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

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

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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.