A Fresh Look at the Expansion Theory

When I first heard of the Expansion Theory years ago, I don't think I ever really considered taking it seriously.  It struck me as the sort of cornball idea that's only good for shaking up your preconceptions and possibly motivating you to consider different perspectives, the typical sort of thing that inevitably comes up in conversations about "thinking outside the box", something akin to my "microcosm" idea mentioned a few months back.  But yet, the theory has stuck with me, nagging at my mind from time to time, and tucked away on some back shelf where I didn't really bother talking about it.  Today, however, it somehow came up in a conversation I was having with my daughter, and this leisurely day of leftovers and laying around watching TV provided me with an occasion to dust it off, bring it down from the shelf, and reconsider it.  After some brief hunting around on the internet, I found some people who actually take the idea seriously, as well as some interesting arguments for and against.  Some of the advocates of the theory seem a bit...crackpot-ish, even a little too...Flat Earth, but some of them seemed to make a fairly sober and compelling case.  I won't say that I'm completely sold on the idea.  Far from it.  But I'm no longer so quick to dismiss it either.

For those of you who've never heard of it, the Expansion Theory is basically the idea that all the matter in the universe is in a constant state of expansion, and this expansion is fairly uniform.  Since (under this theory) we're expanding along with everything else, this expansion is nearly imperceptible.  If fact, it only manifests itself in one obvious way: gravity.  Confused yet?  Don't worry, my daughter didn't know what the heck I was talking about either.  Let me see if I can't find a way to make it clearer.

If I hold a ball in my hand, and I let it go, it appears to fall to the ground as though pulled there by a force of attraction.  What the Expansion Theory is saying is that the ball doesn't fall at all; it doesn't actually even move.  The Expansion Theory says that the Earth and the ball come to meet each other as they expand, filling the space between them.  Because I'm growing, and the room is growing, and...well, everything is growing, then I don't see that the ball gets any bigger.  I just see the ball and the Earth rapidly colliding.  You see, as long as I'm holding the ball in my hand, and I'm standing solidly on the ground, then the ball and I are both being pushed outward through space by the expanding surface of the Earth.  But the second I let go of the ball, it stays at that same point in space until the surface of the Earth expands to meet it.  To our eyes, it appears to fall.  (See figure below.)

I know, it sounds crazy, right?  The idea that you, your computer, and the room you're sitting in have all doubled in size while you've been reading this seems absolutely ludicrous.  But is it really any more ludicrous that attributing gravity to a curvature of space that you can't see?  Anyway, like I said, I'm far from completely sold on the idea.  It has a few obvious problems, and a few not-so-obvious problems.  For one thing, you have the fact that gravity gets weaker with distance.  At first glance this seems to definitely contradict the theory, but I've come across some intriguing proposals for tackling that problem.  Again, I haven't gone off the deep-end completely.  It's just something interesting to pursue on a lazy day while I lounge around the house digesting my turkey, a little worthwhile time spend outside the box.  I'll keep you posted.             

Trying to Understand Relativity (part 10)

If the flow of time can be affected or altered by a physical phenomenon, then it seems necessary to establish some point of contact between time and physical matter.  For instance, if we say that the weight of an object here on Earth would be 1/16th of that weight if we were to move that object to the Moon, we are able to state this with the utmost confidence because we understand precisely how weight is a physical property of the object, and because we understand precisely how this property expresses itself through the object.  We understand that weight is a measurement of the force of gravity's interaction between the mass of the object and the mass of the Earth or the Moon.  Likewise, if we are to stake the claim that an object's duration can be affected by its velocity, then in the same manner, we need to either understand time as a property of the object, or understand how time can be affected by the object.  In either case, some connection between time and the object needs to be established.

Relativity addresses this problem by tying time to space, forming the unified concept of space-time.  According to Relativity, the mass of an object warps the space around it, and other objects caught in this curvature fall towards the object, creating the appearance of attraction which we call gravity.  Since time is interwoven with space, this warping of space causes a warping in time as well.  In the special circumstances of Relativity this seems to make a certain amount of intuitive sense.  We picture space as a flat plane, and time as a perpendicular dimension to that plane, represented perhaps by an arrow.  Normally, they pass at right angles to one another without disturbing each other, but when there is a warp in the plane of space, it causes a warp in the passage of time as well.

Evidence backs up the facts of this as well.  The warping of space was proven by taking photographs of the stars surrounding the sun during a solar eclipse.  The stars appeared to be slightly shifted in their positions because their light was passing through the warped region of space around the sun.  From the warping of space follows the warping of time.  The Earth is certainly a massive object, and as such, it warps space to a considerable degree, fortunately holding us and the atmosphere snugly to its surface.  In addition to warping space, it also warps time to an almost imperceptible degree.  The GPS satellites in orbit have to be recalibrated on a daily basis to account for the discrepancy.  These aren't just formulas on a chalkboard; these are genuine realities.  Due to the mass of the Earth, time really does run slightly slower here than it does out in space.

So where does this leave us?  In the previous post I brought the wave model to bear on all of this.  With this wave model I proposed that time existed entirely in change and motion.  I went on to speculate that the time dilation effect predicted by Relativity was really a uniform slowing of all motion.  Relativity, however, seems to have returned us to the notion that time exists independently of matter, as something aloof, as a dimension or medium through which change and motion occurs, rather than arising out of the change and motion itself.  Relativity couples time with space, rather than with the matter occupying that space, and there is plenty of evidence to support this union.

Once again, I'm thrown for a loop.  The wave model seemed to neatly provide the point of contact mentioned above.  If time was in the motion, then it seemed to make sense that accelerating one frame of reference to near the speed of light relative to another would cause a uniform regress of motion within the frames to account for the constancy of light.  The next step was to try and figure out exactly how this uniform regress could be caused by acceleration.  It seemed to a matter of calculating how the external and internal velocities balanced to compensate for the speed of light, and then time dilation would arise up out of this balance.  It would all be an adjustment of motion.

It all has an appealing simplicity, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.  I can't deny the connection between space and time.  It has been demonstrated clearly in theory, and in practice, and I'm not here to rewrite Relativity, but rather to understand it.  At the most, I would only propose a reinterpretation of the conclusions drawn from the theory.  So I pose the questions to you, the reader.  Does the space-time concept invalidate the wave model?  Is the hypothesis still worth pursuing anyway?  Is it possible that instead of space stealing time away from matter, perhaps space exists through matter in a similar way as I've proposed that time exists through matter?  The wave model suggests that change doesn't pass through time, but rather that time passes through change.  Likewise, is it possible that objects don't exist in space, but rather that space exists in objects?  Can space and time be unified on the ground of physical matter, as properties of that matter?  In other words, where do we go from here?