http://www.physorg.com/news190027752.html

couple of highlights for me:

Astronomer Mike Hawkins from the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh came to this conclusion after looking at nearly 900 quasars over periods of up to 28 years. When comparing the light patterns of quasars located about 6 billion light years from us and those located 10 billion light years away, he was surprised to find that the light signatures of the two samples were exactly the same. If these quasars were like the previously observed supernovae, an observer would expect to see longer, “stretched” timescales for the distant, “stretched” high-redshift quasars. But even though the distant quasars were more strongly redshifted than the closer quasars, there was no difference in the time it took the light to reach Earth.

In a last ditch attempt to save expansion, the next paragraph suggests some monumentally unlikely lensing effect that would coincidentally offset exactly the predicted time dilation. Although Mr. Hawkins himself doesn't seem to be real confident in that idea.

another one that caught my eye:

As Hawkins explains, most physicists predict that dark matter consists of undiscovered subatomic particles rather than primordial black holes.

that sounds like aether to me (a rose by any other name...). I wasn't aware that there was now general consensus on this.

I read on one of these alternative cosmology forums once, that the leaders of the cosmological and physics community will eventually come around to the truth, whatever it may be. And they will do so in a manner that suggests that they discovered it. (as if the people who have been suggesting alternatives for the past 100 years or more never existed). You see this in politics all the time - nobody could have foreseen 9/11 or the mortgage market collapse, etc (except for all the people who foresaw it and were ignored)

So, eventually I expect the expansion theory will be done away with and redshift will no longer be considered a measure of recession velocity, and there will be very little mention of the folks who have been trying to get those points across for decades. It will be another great accomplishment of the usual suspects.

That's pretty intriguing. Supernovae time dilation curves are close to if not the top piece of evidence for an accelerating expansion of the universe. Having a whole class of objects which should behave the same but don't is pretty powerful stuff.

Still leaves open the complementary question about what's going on with the supernovae light curves.

Ed said:

that sounds like aether to me (a rose by any other name...)

No, dark matter as imagined in mainstream cosmology, whether mini-black-holes or WIMPs, is most certainly not a candidate for an aether.

(Side note: Ever looked at spin foam as a possible alternative to aether?)

Ed said:

So, eventually I expect the expansion theory will be done away with and redshift will no longer be considered a measure of recession velocity, and there will be very little mention of the folks who have been trying to get those points across for decades. It will be another great accomplishment of the usual suspects.

Perhaps, but it might in part be because at that point in time, we won't really have a good, visible ATM 'spokesman'. No all authors of heterodoxies are completely overshadowed, but in our case, who would be around to properly take the credit?

(I mean, my vote would be for Lopez-Corredoira and Russell, but they're not well-poised :)

I'm not so much worried about who gets what credit as the notion that the regime and infrastructure responsible for slowing down progress by bending over backward to support the unsupportable, will still be in place....like the Ministry of Candles.

It could be an efficient regime as long as they can be nudged off the wrong tracks.

Remember nuclear physics and the Standard Model? They were predicting and finding particles left, right and center in the 80s. They are markedly more off-track now with the pursuit of various flavours of string theory (unless I'm mistaken as to where the Standard Model physicists went after the big discoveries)

It seems like an approach that works just fine as long as you're going in the right direction. Unison does not help when there are too many surprises coming, but fine when you have something solid behind you.

Hopefully, there will be a little bit of humility when things come together, and maybe that might lead to a more fractured think-tanks type of approach for a while, but that will probably take another, I'd say, 20 years or so.

And, of course, if they got off-track again, they might pursue that to the ends of the earth, too :)

I think there should be some "outreach" between the theoretical cosmology community and the applied engineering community. A few voices who's main objective is to find some truth that results in a better screw driver (mo' money) might lead to some righting of the path.

Looks like Hawkins has been working on this for a while. Here's the link for his 2001 preprint.

Ed said:

A few voices who's main objective is to find some truth that results in a better screw driver (mo' money) might lead to some righting of the path.

Are there any practical applications of cosmological theories into which the engineers can actually sink their teeth? :)

If the theories had practical applications somehow, we would probably be closer to finding the problems anyhow :)

Note that engineers are bright as a group, but from my second-hand experience, science is definitely perceived if not presented more as a source of received knowledge rather than a process in engineering coursework. Engineers have to be scientifically and skeptically-minded on their own time and dime.

Sorry about this but it has to be done...(yawn,yawn)
When i talked to Mike at the CCC2 conference I asked him about this stuff because it is VERY important to cranks like me. Ergo, why do supernovae light curves show 'time dilation ' but quasars don't. He (allegedly - in case i get sued) said that if one takes his work in isolation then one would say that the universe was not expanding.
Particularly as my own paper on average spacing between Hydrogen clouds shows that ,on average, they are evenly spaced up to a redshift of unity - and this region includes all the supernovae that show acceleration and time dilation.
He said about this paper that it was unbelievable that no-one "had picked up on this before".
We asked him, had anyone else repeated his work and his reply was " the data is there and nobody has ever asked for it"
Why not?

Hmmm... perhaps the occasional weird, throwaway-but-BB-concordant explanations that we see at the end of some papers might be indicative of some frustration, especially if they tend to the implausible. Idle speculation, that, though.

I'd actually be happier in a sense if Mike were getting some amount of blowback instead of mere disinterest; at least folks might have to put their money where their mouth was.

The hydrogen cloud spacing and quasar non-dilation results are important, for goodness' sake. If they are true, BBT cannot work as advertised, and the inevitable retrofit gets a lot harder.

Ritchie: "Are there any practical applications of cosmological theories into which the engineers can actually sink their teeth? :)"

I think that's a good test. If it sounds good on paper, but doesn't lead to a better screwdriver, maybe you should have another look.

Looking at it from an "intelligent design" (note: not "superior being design") standpoint. If things operate in a certain fashion, there's probably a good reason for it. Finding ways to connect the seemingly unconnected is how you discover new patterns and clues to the operating system.

Astronomer Mike Hawkins from the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh came to this conclusion after looking at nearly 900 quasars over periods of up to 28 years. When comparing the light patterns of quasars located about 6 billion light years from us and those located 10 billion light years away, he was surprised to find that the light signatures of the two samples were exactly the same. If these quasars were like the previously observed supernovae, an observer would expect to see longer, “stretched” timescales for the distant, “stretched” high-redshift quasars. But even though the distant quasars were more strongly redshifted than the closer quasars, there was no difference in the time it took the light to reach Earth.

There’s also a possibility that the explanation could be even more far-reaching, such as that the universe is not expanding and that the big bang theory is wrong.

http://www.physorg.com/news190027752.html

Look at the Quasar jet in the pic...

Here is the bottom line on this and the only explanation that is possible, once you understand 'When SMBH's become part of a galaxies life". ;>))

M87...is a full eliptical galaxy
http://blackholes.stardate.org/directory/factsheet.php?p=M87

distant galaxy 0313-192...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030114.html

Notice that the "Bulge" is almost all the way out to the rim of the galaxy like the Sombrero Galaxy...

The answer is really very simple IF you just 'get it'...

I think that nearly everyone here thinks that the Universe is MUCH older than currently portrayed by mainstream...and it IS

SO, AGN with their jets ON are Quasars (Mostly Ellipticals) and are the oldest galaxies, whether they are near by or far away.

So, when Mike says...

Astronomer Mike Hawkins from the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh came to this conclusion after looking at nearly 900 quasars over periods of up to 28 years. When comparing the light patterns of quasars located about 6 billion light years from us and those located 10 billion light years away, he was surprised to find that the light signatures of the two samples were exactly the same.

That IS the "Observation"

And here is another...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/gemini_survey_040105.html

"Theyre already very old," explained Patrick McCarthy, a co-principal investigator on the study from the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution. "In fact, theyre ancient."

"Its probably not at the point where we have to reevaluate our theories of galaxy formation, but its getting there."

No...it's way past time....LOL

These kind of galaxies...

http://www.narrabri.atnf.csiro.au/public/images/ngc2915/

Are VERY young (Less than 1 billion years old) whether they are nearby OR very far away

SO, I am going to assume that the Milky Way, by default (Some educated guessing that I won't go into detail on here), is roughly 13 billion years old.

SO, Since there is NO TIME DILATION/photons are NOT stretched, and then I am going to estimate that M87, with its "Billions" of Sol mass SMBH is at least 10 billion years older than the Milky Way, with its mere 3-4 million sol mass SMBH...that takes us to 23 Billion years...BUT, when you get to a Quasar that is say 10 Billion light years away, so that light has taken that long to get here, then we are up to at least 33 billion years.

And we are seeing those 10 billion LY galaxies as they were 10 Billion years ago!

Then there are the "Red Quasars" which are the grand daddys....there is NO way to scientifically put an age to our Universe

SO......what are the problems with this guys????????????????????????

You guys don't believe in the Big Bang so you shouldn't believe that the Universe(s) was once very much smaller!!!

The Milky Way still has its Bar, for goodness sakes........it cannot be the oldest of the galaxies!!!

Do you think that my ad hoc of aging M87 to 10 billion years past the Milky Way is too much?

Do you think that all galaxies in a cluster will eventually end up as 1 Elliptical in the center of the cluster and therefore end up as GrandDaddy Red Ellipticals?

How much older do you think Andromeda (M31) is compared to the MW and the Triangulum
http://seds.org/messier/m/m033.html