Scientists Find Universe Is 80 Million Years Older, So Actually How Old Is It? By Roger A. Rydin Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering, University of Virginia
1. Introduction It was announced on March 21, 2012 that new data taken by the Planck telescope show the universe is 13.8 billion years old, or 80 million years older than previously thought. This is an interesting result, since it changes the previous estimate by only about 1 part in 140. If we were to assume that these were two separate measurements, we would assign a precision to the result of ± 0.7 %, a remarkably small amount. Achieving precision is the effect of repetition, and this is a remarkably high precision.
What then is the accuracy of the result, meaning the percentage difference compared to the true absolute age of the universe? We do not actually know, because we routinely confuse the concepts of accuracy and precision. The answer may be precise but precisely wrong. We need to look at other data to see if the age estimate itself is meaningful.
The concept of the Big Bang is that the universe began as a singularity, which is to say with all its matter concentrated at a point, and then space expanded in all directions to separate the pieces. So when we speak of a galaxy that is 13 billion light years from Earth, that means that light has taken that long to get here from there. A theoretical corollary is that the galaxy in question was seen only a short time after the Big Bang occurred, so it was an infant when the light left it. We can also measure the Doppler shift of the light, and determine that its velocity is only a fraction of the speed of light.
The main question is: If the Earth and that galaxy were once close together at t = 0, how long did it take for the two to separate before the light left the galaxy to come here? The logical answer is, at least 13 billion years to move away and probably several times that because it is moving at less than the speed of light away from us. So that gives an estimate of the true age of somewhere between 26 billion years and perhaps 130 billion years. Hence, unless there is something strange about how far an object moves away from another object at constant speed over a time period, the true age is very different from the accepted age, which is indeed precisely wrong!
According to Eric Lerner [1], "Tully's super-cluster complexes directly contradict the homogeneity assumed by the Big Bang. This homogeneity has always been a problem, since it's clear that the universe is so clumpy: how did it get that way if it started out so smooth? The general Big Bang answer has been that there were very tiny clumps in the early universe; through gravitational attraction those clumps gradually grew bigger and bigger, forming stars, galaxies, and clusters. Of course, the bigger the clump is, the longer the time it takes to form it."
"For stars, a few million years is enough to form, for galaxies one or two billion years are needed. Clusters take even longer. By the time super-clusters were discovered, there was an obvious difficulty, and in the nineteen eighties cosmologists were hard at work trying to overcome them. Tully's objects made the situation impossible - they were just too big to have formed in the fourteen billion years since the Big Bang."
"It's not hard to see why. By observing the redshifts of galaxies, astronomers can see not only how far away they are, but roughly how fast they move relative to one another - their true speed, ignoring the Hubble velocities that increase with distance. Remember, redshifts indicate how fast an object is moving away from us. Redshifts increase with distance, but also with an object's own speed, relative to the objects around it. It's possible to sort these two velocities out, using other distance measurements, such as the one Tully and Fischer devised. It turns out that galaxies almost never move much faster than a thousand kilometers per second, about one-three- hundredth as fast as the speed of light."
"Thus, in the (at most) fourteen billion years since the Big Bang, a galaxy, or the matter that would make up a galaxy, could have moved only about sixty-five million light-years. But if you start out with matter spread smoothly through space, and if you can move it only sixty-five million light-years, you just can't build up objects as vast and dense as Tully's complexes. For these objects to form, matter must have moved at least 270 million light-years. This would have taken around eighty billion years at one thousand kilometers per second, four or five times longer than the time allowed by the Big Bang theorists."
"The situation is really worse than this, because the matter would first have to accelerate to this speed. Even before this, a seed mass big enough to attract matter over such distances would have to form. So an age of one hundred billion years for such complexes is conservative. Simply put, if Tully's objects exist, the universe cannot have begun fourteen billion years ago."
2. Cosmologist’s Reactions to the New Data According to two articles on the web, and one in the Washington Post [2], various conclusions result from the new data:
“A new examination of what is essentially the universe's birth certificate allows astronomers to tweak the age, girth and speed of the cosmos, more secure in their knowledge of how it evolved, what it's made of and its ultimate fate. Sure, the universe suddenly seems to be showing its age, now calculated at 13.8 billion years — 80 million years older than scientists had thought. It's got about 3 percent more girth — technically it's more matter than mysterious dark energy — and it is expanding about 3 percent more slowly.”
“The Planck space telescope mapped background radiation from the early universe. The results bolstered a key theory called "inflation," which says the universe burst from subatomic size to its vast expanse in a fraction of a second just after the Big Bang that created the cosmos. "We've uncovered a fundamental truth of the universe," said George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge who announced the Planck findings in Paris. "There's less stuff that we don't understand by a tiny amount." The map of the universe's evolution — in sound echoes and fossilized light going back billions of years — reinforces some predictions made decades ago solely on the basis of mathematical concepts.”
"What a wonderful triumph of the mathematical approach to describing nature. The precision is breathtaking," Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist, said in an email Thursday. "The satellite is measuring temperature variations in space — which arose from processes that took place almost 14 billion years ago — to 1 part in a million. It’s amazing." The Big Bang theory says the universe was smaller than an atom in the beginning when, in a split second, it exploded, cooled and expanded faster than the speed of light — an idea that scientists call inflation.”
The mathematical concepts referred to above are the idea that General Relativity (GR) is the basis of the expansion of the universe. It is supposed to be a uniform, isotropic, center-less expansion of space from a singular point to what we observe today. Hubble’s Law, which is actually a fit to galaxy data taken not far from Earth, supposedly shows that the farther away from us in all directions galaxies are found, the faster they move away, in accordance with the GR solution. But simply extrapolating backwards 14 billion years, we don’t arrive at a universe that is nearly small enough. “Inflation” [3] is a way to fit the present distribution smoothly back to a point by using an extraordinary rate of expansion over a very brief interval of time. In other words, we adjust the data to fit the theory!
Actually, our measuring stick for distance is based upon measuring nearby galaxy distances at two different positions in the Earth’s orbit six months apart using standard surveying techniques, and then extending the scale using standard candles called Cepheid variables to go out to a few hundred million light years, and then using a brighter standard candle called a supernova Type I to go out to far distances. The process is shown in the figure below.
Fig. 1 Smoot’s Lecture on Cosmic Distance Measurement
The actual data near Earth are shown below in two directions, one along a line toward what is known as the Great Attractor (GA) [4] where the data assumes a rather strange asymmetry. We will comment on this matter again, later. It is seen that the data have a natural uncertainty or spread of about ±10 %. We should actually plot error boxes rather than error bars to indicate that the uncertainty goes along both axes.
Fig. 2 Hubble Redshift vs. Distance Plots Near Earth
What most people do not appreciate is the idea of a statistical propagation of errors. The original geometrical measurements have an uncertainty of a percent or so due to the ability to accurately measure angles and the Earth’s orbit size. When a boot-strap measurement is made to extend the distance scale using a Cepheid, the uncertainty of the brightness data is compounded with the original uncertainty, with the idea that errors always add. Also, the square relationship between points must be considered. So after several independent extensions, the overall error becomes larger. Finally, each time the scale is extended using a supernova Type I, the errors compound again since each measurement is independent. Thus, it is unreasonable to simply assign ±10 % to all subsequent measurements, as seems to be routinely done for the measurements that lead to the idea of dark energy and an accelerating expansion of the universe. The apparent location of the data points slightly above the Hubble curve, used to justify that the expansion was accelerating, would be unremarkable if the error bars or error boxes were actually ±30 %! This is shown in the figure below.
Fig. 3 Hubble Brightness vs. Redshift for Supernova Type I “Planck's examination of the Big Bang's afterglow set the universe's age at about 13.8 billion years. Scientists often round up to 14 billion years anyway, and Caltech's Carroll said an additional 100 million years is nothing — like adding a month to the age of a 13-year-old. But 100 million years is important, countered Planck scientist Martin White: "100 million years here and there really start to add up." The new results also mean there's slightly less dark energy in the universe than scientists figured. Instead of 71.4 percent of the universe being that mysterious force, it's 68.3 percent. This dark energy is smoothly spread throughout the universe and gives the "push" to its expansion, Carroll said. The results also slightly boosted the amount of dark matter in the universe — up to 26.8 percent — and more normal matter, up to 4.9 percent. The concept known as the Hubble constant, which measures how fast the universe is expanding, was adjusted to be about 3 percent slower than scientists had thought.”
It is amazing that such a small change in age of only 0.7 % can have such profound consequences! This is especially true when you think that scientists believe that visible matter is only a small fraction of the total matter in the universe, and that this also indicates that the Hubble relationship needs to be modified. It begs the question of what would be the consequences of having an age that is considerable longer!
“There was an odd spike in some of the Planck temperature data that hinted at a preferred direction or axis that seemed to fit nicely with the angle of our solar system, which shouldn't be, he said. But overall, Planck's results touched on mysteries of the universe that have already garnered scientists three different Nobel prizes. Scientists studying cosmic background radiation won Nobel prizes in 1978 and 2006, and other work on dark energy won the Nobel prize in 2011. At the news conference, Efstathiou said the pioneers of inflation theory should start thinking about their own Nobel prizes. Two of those theorists — Paul Steinhardt of Princeton and Andreas Albrecht of University of California Davis — said before the announcement that they were sort of hoping that their inflation theory would not be bolstered. That's because taking inflation a step further leads to a sticky situation: An infinite number of universes.” The new data is shown below the older data.
Fig. 4 Planck Satellite CMB Survey “But where the basic models of inflation say this expansion should have happened uniformly in all directions, the new Planck results suggest that might not have been the case."One of the features of inflation is it says there should be no preferred direction — everywhere in the universe should be more or less the same," astrophysicist Marc Kamionkowski of Johns Hopkins University said today (March 21) during a NASA press call. "But when you look at the amplitudes, even by eye you can tell that one side of the universe looks different from the other side." That is to say, the temperature variations in the CMB appear to be sized and spaced differently when Planck looks in one direction, than when it looks in the other. There are other anomalies as well. The variations don't appear to behave the same on large scales as they do on small scales, and there are some particularly large features, such as a hefty cold spot, that were not predicted by basic inflation models. Ultimately, the data show "some features that are surprising and very, very intriguing," said Charles Lawrence, U.S. Planck project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.”
In other words, the experimental asymmetries were unexpected. But these are not the only problems with the totality of experimental data. There are other asymmetries, such as the Dipole Anomaly [5], shown below, and the fact that the only known blueshift galaxies [6] lie along a line in the direction of Virgo. Some of this other data will be discussed next.
Fig. 5 Dipole Anomaly in the CMB 3.1 Galaxy Distribution There are six deep redshift galaxy surveys that cover a significant sampling of the universe to a depth of about 5 billion light years [7], plus the entire Sloan Survey which is plotted in 2D by integrating over the third angle. These are shown symbolically below.
Fig. 6 Six Deep Redshift Pencil Surveys
Fig. 7 Sloan Galaxy Survey
Both surveys show that the distribution of galaxies is essentially spherically symmetric about an origin located about 70 million light years from Earth in the direction of Virgo. The count density of galaxies, as a surrogate for the local density of matter falls off from this origin approximately as 1-over-r-squared [8]. Furthermore, the density is periodic, with a period of approximately 400 million light years as shown by the circles in the Sloan Survey and in the cartoon shown in Figure 8 from the NS pencil survey. The data from the six pencil surveys are highly correlated [9], showing that they come from a common source. The only conclusion that can be made from these data is that they do not correspond in any way with the conditions of the Big Bang, in that the distribution is not uniform in density, or isotropic, or center-less. Rather, it is periodic, which is at odds with all GR theory!
Fig. 8 Cartoon Showing Results of NS Deep Redshift Survey [7]
The origin of the galaxy distribution corresponds with the origin of the CMB distribution. The blueshift galaxies lie along the line to the origin, which means that they are on the same side of the origin as Earth, and moving in the same general direction but with slightly different velocities such that some are catching up with others. The origin corresponds to the Dipole Anomaly shown in Figure 5 and the Great Attractor shown in Figure 2. Hence, the asymmetries and anomalies in the Planck data are not so unusual after all!
3.2 Explanation for the Asymmetries We contend that the asymmetries are real, and are an artifact of our misunderstanding of the spherically symmetric nature of the movement of galaxies. They are all moving away from the origin, but since we are off center, we misinterpret what we see when looking in the region between the origin and our position [10]. We obtain a vector component of the actual velocity difference, as shown in Figure 9. As distance increases outside this region, increasingly we see all galaxies generally moving away from us like a uniform distribution.
Fig. 9 Off-center Observations
4. Conclusions Is the age of the universe now firmly established, or is it still in doubt? Has the new Planck telescope data confirmed the Big Bang model is valid or hasn’t it? Are new Nobel Prizes in the works for the theorists involved in the analysis, or were they wrong? We consider the following points:
1) The galaxy distribution data argues that the conditions for the GR model to be valid were not met. The expansion appears to be radial motion of galaxies from an origin at relatively constant but different speeds such that the density of matter decreases as the matter spreads. It is not an isotropic, homogeneous and center-less spread of matter as space expands, but rather actual motion in absolute space.
2) Hence, if the beginning was not a singularity, inflation is not needed to connect the current data to a point. If the Big Bang did not occur, then a different explanation is needed for the CMB, and small initial fluctuations were not required to form present structure.
3) If the error bars of uncertainty on experimental data have not been correctly calculated, and precision has been substituted for accuracy, then conclusions about the data supporting the existence of dark energy are unwarranted.
4) The asymmetric features of the Planck data are also not in agreement with the Big Bang scenario. On the other hand, they can be explained in terms of our observing a symmetric distribution from an off-center vantage point, and not realizing that this is what is happening. All the various asymmetries appear to occur near the origin, or along the line to the origin. The measured reference frame of the CMB also corresponds to the frame set by the origin. Hence, this may be the long sought Absolute reference frame where the speed of light is truly constant.
5) The age of the universe appears to be much older than 14 billion years, perhaps ten or more times that value. This is based on the structure observed in the universe, namely great walls of galaxies arranged in a radial manner, with clusters and super-clusters that would have taken a great deal of time beyond 14 billion years to form.
6) Finally, the NS deep redshift data can be fit with a probability curve that corresponds to a radial Bessel function squared times an exponential [10]. This gives a curve that decays as 1- over r-squared, is periodic, and decreases as if matter were being deposited along the way. The various maxima correspond to the great walls, and the minima correspond to relative voids between the walls. While this does not explain how the damped periodic distribution was created, it does give a hint about its possible origin, which may lead to a new theory. This fit is shown below.
Fig. 10 Spherical Bessel Function Fit to NS Pencil Data [10]
References 1) Eric Lerner, “The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominate Theory of the Origin of the Universe, essay adapted from the web. 1991.
2) Lena H. Sun and Brian Vastag, “New `Baby Picture' of Universe Yields Surprises and Questions”, Washington Post, March 22. 2013. 3)Alan H. Guth, The Inflationary Universe, Perseus Books, Reading MA, Chapters 1-3, 7, 8, 1997. 4) Alan Dressler, Voyage to the Great Attractor, First Vintage Books, Random House, 1995. 5) Lawrence Krauss, Quintessence, the Mystery of Missing Mass in the Universe, Basic Books, Parts II-IV, New York, NY, 2000. 6) Halton Arp, Seeing Red, Aperion Press, 1998. 7) D.C. Koo, N. Ellman, R.G. Kron, J.A. Munn, A.S. Szalay, T.J. Broadhurst, and R.S. Ellis, "Deep Pencil-Beam Redshift Surveys as Probes of Large Scale Structures", Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Conference Series, Vol. 51, 1993, and S.R. Majewski, class notes, Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, March 1996. 8) R. A. Rydin, "Experimental Evidence that the Density of the Universe is Not Constant", Proceedings of the 13th Natural Philosophy Alliance International Conference, April 3 - 7, 2006, at OSU, Tulsa, OK, 2006. 9) R. A. Rydin, "Cross Correlation of Deep Redshift Galactic Pencil Survey Data", Proceedings of the 10th Annual Natural Philosophy Alliance International Conference, June 9 - 13, 2003 at UConn, Storrs, CT, in Journal of New Energy, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp 139-143, 2003. 10) R. A. Rydin, "A Conceptual Model Explaining the Experimentally Observed Motion of the Universe”, General Science Journal, http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers- Astrophysics/Download/3621 , 2008.