Monday, August 07, 2006

Universe is Older than Expected

In Secrets of the Aether, we suggest the Universe did not arise from a single Big Bang event, but rather is a constant "slow bang" caused by some regions of the Universe expanding and others collapsing. Matter is seething in and out of existence constantly.

Now new evidence has surfaced showing the Hubble constant could be off by as much as 15%, thus making the Universe 15% older than previously believed. According to the Aether Physics Model, the Hubble constant should vary for different regions of the Universe. A recent article at Space.com highlighting the work of Alceste Bonanos provides evidence for this hypothesis.

The new method took 10 years to develop and relied on optical and infrared measurements gathered from telescopes all around the world. The researchers looked at a binary star system in M33 where the stars eclipsed each other every five days. Unlike single stars, the masses of paired stars can be precisely calculated based on their movements. With knowledge of the stars' masses, the researchers could calculate their true luminosities, or how bright they would appear if they were nearby.

The difference between the true luminosity and the observed luminosity gives the distance between the stars and Earth. The team's results suggested that the stars were about 3 million light-years from Earth—or about half-a-million light-years farther than would be expected using the commonly accepted Hubble constant value.


If further research shows the Hubble constant is different, depending on which galaxies it is derived from, then this would further support the "slow bang" hypothesis. If the Hubble constant is the same, regardless of where in the Universe it is derived from, then the "slow bang" hypthesis could not be correct.