel at the universal speed limit of light speed in vacuum, so is not affected by variations in time dilation or length contraction of special relativity.)

Space expansion is a scale factor change that is obeying relativity (specifically curved space general relativity, not just flat space special relativity). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_factor_(cosmology) Through redshift that can be erroneously interpreted as "recessional velocity". But should not be confused with the so called "peculiar velocity" of a galaxy own velocity in relation to e.g. the cosmic background radiation. Peculiar velocities add blue- or redshift to the cosmological redshift observations. The galaxies aren't actually moving due to space expansion when the distances between them increase. Think of a rising raisin bread, the dough may expand but the raisins don't move through the dough.

The scale factor change rate has varied through cosmological time, as enforced by the dominating energy type in the universe energy budget (see the scale factor link). Currently the rate change is dominated by vacuum "dark" energy, a constant factor that drives an exponential rate change. That has been called an "acceleration" in rate change, but mind that the Hubble constant (the Hubble parameter now) that sits in the exponential model is slowly asymptoting towards a lower value. In this case it is the problem to fit the rates to the many observations in the LCDM model that cosmologists mind.

What if the cosmos was in a spin?
How would that explain a common redshift!?

But we can see from the cosmic background observation that the universe is not rotating.

It seems to me that there is a very simple explanation -- The laws of physics are slowly changing as the universe ages.
We know from observations of spectra that atoms and the law they saw have been the same through cosmological history.
I published a paper
No, you did not, that was a comment site essay.

A paper is a peer reviewed scientific text published in a vetted journal that scientists would want to read.

This is not a Law. It is an observation and will likely change.
Space expansion is not a conservation law, it is an observational law since a general relativistic universe can either expand or contract - it is expanding.

The LCDM model may change (or not), that is what the Hubble expansion observations are about.

Is there such a thing as a "relativistic mirage", where we are fooled by "something" caused by "something else"?
The many observations in the LCDM model that cosmologists mind implies that it is a robust model despite the Hubble tension if you integrate all the observations. (The Hubble tension tends to get resolved to the lower values.)

And as noted here, it solved the earlier "mirages" of disparate observational ages for the universe (star ages, cluster ages, expansion ages).

In our case, the mirage is caused by bad assumptions.

#1 Hubble's Law is linear.
The Hubble law dD/dt = H(t)*D(t), D distance, H Hubble parameter. is a linear form. But the relation between distance change rate and redshift depends on the cosmological model.
 
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Nov 20, 2024
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Cosmological redshift is not a Doppler shift, and no physicist has claimed that in a century, I think. But is caused by photons being stretched by traveling through expanding space.
So based on this, galaxies forming superclusters must be converging because the space between them is decreasing. The galaxies forming a given cluster then would be blueshifted when looking at one from another?

But I have read that most galaxies are redshifted relative to others, due to the expansion of space, even in superclusters.

This seems a tad contradictory, and perhaps conditional. How can superclusters form if the galaxies forming them are expanding away from each other, and are redshifted?
 
Do you know how fractally broad and deep in accelerating expansion open (opening) system single-sided 2-dimensional Flatland universe photo-frame fronts with no other side whatsoever are?!

Do you know, or can you suspect, a Schrodinger's cat, and/or a tesseract, when you see one macrocosmically?! That you may be observing different, more than one, phenomenon (more than one phenomena) in exactly the same picture-frame of SPACETIME?! A possible multiverse universe?!

If not, then explain all the universe's self-contradictions observed!
 
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Jan 28, 2023
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So based on this, galaxies forming superclusters must be converging because the space between them is decreasing. The galaxies forming a given cluster then would be blueshifted when looking at one from another?

But I have read that most galaxies are redshifted relative to others, due to the expansion of space, even in superclusters.

This seems a tad contradictory, and perhaps conditional. How can superclusters form if the galaxies forming them are expanding away from each other, and are redshifted?
You cannot register the effects of light between approaching or receding galaxies, let's call them A and B, from the position of a side observer. You can only see and register these effects from the motion of these and other galaxies relative to you, which may and even is certain to be at a different speed and direction than the motion between galaxies A and B has, for an observer who lives or resides in one of these two galaxies.
 
An appearance of accelerating contraction into itself away from the observer at a distance, a "spooky action at a distance," red shifts. It doesn't blue shift. The Flatland universe 'Mandelbrot set', regardless of its accelerating contractions within, is at once a grand display of accelerating expansion of its overall dimensionality. It goes in to closure and balloons out in opening. The quality of the red shift is infinitely easier to pick up then the blue shift.
 
Jan 2, 2024
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How can we know that the CMB is a 'direct' measurement when there is nothing to verify the accurate impact of the mass of the Universe on its 'evolution'? Isn't red shift of the CMB essential to its de-convolution and thereby its interpretation? It seems possible that 'direct' is not so direct (to say nothing about its de-convolution). It all seems rather murky.

This is way out of my area, but the concept of a cosmic mirage is hard to shake.
CMB data is a measure of expansion - not travel through space. Wavelengths become longer as a result of space 'stretching'. Standard Candles have data travelling THROUGH space ( and also stretching due to expansion. It is the action of travel through space that makes the difference re red shift data. ;) Maybe.
 
The length of a photon never changes. That’s why when we learn to measure light, spacetime and the blur of this cosmos goes away.

Even our velocity can not change the length of a photon, only the interaction duration with it. But never it’s length. Light has a limited shift. And when it does shift, only ½ of it shifts.

A photon’s length is a discreet physical quantum and can not be changed. The half that does NOT shift.

And nobody knows this.

Time can not be pressed or stretched, only sliced. And light is a slice.
 
Jan 2, 2024
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The length of a photon never changes. That’s why when we learn to measure light, spacetime and the blur of this cosmos goes away.

Even our velocity can not change the length of a photon, only the interaction duration with it. But never it’s length. Light has a limited shift. And when it does shift, only ½ of it shifts.

A photon’s length is a discreet physical quantum and can not be changed. The half that does NOT shift.

And nobody knows this.

Time can not be pressed or stretched, only sliced. And light is a slice.
You fly in the face of the best available evidence as presented by our best scientists. This does not mean you are wrong of course. It does however mean that it is best to say "maybe" so as not to mislead the uninitiated. You state things as a fact but have no reviewed backup. So, your theory implies a 4D space so that duration and space are combined in spacetime and this means in 4D length can vary but in 3D all photons are the same. This is what you said.

So the length is the same but the time element varies - your theory. So the time a photon displays varies. There is no speed of light(?) Please explain.
 

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