Abstract

We are all so accustomed to reading that the universe "began" once a time with the Big Bang that most people no longer think it necessary to question or scrutinize it. A detailed analysis of the Big Bang theory, however, leads to consequences and implications that are inconsistent, or are contradicted by astrophysical observations, including important ones. At the same time, one of the pillars of the model, the all important cosmic redshift- the shifting of spectral lines toward the red end of the spectrum, in proportion to the distance of the source from us- can be explained without invoking the Doppler velocity interpretation(1) so dear to Big Bang theorists. The redshift is explained instead by taking the intergalactic medium into account, and correcting our understanding of how light interacts with such a medium on its way to the observer. Two different theoretical approaches, semi classical electrodynamics and quantum electrodynamics, have shown that all interactions or collisions of electrodynamics waves (photons) with atoms are inelastic; that is, the photons lose a very small part of their energy as a result of the interaction. Hence, the greater the depth of the intergalactic medium through which a galaxy's light must pass, the more toward the low-energy end of the spectrum - that is, toward the red - is the light frequency shifted. These considerations eliminate the limit on the size of the universe imposed by the Big Bang theory. Indeed one can say that the universe far greater than imagined.