For over a century, the observed red-shift of light from distant galaxies has been interpreted as a signature of cosmic expansion ...a cornerstone of modern cosmology. This interpretation, rooted in general relativity and formalized in the ΛCDM model, has led to a sweeping narrative: a universe born in a Big Bang, expanding ever since, driven in part by dark energy.
However, this explanation is not compelling to all. It relies on speculative assumptions, such as the inflationary epoch, dark energy, and the concept of expanding spacetime ...all introduced to preserve the standard model, not derived from direct observation. In this light, the expansion hypothesis begins to resemble a theoretical scaffold propped up by increasingly elaborate constructs.
An alternative interpretation, grounded in Newtonian gravity corrected for large-scale structure, suggests that red-shift could instead arise from gravitational time dilation ...the slowing of time in deeper gravitational potentials over cosmic distances. In such a model, red-shift is not the result of moving galaxies or a stretching metric, but of the observer witnessing light from regions where time flows more slowly due to accumulated mass and distance.
This invites a more fundamental discussion:
- Can an infinite, homogeneous universe produce the observed red-shift entirely through gravitational effects?
- Are time gradients sufficient to account for red-shift without invoking expanding space?
- And what observations could decisively distinguish between the gravitational and expansion interpretations?
- These are not questions of nuance. They challenge the very foundations of cosmology ...and call us to reconsider whether the universe is truly expanding, or if we've simply misunderstood the clocks by which we measure it.
This is a fascinating perspective that challenges the standard interpretation of redshift as due solely to cosmic expansion. While gravitational redshift can mimic some redshift effects, it's unclear how such a model would account for other observations like CMB anisotropies, supernova time dilation, and large-scale structure formation. The ΛCDM model, despite its assumptions, successfully explains a broad range of cosmological data. Any alternative must match this predictive power across multiple scales. I'm interested to see how this reassessment addresses these challenges.
Aayusha Singh
Thank you, Aayusha ...I appreciate the constructive tone of your comment and your openness to reassessing foundational assumptions. You're absolutely right to raise the question of how an alternative to ΛCDM must be able to match its explanatory breadth, from the CMB anisotropies to supernova observations and structure formation.
My position doesn’t reject red-shift data or large-scale observations ...rather, it questions whether cosmic expansion is the only viable interpretation of those observations. The standard model works impressively within its own framework, but it does so by introducing a considerable number of speculative elements: inflation, dark energy, dark matter, etc. These additions restore consistency, but at the cost of increased complexity and reduced falsifiability.
The gravitational red-shift approach I explore suggests that time gradients and accumulated effects across infinite structure can account for reds-hift ...and possibly even for some apparent time dilation. As for CMB anisotropies, they may well arise from density variations in an eternal structure rather than from quantum fluctuations in a brief hot phase. It’s an open question, and I fully agree that this alternative view must grow into a predictive framework if it hopes to stand beside ΛCDM.
For now, I consider my role exploratory ...identifying internal consistencies in gravitational physics that have been overlooked, and seeing where these lead. I don’t claim to have all answers, but I do believe it’s healthy for science to keep multiple interpretive pathways open, especially when data can plausibly support more than one story.
Again, thank you for engaging seriously with the idea ...it’s a rare pleasure.
Thanks for the engaging response. I appreciate your approach to questioning cosmic expansion and exploring gravitational redshift as an alternative. It’s refreshing to consider time gradients in an infinite universe as a potential explanation for redshift. I’m curious how your model might quantitatively address key observations like the CMB power spectrum or supernova light curve stretching, which ΛCDM predicts with precision. Could specific tests, like gravitational lensing patterns or peculiar velocity distributions, help distinguish your framework from expansion-based models?
Aayusha Singh
A Quantitative Path Forward
Thank you, Aayusha, for your openness and scientific engagement. Your question goes straight to the heart of what makes a physical framework viable: Can it quantitatively match ...or even improve on ...the explanatory precision of the ΛCDM model?
My proposed framework arises from a re-examination of Newtonian gravity, corrected through three dimensionally consistent factors:
- kr = 144 / π⁴ (packing factor, dimension time), - ke = kr¹² · (4π / 3) (collapse factor, no dimension), - tc = ke · kr (characteristic time).
These corrections result in a modified gravitational constant expressed as:
G = 3 / (4π · kr² · ke² · ρFe),
where ρFe = 7860 kg/m³ (density of alpha-iron). This yields a gravitational constant remarkably close to the experimental value, with variations in the 10⁻⁶ to 10⁻⁷ range depending on boundary assumptions. (For different masses and densities the product of ke² and ρFe remain constant !)
Numerical Insights on Gravitational Redshift
Assuming a time gradient model, the gravitational red-shift (z) from a homogeneous iron sphere of radius R and mass M can be estimated from Newtonian potential:
z ≈ Δt / t ≈ GM / (Rc²).
We must use the shell theorem given by Newton’s gravity and assume that the average density of the universe is e.g. 10 Hydrogen atoms per cubic meter, the distance to the place in space where the surface orbit velocity of this “dust sphere” equals the speed of light is then given by:
Radius=C/2*sqr(3/(G*pi*density)), which equals about 14,65 billion light years for a density of 10 Hydrogen atoms per cubic meter
From this distance can no visible light be seen… what happens there and further away is invisible from your position. There is no causal connection to this distance.
Further, the light-travel behavior through layered gravitational potentials suggests that red-shift accumulates with radial distance in a nonlinear but smooth curve ...a cumulative gravitational red-shift rather than Doppler shift.
Potential Observational Signatures
If red-shift is due to time gradients rather than expansion:
- Supernova light curve stretching could emerge from photon-path delays in deep gravitational wells, not time dilation from expansion.
- Lensing patterns would still exist but would be statically determined, rather than evolving with a scale factor.
- CMB anisotropies could be reinterpreted as imprints of mass distribution and gravitational filtering across infinite distance, rather than from early universe quantum fluctuations.
I am not claiming to have completed the full numerical pipeline yet ...but these foundational equations and the derived red-shifts suggest that the gravitational approach is not only consistent, but predictive. It removes the need for inflation, dark energy, and metric expansion, offering instead a timeless gravitational filter as the lens of observation.
I would welcome collaboration or scrutiny to take these early-stage results toward a more robust simulation.
I am proposing that:
🔹 Key Concepts
1. Redshift is not due to space expanding (metric redshift) or Doppler motion, but due to:
• A cosmic phase transition of the energy field,
• Which affects how atoms evolve and emit radiation.
2. Atoms are gradually formed throughout cosmic evolution, not all at once.
• This matter creation could be due to continuous unfolding of a deeper field structure.
3. As atoms form and evolve:
• They lose potential energy (e.g. stored vacuum field energy),
• That potential energy is converted to kinetic energy — released as light.
4. Critically:
• Newer atoms emit higher-frequency (higher-energy) light,
• Older atoms emitted lower-frequency light,
• Therefore, when we observe ancient light, it appears redshifted relative to the light emitted by today’s atoms.
⸻
🔁 Summary
The redshift observed in cosmic light is not due to the stretching of space but due to a universal phase transition of the energy field: the frequency of atomic light emission increases over time as atoms evolve and release stored field energy. The earlier the atom, the lower its emitted light frequency — hence ancient light appears redshifted today.
⸻
✅ What is the Phase Transition Hypothesis in Cosmology?
The Phase Transition Hypothesis in cosmology suggests that the large-scale structure and properties of the universe were shaped by phase transitions of quantum fields during the early stages of cosmic evolution. This hypothesis goes beyond the standard Big Bang model by proposing that the universe’s apparent properties (like matter content, symmetry breaking, inflation, and more) are consequences of critical changes in vacuum states — phase transitions — of underlying fields.
🔍 How It’s Distinct from the Big Bang Theory
• Big Bang Theory describes the expansion of the universe from a hot, dense initial state and explains many observations (CMB, Hubble expansion, nucleosynthesis).
• Phase Transition Hypothesis focuses on how the universe’s fundamental fields changed states, influencing structure, symmetry, and evolution.
⸻
🧊 Key Ideas Specific to the Phase Transition Hypothesis
1. Vacuum State Transitions
• The early universe may have been in a false vacuum — a metastable high-energy state.
• A transition to the true vacuum could release enormous energy, triggering inflation or symmetry breaking.
• This concept is rooted in quantum field theory and is independent of the geometric expansion of space itself.
2. Critical Temperature and Field Dynamics
• As the universe cooled, different fields underwent spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB), changing the vacuum structure.
• This includes the Higgs field acquiring a non-zero vacuum expectation value, which gives mass to particles.
3. Cosmological Implications of Phase Transitions
• Phase transitions can create topological defects (cosmic strings, domain walls, monopoles).
• They can generate gravitational waves detectable today.
• They may provide mechanisms for baryogenesis, explaining the matter-antimatter imbalance.
4. Multiple Transitions
• The hypothesis allows for multiple, sequential phase transitions:
• GUT phase transition
• Electroweak symmetry breaking
• QCD confinement
⸻
🔄 Summary
• The Big Bang Theory explains the evolution of the universe from a hot, dense state.
• The Phase Transition Hypothesis suggests that critical changes in the quantum fields (akin to phase changes in matter) drove key features of the universe, such as structure formation, mass generation, and even the onset and end of inflation.
• It is deeply rooted in quantum field theory and symmetry principles, not just thermal evolution.
Zhang Ke
I come to the same conclusion by using an average density of the universe,,, and Newton...
Zhang Ke Berndt Barkholz
I come to the same conclusion by using an average density of the universe,,, and Newton...
Must be really exciting and Zhang Ke can get all those reads by putting nothing up front. Wow.
Yes different, but giving almost the same result... GR is and stays A MESS ! The universe is infinite and static !
In The Dying of a Principle: The Bending of Light, the Oppenheimer-Snyder Gravitational Contraction, and the Postulate of Relativity, we show that gravitationally bent light is redshifted light:
Without any redshift, the square of the velocity of the resulting light ray is 𝒄𝟐 + 𝒄𝟐𝜶𝑴/𝒓 =𝒄𝟐(𝟏 + 𝜶𝑴/𝒓 ), so the resulting light ray must be red shifted by the factor (𝟏 + 𝜶𝑴/𝒓 )𝟏/𝟐 for its velocity to be 𝒄 = 𝟏. Once again, both the radial component and the perpendicular one of the resulting light rays are (𝒗𝟐 + 𝒄𝟐)−𝟏/𝟐 times the corresponding component of the non-red shifted light ray. For 𝐭𝐚𝐧 𝜽, we have 𝐭𝐚𝐧 𝜽 = (𝜶/𝒓)𝟏/𝟐.
Since 𝜶=2GM/c2 in units such that the velocity of light c is equal to 1, the gravitational constant G is effectively doubled. The cumulative redshift is proportional to the distance. (PDF) The Dying of a Principle: The Bending of Light, the Oppenheimer-Snyder Gravitational Contraction, and the Postulate of Relativity. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391505289_The_Dying_of_a_Principle_The_Bending_of_Light_the_Oppenheimer-Snyder_Gravitational_Contraction_and_the_Postulate_of_Relativity [accessed May 23 2025].
Article The Dying of a Principle: The Bending of Light, the Oppenhei...
Darrell Bender
Oh great master of science... did we step on your toes ? Forgive two naive wannabe's...
Berndt Barkholz
Just irritating to see someone expecting reads of a preprint with nothing more to say than here is my preprint.
Papers published by this author are not for the timid and the education is evidently sufficient for that.
I have seen your paper and ask myself why someone would use a cannon to shoot a sparrow... when a slingshot can do it ! But yes it looks good !
Berndt Barkholz
We first considered the bending of light in a gravitational field at the end of On the Nature of Being: Gravitation because we had to since that was a part of gravitational theory. We spent six-eight months on the bending of light and quit. The paper Fast Clocks in the Moving System was submitted and On the Nature of Being: Gravitation was submitted after that with no review. We could not see any obvious way to go after that, and this was the case until we started working on Quantum Gravity, Energy Wave Spheres, and the Proton Radius perhaps six years later. Even that was slow until we had lunch with a friend and started talking about it.
The treatment of the bending of light in On the Nature of Being: Gravitation involved considering, just as in the case of the electron energy wave in the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom, the energy of motion to be the energy lost by the light ray perpendicular to a radius. We considered this again in Quantum Gravity, Energy Wave Spheres, and the Proton Radius and again after that in Classical Quantum Hidden Variable Gravitation. In the first of these papers we considered a generalization, the energy way sphere, of the spherical electron energy wave. We showed that the radius of the proton energy wave sphere is 4(h/2(pi))/mpc, so that the circumference of the proton energy wave sphere is an integral multiple of the wavelength of the proton energy wave in the proton energy wave sphere. With a fixed radius, the frequency of the energy wave sphere wave is directly proportional to its velocity, which at infinite r is equal to c. With the actual unit clock rate (1-(alpha)/r)1/2, the multiplicative inverse of Einstein's clock rate, in a gravitational field at radius r, the energy remaining of the wave in an energy wave sphere is (1-(alpha)/r)1/2h(nu). The energy lost h(nu)-(1-(alpha)/r)1/2h(nu)=h(nu)((1/2)(alpha)/r)+(1/8)(alpha)/r)2+(1/16)(alpha)/r)3+(5/128)(alpha)/r)4+. . .) is the energy of motion of the energy wave sphere in a gravitational field, the first term after multiplication by h(nu) being the gravitational kinetic energy of the energy wave sphere. The rule, the law of gravitation, of motion is that the energy of motion of an energy wave sphere is the energy that it loses. The energy wave sphere does not move in a geodetic line because (alpha)/r=v2/c2 so that v changes since r does.
In Classical Quantum Hidden Variable Gravitation, we considered imaginary energy wave spheres to explain the change in frequency of the energy wave sphere wave in a gravitational field. After considering the bending of light in a gravitational field in Classical Quantum Hidden Variable Gravitation, we realized that an energy wave sphere wave inside a photon had velocity 0, with no energy to lose, so we placed by necessity an imaginary energy wave sphere inside the photon. This required a further consideration of the bending of light in a gravitational field with an imaginary energy wave sphere inside the photon, so we used a cannon by accumulation after multiple attempts to explain the bending of light in a gravitational field.
Berndt Barkholz
The gravitational redshift of light results from different clock rates in a gravitational field., the idea being that the frequency of light does not change, but the measured frequency does. Einstein's unit clock rate from the Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity, (1-(alpha)/r)-1/2, is greater than 1, so it cannot possibly be the correct clock rate, which is its multiplicative inverse, (1-(alpha)/r)+1/2. If some star or other environment produces redshifted light so that the light appears more redshifted on Earth, where the clock rate is faster if (alpha)/r is less, then the perceived redshift would have to be great enough to agree with measured values in order to explain them.
Darrell Bender
I am sorry Darrell, but I am right now very busy with another problem I need to solve...
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