MazeHatter comments on Some recent evidence against the Big Bang - Less Wrong

6 Post author: JStewart 07 January 2015 05:06AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 08 January 2015 11:19:53PM -1 points [-]

Something already does happen for large distances.

That's an observable fact. It's redshift.

What causes it?

The standard answer is expansion, which needs inflation and dark energy and an arbitrary multiverse to do that. Al lthings that make the theory more complicated with distance.

Alternatively, what if light doesn't travel forever?

How would such a reality look if things existed farther away than light could travel?

Is it not exactly what is observed?

What is more complex,

0 frequency photons ceasing to be photons,

or

infinite wavelength photons everywhere never interacting with anything in space expanding faster than c?

If it's a matter of complexity, the 0 frequency photons ceasing to exist is less complex than there being infinite wavelength photons everywhere.

Comment author: gjm 09 January 2015 12:27:57AM 1 point [-]

The thing you need to evaluate the complexity of is an actual theory, with equations and everything, not a vague suggestion that maybe photons lose energy as they travel.

I don't think the conventional theory says you have infinite-wavelength photons, and I think your thought experiment with your two hands is wrong. Light from an object at the Hubble limit not only never reaches us, but also never reaches (say) a point 1m "inward" from us. It never gets any closer to us. Note that this is not the same as saying that light from 1m less than the Hubble limit never reaches us, which of course is false.

We get arbitrarily long-wavelength photons, if we wait long enough, but we have to wait longer for the longer-wavelength ones and we would have to wait infinitely long to get ones of infinite wavelength.