|
What fits with The Urantia Papers?
Both the Arp scheme and the Urantia papers are dismissive of extraordinarily large red shifts associated with far distant, high velocity objects.
Arp's scheme provides an explanation other than that provided by the Hubble recessional velocity interpretation. But to give Hubble his due, he never did propose that recessional velocity was the only explanation for the red shift phenomenon.
However the Big Bang cannot get by without it. And so it comes up with what appear to be impossibly enormous outpourings of energy from objects called quasars. Sometimes these enormous outbursts fluctuate violently over intervals as short as two hours. Hence, if far from us, they must be associated with volumes no larger than our solar system, the distance a light signal could traverse in that time.
Arp's alternative proposes that these aspects of red shift are simply a function of the age of the particles that are the source of the photons detected by our telescopes. This gets rid of the impossibly high energy outpourings of quasars which, according to Arp, is due to the false distance from Earth that the Big Bang's red shift recessional velocity idea must attribute to them.
What about space respiration?
The Papers tell of expansion and contraction phases in space that are given the name space respiration. In 1993, Hoyle, Burbidge, and Narlikar proposed a new version of Hoyle's much older steady state theory about the universe. The new version has matter continually creating itself and the universe expanding as it does so. Included in their scheme is a periodic oscillation during which the universe contracts, the oscillations being superposed upon the overall expansion. Which, very approximately, is about what the Papers say. Apparently the Hoyle et al scheme also explains many contradictions inherent in the Big Bang model.
Suffice it to comment that this is a marvelously gifted team, not a group of wild speculators. Hoyle, with the Burbidges, laid the foundations for understanding the generation of elements in the stars. Many of Hoyle's peers believe his work in the 1950's was deserving of the Nobel prize.
Relativity and the Papers
"Let not your dabblings with the faintly glimpsed findings of "relativity" disturb your concepts of the eternity and infinity of God."
Many Urantia Book readers believe certain of the remarks in the Papers that use the term "relativity" refer to Einstein's General Relativity. This belief may be misplaced. However those who do so may be relieved to know that Arp's model of the creation does away with the need for the curvature of space-time that is basic in Einstein's general relativity.
These quasi-steady state views provide a much closer fit to Urantia Book cosmology than does a Big Bang beginning. But only the accumulation of observational evidence will reveal which, if any, of the models approximates to the truth So it is a wait and see assignment.
References
Arp, H., (1998). Seeing Red. Red Shifts, Cosmology, and Academic Science. (Apeiron, Montreal)
Hoyle, F., Burbidge, G, and J. Narlikar. (1993) ibid.
|
|
