A NEW PARADIGM OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT - THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE Article 12 : Are some ideas in today's science ready for retirement? - Part 3 by Rev Nicholas Sykes In the last article an alternative explanation was offered for the observations that have led cosmologists to propose the existence of "Dark Matter". In this article we hope to critique the reasons that cosmologists have given for proposing the existence of the even more unlikely "Dark Energy", whose function, they believe, is by an undiscovered sort of negative gravitation to accelerate the expansion of the universe that was supposed to originate in a primordial "Big Bang". Electric Universe adherents however, asserting what must seem to many to be scientific heresy, consider that there is no proof that such an event as the "Big Bang" ever happened, and also that the supposed proofs of a general expansion of the universe are erroneous. Certainly, if the universe is not in fact expanding, the foundation of the theory that there was a "Big Bang" causing the expansion in the first place lies in tatters. All that would be necessary after that would be to account plausibly for what is called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation ("CMBR") that is generally thought to arrive at our observation posts directly from the primordial Bang itself. So our first task will be to uncover the roots of the general conviction that the universe is expanding, and then to suggest other ways of accounting for the observations that have led to that conviction. The names that are mostly easily associated with this conviction are Doppler and Hubble. Oddly enough, neither of these individuals actually believed the universe was expanding, though Edwin Hubble certainly gave the matter considerable thought. The Doppler effect, named for the scientist Christian Doppler (1803 - 1853) who explained the effect, is the varying note to an observer of the sound demonstrated by a sound-producing travelling object such as a train as it first approaches the observer, goes past him and recedes into the distance. As it approaches, the train's whistle sounds a higher pitch in the ear of the observer than it would if the train were stationary, while when it recedes from the observer, the pitch of the whistle is lower. In the same way, an approaching light-producing object will be observed as "blue-shifted" to the instruments of an observer, while a receding object will be observed as "red-shifted". The blue-shift will indicate a shift to higher frequency and the red-shift likewise to lower frequency, and it is considered that the degree of red-shift will reveal the speed at which the object recedes from the observer. The amount of red (or blue) shift is obtained from the position on the electromagnetic spectrum of the spectral lines of the light-producing or light-absorbing chemicals of the moving object, as measured by the instruments of the observer. The astronomer Edwin P. Hubble (1889 - 1953) made what was to him a tentative discovery: that the further away a galaxy was, the more it was red-shifted. In developments from that assumption, the relationship between the velocity of recession and the distance became named the "Hubble Law" v = H d, in which H is the "Hubble Constant". Hubble himself made an assumption that generalised his tentative discovery, first, that the fainter a distant galaxy appeared to be to his telescope, the further away it was. Dr. Donald Scott points out that the obverse is indeed the case, that the further away a galaxy is, the fainter it will appear to be to us. However, faintness cannot always be regarded as proof of distance. There might be some nearby but small and dim galaxies as well. There is a second assumption implied within the Hubble Law (one that Hubble himself never agreed to), and that is that the degree of red-shift is always a measure of receding velocity. Again Dr. Scott points out that while the receding velocity of a luminous object will indeed produce a red-shift, a red-shift cannot always be regarded as proof of receding velocity. It is becoming evident in fact that a factor other than a receding velocity, a factor which the Electric Universe paradigm treats very seriously and which I hope to consider later in this series, can be the cause of red-shift. And once such a possibility has been accepted, the "Hubble Law" is shattered. There would be no necessary connection between velocity of recession and distance. Consequently there would be no need to assume that the universe is expanding; the idea, first, that there was a "Big Bang" (or for that matter some other mechanism that started the expansion) is entirely unnecessary and can be dispensed with; and secondly, there would be no mathematical need to satisfy any supposition that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. There is therefore no need whatever for the idea of the repelling agent termed "Dark Energy", which can now be returned to the shades of fiction where it always belonged. The astronomer Dr. Halton C. Arp has in fact proved in several hundred observations that there are high red-shifted objects and low red-shifted objects in the universe that are physically connected. These observations have been verified and proved beyond all doubt, and yet because the very idea breaches the canons of modern scientific orthodoxy they have time after time been rejected from publication in the journals. The reason for this is that, once one accepts that there are high red-shifted and low red-shifted objects that are connected and therefore in the same general part of the universe, the chain of assumptions, that red-shift implying recessional velocity implies distance from the observer, is broken and in consequence the mental structures that have been accepted of an expanding universe and the Big Bang are themselves entirely exploded. What, then, is the cause of CMBR? It is simply the Electric Universe itself. The connection between CMBR and the Big Bang was always wholly speculative. No big bang is necessary to make a microwave oven work, after all; one such would be completely undesirable. But if the Universe is in fact alive with plasma electrical current, some background radiation from it is exactly what to expect. Of course the Gravitational Universe proponents could never imagine such a simple solution, but looked at with its necessary electrical component, the universe suddenly starts in many and various areas to make a lot of natural sense. I promised also to take a critical look at black holes and the Oort cloud, but they will have to wait until 2012. For now, let me extend a very "Merry Christmas" to my readers. For more information on the new paradigm, see www.holoscience.com and www.thunderbolts.info Adjustments have been made (May 2014) to this article by the author since its original publication.