RE: Questions about Physics, Biology and perspective
June 23, 2016 at 4:08 am
(This post was last modified: June 23, 2016 at 4:33 am by Alex K.)
But if my maths doesn't fail me, one has to scale time as well when one wants to do that, but that's not surprising. So if the universe "grows by a factor of 10" in the usual picture, you can either stretch the space coordinates by a factor 10, giving you the usual interpretation, or you increase the masses by 10 and shrink time by 10.
But I think this all fits together. This can be seen best with a hydrogen atom as a test system giving you measures of length and time:
We now want to take an alternative view of a situation where the universe has expanded by a factor of 10 in a given timespan:
The size (the bohr radius) of a hydrogen atom goes with 1/(effective mass of the electron). So if we increase the electron mass by a factor 10, the hydrogen atom shrinks by a factor 10, which gives us the desired effect of the universe seeming bigger to any observer made of matter. The frequencies emitted and absorbed by the hydrogen transitions are proportional to the mass, so they will rise by a factor of 10. This is exactly what you want, because if you let a hydrogen atom emit a photon in the past, and then we raise the electron mass as a substitute for cosmic expansion, when we receive the wave later it will only have one tenth of the frequency of our reference hydrogen atom, and will thus seem red-shifted. It wasn't really redshifted from this perspective, but all physical rulers shrunk.
But I think this all fits together. This can be seen best with a hydrogen atom as a test system giving you measures of length and time:
We now want to take an alternative view of a situation where the universe has expanded by a factor of 10 in a given timespan:
The size (the bohr radius) of a hydrogen atom goes with 1/(effective mass of the electron). So if we increase the electron mass by a factor 10, the hydrogen atom shrinks by a factor 10, which gives us the desired effect of the universe seeming bigger to any observer made of matter. The frequencies emitted and absorbed by the hydrogen transitions are proportional to the mass, so they will rise by a factor of 10. This is exactly what you want, because if you let a hydrogen atom emit a photon in the past, and then we raise the electron mass as a substitute for cosmic expansion, when we receive the wave later it will only have one tenth of the frequency of our reference hydrogen atom, and will thus seem red-shifted. It wasn't really redshifted from this perspective, but all physical rulers shrunk.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
