New Measures, New Models

It occurred to me one day, shortly after the idea of Cascading Essence Cosmology came to me, that our models of the Universe go through a sea-change each time we gain the ability to see and accurately measure greater and greater distances. Every time there has been a significant increase in our ability to observe the Universe, there’s been an accompanying shift in how we explain what we’re seeing.

When pre-historic humans had no tools and lived in uncleared forest, they could only see a couple of miles at best. Their models revolved around great turtles and coyote and insect people. These were the things they could see and interact with and which influenced their worldview.

Then, when people started clearing the land and travelling across the oceans, their ability to see and measure further increased. Their models revolved more around anthropomorphic gods, human-like beings that reflected their new-found power and vitality – using that power to explain the differentiated world in which they lived.

Eventually, in the early 1600s, the telescope was invented, allowing astronomers to see the moons of other planets – and shortly afterwards the cosmological models shifted from Earth-centric (geocentric) to Sun-centric (heliocentric).

Large, reflecting telescopes started to be built in the mid- to late-1800s and soon afterwards it was realized that the sun is not the center of the Universe, but merely one star in one galaxy among many. Einstein proposed his theories, including the Special Theory of Relativity, around this time.

As reflecting mirrors became larger and more accurate, astronomers could look further and further out into space – seeing countless more galaxies and objects like quasars, neutron stars, and supernovae. In the mid-1900s, Hubble and Hoyle proposed the Big Bang Theory to explain why the Universe appears to be expanding.

In the 1990s, adaptive optics allowed people to look deeper and deeper into space. The redshifts observed of emergent supernovae lead to the new model of a Universe with accelerating expansion, explained by the concept of dark energy.

The launching of the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit in the 1990s and the perfecting of radio telescope installations like the Very Large Array, are currently allowing us to see clearly to the very edges of the observable Universe. Some of the phenomena we’re discovering aren’t fitting well into the Einstein-Hubble model.

A new model is needed for the new observations. Whether that model is Cascading Essence Cosmology or something completely different, I believe in 10 years we won’t be using the current model at all – but its replacement instead.

Filed under: Background, Odds and Sods Tagged: big bang, dark energy, Einstein, history, Hubble, model, relativity, telescope, Very Large Array