When I look at "The Expansion of the Universe", I see a massive dichotomy. That always bothers me.

Everyone basically agrees that the universe is expanding and the galaxies are moving away from each other.  The farther away they are the faster they are moving apart.  Every new astronomy student hears the expanding Universe described as being comparable to a balloon or to a cake with raisins stirred into it.  As the cake raises, the raisins move apart. If two raisins are half an inch apart and the cake doubles in size they will then be one inch apart. However, if they start at two inches apart and the cake doubles they will be four inches apart.  The farther apart they are the faster they recede from each other.  But, they always move away from each other at some rate of speed.  The raisins are used to symbolize galaxies.


However, everyone also agrees that in the world of real time galaxies; everywhere we look, within say a few billion years; everything is coming together into super mega-clusters and walls.  All of those billions of galaxies!  They are not moving away from each other they are moving toward each other!  In the real universe, the raisins are forming into clumps of clusters, super clusters and walls.  The cake explanation does not conform at all to what we see in the Universe.

A long time ago, galaxies were expanding from each other very rapidly: almost at the speed of light.  That was plus or minus fifteen billion years ago.  What has happened to that expansion today?  We just don’t know!  We have absolutely no idea of what is happening fifteen billion light years from us, at this instant.  The only things we know about the present, is what we can see within a few light years. Astronomers are historians, not news reporters. Astronomy deals almost exclusively with "old news".


Cosmologists generally agree that if there is enough matter in the Universe it will expand for awhile and then contract.  This is the closed universe model. Gravity will slowly gain control of all matter.  When it has, the universe will start to contract.  How could we tell if it started to contract?  How would we know it was contracting rather than expanding?

Most people tell me the Hubble Constant is the proof it is still expanding.  We can see that the farther away we look, the faster space is expanding.  The red shift lets us know it is still expanding.  The problem with that is; the light that is red shifted left its source fifteen billion years ago.  Even I agree it was expanding back then.  Not only were the galaxies receding relative to us, but all of those galaxies were receding from each other.  They were not gravity bound to each other.  They were not forming into local groups.  The universe was expanding and that made the galaxies recede from each other.  But that gives us no clue as to what is happening now.

So how would we know if The Universe were contracting?


This contraction would first be noticed in the home galaxy.  Then the local group would start to move together.  In the beginning of the Local Group’s contraction the cluster would still be expanding, though at a reduced rate.

In another few million years or so, the Cluster would start to move together, but the Super-Cluster would still be expanding, though at a reduced rate.  Of course in real time the entire Universe would stop concurrently (or thereabouts), BUT BECAUSE OF THE LOOK BACK INTO TIME WE CAN ONLY OBSERVE THE CONTRACTION WITHIN THE NUMBER OF LIGHT YEARS SINCE THE CONTRACTION BEGAN.  Before that time, it was still expanding.  This would be an event horizon.  The universe would be expanding on one side of this horizon and contracting on the other. This horizon would exist no matter where in the universe the observer was located.

In other words if the universe came to dead stop say ten million years ago, what would we see now?  Well, we should see our own Galaxy perhaps having a slight contraction.  Our local group should be generally trending toward blue shift, though the proper motions of the bodies would ameliorate this to some degree.  Our cluster and our super-cluster would be red shifted but decreasingly so.

These are exactly the conditions we find today.  Our home galaxy is stable.  In our local group: the Magellanic clouds are in the process of merging into the Milky Way, as are NGC 2300 and The Sagittarius Galaxy among a number of others.  The Andromeda Galaxy is closing on us, while also merging with M32, M33, and M110 amongst others.  The entire local group is slowing down relative to the Virgo Cluster and the Virgo Super-Cluster.

This meets all of the conditions for contraction of the closed model of the Universe.  Why then would we still think that the universe is continuing to expand?  It seems to me the reason for this is that it is less than 100 years since we found out there was any expansion.  It was quite a discovery since everyone at that time thought the universe was static, even Hubble.

Since we were not around when the Milky Way was expanding, we didn’t notice it stopping.  The same applies to the local group!  We didn’t see it expanding so we think it was always gravity bound.  We have never really dealt with the question of "Why isn’t space expanding between us and the other galaxies in the local cluster?"  We just say they are gravity bound and let it go at that.  GRAVITY BOUND IS ONE OF THE FIRST CHARACTERISTICS OF A UNIVERSE THAT IS CONTRACTING !


The Hubble constant says that in the distant past the Universe was expanding very rapidly.  The closer we get to the present the slower the Universe is expanding.  We generally hear the constant used to describe what happens to light-shift based on how far away galaxies are from the Earth.  The farther away the galaxies, the faster they are receding and the higher their red shift.

If we see a galaxy that is red-shifted, does that necessarily show it is moving away from us?  No!  It only shows it once was!  What is happening to galaxies ten billion light years from us right this second?  Galaxies that are in the same time frame as us, not billions of years in our past.  We have no idea what is happening to those galaxies.  We really know very little about our own time frame.

When making a graph of this we set it up so that the X-axis = distance and the Y-axis = red shift.  But the constant doesn't really deal with distance; it deals with time.  It doesn’t tell us what is happening to galaxies at a particular distance, it tells us what was happening to galaxies at a particular time.  If we set it up so that the X-axis = Time and the Y axis = red shift we get a much more accurate idea of what is now happening

The farther that we go into the past the faster the universe was expanding and the closer that we get to the present, the slower the universe is expanding. And real close it is not expanding at all. This is not theory; this is what we observe.

The blue-shifted light we see from Andromeda left there over two million years ago. All we know is that it was moving toward us two million years ago; not what it is doing today! Hubble deals with what was happening in the past, not with what is happening now.

If the universe is contracting, there should be a spherical horizon around the earth where everything beyond that horizon is still basically red shifted. And inside the horizon, it is blue shifted or having no shift. The distance to that horizon would tell us how long ago the contraction started. While it may be a bit fuzzy, and proper motion will have some effect upon it, there should be a definite break off point.

This same spherical horizion should exist for every point in the universe.  Every local group and cluster should have the same effect.

I have no idea if there is enough data to compute the horizon at this time, or if more observation is necessary. But it would be good to find out. If anyone has any information on this, I would appreciate hearing from you.

If you think some of the data or conclusions presented here are incorrect, please contact Bud Camp. The humility might do me some good. If you agree with them, also please let me know. I can use the encouragement.

bud.camp@verizon.net