I presented a paper at the CCC2 conference in September 2008.

What I had done was to search for actual direct evidence to solve the problem of expansion/nonexpansion one way or the other.

To do this I looked at the data on quasar spectra - the lyman alpha forest in particular as these show the positions of the Hydrogen clouds over the history of the universe.

In a static universe they should, on average, be equally spaced. In an expanding universe they should, on average, be getting further and further apart.

What I found was that the evidence is:

1. The universe has been static for the last billion years or so

2. The universe is heating up (or at least becoming more disturbed) as time goes on - and not cooling down.

3. It may well have expanded in the past, but if it did then the universe is very much older than the 13.6 billion years often quoted.

I have posted the power point presentation and a preprint:
Here

Lyndon

Thank you for sharing, Lyndon!

I was looking forward to hearing about what you presented. The cloud spacing I found interesting. I was expecting it to be sort of a cut-and-dried 'constant' all the way from high-z; I wasn't actually expecting it to indicate (in a non-static interpretation) a slowdown effect in the more recent past, rather opposite what would be expected in an expanding universe. (Do I have that right? cf. the graph on p.13 of the presentation)

The Doppler parameter table was pretty interesting, but I must ask: why are the error bars so large? Why is it so hard to measure b properly?

Lyndon said:

But… If the temperature is constant, the local CMB consists of a series of increasingly redshifted Blackbody curves and so the final result will not be ‘perfect’

I was having a bit of trouble understanding that. Do you mean to say that the scale of this effect would be representative of the 'inhomogeneities' of the CMB? How would we know?

Lyndon said:

So, at what redshift were they ‘touching’ - assuming expansion?
dN/dZ = 6600 Z = 29
Or 46x10⁹ years!

Doesn't mainstream cosmology have some means of normalizing redshifts such that z -> infinite as t -> (13.7 Gya)?

Why would it take so long between the atomic and merely-touching stage? Something about that derivation seems odd to me, but I'm open for an education.

I find it pretty interesting how 'troublesome' our influx of new data since 2004 has proved to be, what with more cloud data and non-evolving metallicity and the like. I guess there was a reason that year saw strange alternatives being proposed (like the dodecahedral universe) before everyone 'settled' on an accelerating universe.

Thanks again, Lyndon :)

Hi Ritchie,

I was expecting it to be sort of a cut-and-dried 'constant' all the way from high-z; I wasn't actually expecting it to indicate (in a non-static interpretation) a slowdown effect in the more recent past, rather opposite what would be expected in an expanding universe. (Do I have that right? cf. the graph on p.13 of the presentation)

Thats right. If one takes the Hydrogen cloud data literally, then the expansion rate slows down in the more recent past and comes to a standstill at the present. One reason put forward to explain this is that 1) there is less galaxy formation in recent times and 2) fewer quasars nearby (less uv background so rate of ionisation of H1 clouds reduces). Both these effects are said to reduce the rate at which the clouds 'dip under' a given column density and so (bolster cloud number density) so that when one takes these effects and the 'diluting' effects of an expanding universe the number density remains constant with redshift. One paper actually describes this as 'a  remarkable coincidence'! 
However, at the CCC2 conference I talked to John Hartnet and it looks like the bit about the quasars is not true - there are many more nearby quasars than previously thought (hence this is in the preprint written after and not the actual powerpoint presentation).

The Doppler parameter table was pretty interesting, but I must ask: why are the error bars so large? Why is it so hard to measure b properly?

All the values given are averages of many lines in each redshift interval. The large error bars show the wide range of b values.

I was having a bit of trouble understanding that. Do you mean to say that the scale of this effect would be representative of the 'inhomogeneities' of the CMB? How would we know?

Let me come back to this in a separate post - it takes a while!

Doesn't mainstream cosmology have some means of normalizing redshifts such that z -> infinite as t -> (13.7 Gya)?

I am pretty sure that it does but can't honestly remember why (if I ever knew!)
However, this makes matters worse for the BB (I think - it takes me a while to get my head around these things) If the redshift approaches infinity as we go back in time then the redshift intervals will be less in terms of distance. Hence the distance relating to a particular redshift interval willbe less and there will fewer H1 clouds there. dN/dz will reduce where it should be increasing?
The age goes wrong long before that point - I just extrapolated back assuming the constant rate measured for large redshifts.

One point that should be mentioned. Quasars are weird things and not everyone agrees what they are or even if they are at the huge distances mainstream says they are - some say they are much closer and that the huge redshifts are intrinsic.
I think we will all agree that the most reliable data is from our locality ie nearby and this data says the universe is static!
Cheers,
lyndon

This is very interesting piece of work, Lyndon.

Redshift -> infinity when v -> c. That follows from relativistic Doppler effect, see Wikipedia's article on redshift. But of course, when dealing with mainstream cosmology, you should use BB theory's cosmological redshift equation. The wikipedia article gives 1+z = anow/athen, but that seems to be only for "very small variations in time", whatever that means.

It seems that if universe is static, there has been some large scale evolution going on long time ago judging from your graphs. That's actually good, I think, as there is a need to have some kind of evolution (or, rather recycling) scheme going on, so it might also be happening over large areas at the same time producing an illusion of distance related evolution from our point of view.

One cosmological model that would seem to have trouble with your result is QSSC. I think in that model there shouldn't be such a large scale evolution. However, even in that model the lookback time might create some unexpected tricks.

This is very interesting piece of work, Lyndon.

Thanks.

Redshift -> infinity when v -> c. That follows from relativistic Doppler effect, see Wikipedia's article on redshift. But of course, when dealing with mainstream cosmology, you should use BB theory's cosmological redshift equation.

But it is more complicated than that. If z -> infinity dz does too. But dN ->0 so what is dN/dz then? Ergo, what is zero divided by infinity?I was just extrapolating back. Perhaps i need to go by size of universe at different z's? I will look into it.
What I was stunned by was that dN/dz is constant over a large range of local space. One guy I cited reconned it could be up to z=1.7. Eric Lerner said at the conference that if this guy is correct then this range includes all the supernovae used to show time dilation and acceleration. And yet the H1 clouds have increasing redshifts but are, on average, equally spaced in this region. How do we explain that?
Cheers
lyndon

Lyndon said:

But it is more complicated than that. If z -> infinity dz does too. But dN ->0 so what is dN/dz then? Ergo, what is zero divided by infinity?I was just extrapolating back. Perhaps i need to go by size of universe at different z's? I will look into it.

Well, do you really have to extrapolate all the way back to the "initial singularity", doesn't the equation work elsewhere?

Lyndon said:

And yet the H1 clouds have increasing redshifts but are, on average, equally spaced in this region. How do we explain that?

But isn't the "spacing" determined from the redshift, meaning that if redshift evolution is not linear, the spacing derived from redshift as if it would be linear wouldn't correspond to real spatial spacing?

I looked at some papers dealing with this issue. Inoue & Iwata (2008) seem to get a good fit with their simulation and observations. They correct for the effect of the Hubble expansion referring to Bahcall & Peebles (1969). These seem to be relevant for your work, but as I'm not yet intimately familiar with the issue, I cannot be sure that they are.

OK I understand what the problem is.
I take the expansion rate from recent events and extrapolate back to inflation. this is fine. Regarding the redshift going to infinity is not applicable here as it is a BB interpretaion of events and not obsevation.
According to the BB the expansion rate is greater now than before.
OK. That said I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it is the same.
I then look back and determine how long it was back in time to inflation.
In the BB their prediction would be longer due to acceleration. No Probs let them have that point.
I use redshift as a distance indicator. If its about 1 billion year per z = 1 now then we should be able to extrapolate back and find the age to the end of inflation. They use inflation, i don't. my estimate is an underestimate.
It would have taken too long.
thanks for the ref Ari. I will look at it and get back to you.
Cheers,
lyndon

Lyndon said:

I use redshift as a distance indicator. If its about 1 billion year per z = 1 now then we should be able to extrapolate back and find the age to the end of inflation. They use inflation, i don't. my estimate is an underestimate.

But in your extrapolation you need to be aware that when you get closer to t = 0, the 1 billion years per z = 1 is not valid anymore, you get increasingly more z per year (at least that's how I have understood it). I don't know how far back you can approximate it by linear evolution, but I think that if you want to compare real observations to theoretical Big Bang universe, then you should use the BB equations in that comparison, especially if you're aiming to make a peer reviewed paper out of this.

Hi Ari,
Thanks for the link to Inoue & Iwata (2008)
I have had a look at this and the reason they

seem to get a good fit with their simulation and observations

is because it is written in!
On page 6 they state;

Dave et al (1999) have explained that this break is due to a steep decline of the ionizing background intensity from z =1 to 0. Thus, we assume a break at z=1 in the functional form of f(z).

So lets look at the paper by Dave et al.

It was this paper that I discuss in my own paper.

Page 526

We take the evolution of j directly from HM who calculated the intensity based solely on the observed quasar population at various epochs.

Page 528

The intensity of the UV background drops at z <2 because of the declining quasar population so that the lower recombination rate at low redshifts is countered by a lower photoionization rate.

So Dave states that the curve goes flat because there are fewer quasars at z<2 and your guy, Inoue and Iwata accept this and build it into their simulation.

However, we now know this assumption to be untrue. I talked to John Harnett about this at the conference.
See the graph on page 7 on quasar number density

and tell me what you think?
I will e mail these3 guys and ask them too. Watch this space. 
Cheers
Lyndon

It seems that I should have read Inoue & Iwata (2008) more carefully, as they do seem to build those breaks manually to their analysis.

Quasar population indeed peaks somewhere between z = 1 and z = 2, so that Dave et al. (1999) statement is curious in that sense. Hmm... it's a 1999 paper so perhaps it was then thought that quasar population peaks at z = 2. Or perhaps it is just a typo, as in the first of your quotes they mention z = 1.

I'm just looking at Janknecht et al. (2006) (*) figure 18, and it seems to me that there is a possibility that the break doesn't even exist (as your figure 3 suggests). Specifically it bothers me that there are very few datapoints below the apparent breakpoint. Janknecht et al. also mention the possibility:

Janknecht et al. said:

we conclude that the decrease of the weaker lines is decelerated in the phase z = 1 − 2, turning into a nearly flat evolution for z -> 0, without showing any hint for a sharp break in the evolution.

(*) In your reference list there is a strange "[14]" in the Janknecht et al. reference line.

exactly,

Janknecht et al. said:

we conclude that the decrease of the weaker lines is decelerated in the phase z = 1 − 2, turning into a nearly flat evolution for z -> 0, without showing any hint for a sharp break in the evolution.

exactly what one would expect with a universe slowing down and coming to rest!

There is a discussion about Lyndon's paper in BAUT forum.

Just wondering...

Lyndon Ashmore...Were you (Or perhaps a friend of yours) Noble Ox on BAUT in the thread that Ari linked???

No not me - but i know who it is!! They only posted the thread because the moderator asked them. great. It was only intended as a post - no problems there!
I always posted from my college which is on the IP address of 'Knowledge Village' in Dubai - where all the universities are. So what the BAUT forum did when they banned me was to block any science student in Dubai from logging on to their site.
I think this is why they think it was a 'banned poster from before'.
Its a common IP address for all colleges/universities. I always found it funny - buy the BA's book and if you were a serious science student in  Dubai you were banned from logging logging onto his site!
I kept getting e mails/phone calls re the questions and tried to help him/her. Trouble was that the posters tried to knock it down by having a go at the papers. These were correct. The clouds are evenly spaced, locally.
Mainstream puts it down to a 'remarkable coincidence' saying that it is dur to a reduction in UV locally but that can't be right.
Mind you - it got a good airing. All publicity is good publicity.

I read the entire thread, and was continually amazed that anyone like Nereid still has a voice on that forum.  If there was a face-to-face discussion involving this clown, I don't think Nereid would survive - literally!  What a complete jerk!  It also doesn't seem to matter what the thread is about, Nereid continually gets more rancid as the thread goes forward.

Does anyone know who this Nereid is?