First, some history of...

The Cosmos
and
The Three Stories We Have Used
For the last two thousand years to Explain It All

Stories were needed to explain the mystery and awe inspired by simply looking up and pondering what we are seeing in the sky above, the most obvious things being the Sun which appears more or less daily unless it's a cloudy day, the Moon which also appears more or less every night not quite as regularly as the Sun and having a monthly (almost) cycle of shapes and finally on a clear night there was the spectacular background pattern of millions of stars that slowly moved around over the year announcing the seasons. Almost every culture had stories about what all this meant which often formed the basis of their religion.

But by 2000 years ago the big question was to explain the five moving stars that looked just like any other star except being a little brighter and each one slowly moved around in a unique odd path. They had names that went back to antiquity. The five moving stars were called Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Ptolemy began by describing essentially an Earth that was fixed and motionless at the center of the universe, surrounded by a series of concentric, rotating spheres that carried the Moon, the Sun, the five moving stars each on a separate sphere and a distant sphere that carried the millions of background stars.
It soon became apparent that it was somewhat more complicated than that and the concentric shells with the five moving stars were replaced with a rotation around some kind of an axis which in theory could be reduced to some kind of invisible gears and wheels. This was the best explanation anybody had. To cover the inaccuracies that slowly accumulated over centuries, new gears and wheels were continually added to increase the complexity of this system which lasted for almost 1400 years until...

Copernicus says the Earth moves, that it revolves daily on its own axis and yearly around the Sun. The Sun is at the center of the universe. The five stars became planets which were all in the same plane like a big disk. Earth was the third planet out. All this was still inside the same large shell of fixed stars. This system was good for another 400 years, only having to adjust the circles to actually be ellipses and adding more planets to make the disk bigger.

Then in the 1920's, the discovery of our own galaxy and at much greater distances, other galaxies (previously thought to be stars) and finally with Hubble's discovery of the red shift of those galaxies, the story of the structure of our universe was extended to include the whole system made of no longer fixed but moving stars (now galaxies).

This universe is essentially a big expanding ball with a radius 12 to 15 billion light-years but which mysteriously is often said to be a ball that has no center (partly because that might imply an endorsement of Ptolemy's earth-centered universe but also because the Earth rotates around its own center which itself rotates around the Sun which then rotates around the center of the galaxy so the real center at this large scale is neither easy to determine nor explain).

The easiest explanation of the red shift was simple extrapolation backwards which produced the big bang and the expanding universe. However, somewhat like Ptolemy's system, this model has had to add, not more gears and wheels but unseen and somewhat imaginary objects and forces to explain the inconsistencies that have arisen.

Now, careful analysis of data that has been around and commented on for decades reveals patterns in the distribution and location of the galaxies. These patterns indicate there is another option.

The Closed, Reflective Universe

Simply stated, the universe we live in is not expanding at all but is a closed space, possibly elliptical or egg-shaped cavity, possibly a cave with an opening with a reflective surface. We live in a very large mirrored room. We are about one million light-years from the nearest wall and around eight million light-years from the far wall which is in the general direction of the Virgo Cluster. There could be fewer than a hundred real galaxies, all the rest are reflected images of those real ones.

Andromeda (M31) is the first reflection of our own Milky Way Galaxy as it looked several million years ago, actually closer to 2.5 million years ago which is the apparent distance between us and our reflection.

Andromeda is often referred to by astronomers as the "twin" of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Now we can see it actually is us. Until recently there were no 3D databases, such as the Tully 3D map of galaxies which allow us to make a more sophisticated analysis.

Continuing outward...

The next reflection of our group of galaxies is in the direction of M81, a group of galaxies that looks like our group. This complex group of reflections is then mirrored over and over again to produce the walls of galaxy clusters that appear out at great distances.

This new universe is fixed in size and is several thousand times smaller than the old expanding one proposed decades ago.

The evidence, patterns in the locations of both nearby and distant clusters of galaxies, can be observed in commercially available databases as 3D maps of the universe.

Where to begin...

One problem with astronomy today is that we have way more information than any one person can possibly assimilate and we are collecting even more at a prodigious rate. There needs to be some way to pick out the vital facts and to condense the vital pieces of information. Here we begin by picking one reference book (the Encyclopedia Britannica™ 2000 edition) and one visual image (the National Geographic Map of the Universe © 2000) and build more complex technology from there.

Over the past several hundred years England has emerged as the leader of the field, the guardian of the sky and of time itself. Going back as far as Isaac Newton, they had a class of people with the time, money and interest to build the biggest and best telescopes. In 1879 Englishman Simon Newcomb completed the first extensive catalog of the skies which was used for the next 80 years.

Also during that time the Encyclopedia Britannica™ became the primary source of the latest theories and the history of cosmology. They have much more information about the cosmos than any other encyclopedia.

The Local Group

The Local Group is a collection of galaxies that is made up of our own Milky Way Galaxy and about fifteen of its nearby neighbor galaxies. Then there is a big gap and there is Andromeda with a similar group of neighboring galaxies. This group of galaxies was the first to be observed and was well documented almost a century ago. As the resolution of telescopes improved and more distant points of light were seen to be galaxies, the focus of astonomy continued to expand outward to greater distances. There was no need to continue to look around in our local neighborhood of galaxies since we had already seen that.

The observation that half of the Local Group is the mirror image of the other half, that only half of the galaxies are actually real and the half with Andromeda is the mirror image of ourselves, is the beginning of constructing a whole new universe.

Astronomers have noticed that there might be something unusual in our near vicinity as contained in this quote from the Encyclopædia Britannica™ 2000 edition...
"The Local Group contains seven reasonably prominent galaxies and perhaps another two dozen less conspicuous members. The dominant pair in the group is the Milky Way and Andromeda, both giant spirals of Hubble type Sb and luminosity class II.
The size of the Local Group is therefore larger only by about 50 percent than the 2 million light-years separating the Milky Way system and the Andromeda galaxy, and the centre of mass lies roughly halfway between these two giants."

Then there is the real evidence which you can look at and see for yourself by looking carefully at the National Geographic Universe Reference Map, view 3, The Local Group.

First get the Map of the Universe available from the National Geographic Society
Search for Universe Map.
It should come up with Item # 02011C for $10.99
Buy the map. Look at it. That map hasn't changed for decades. The universe doesn't change, only the details are filled in, the resolution gets better.

The angle of observation is not ideal for seeing the pattern but there are definitely two groups of objects arranged such that one group is more or less the mirror image of the other group.

Although it is fairly clear that there is a mirror image of two systems of galaxies, the actual correspondence is difficult after the first few obvious ones... Andromeda is the reflection of our Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud appears as Triangulum and the real Sagittarius is reflected as M32 but beyond that direct associations become somewhat of a guess since this is only a two dimensional representation of a complex three dimensional pattern.

Here is how to see all this in glorious rotating color.

The Nearby Galaxies Catalog, by R. Brent Tully, first published in 1988, contains the three dimensional locations of the nearest 68,000 galaxies. Some of that database is now available within the Starry Night Pro™ Astronomy program available for sale on the web at www.starrynight.com

Instructions for the Starry Night™ program are here. From within this program you can see two similar rotating systems of galaxies, separated by several million light-years.

Some study of this more complete picture reveals the following correspondence of real to mirror images...

This list is a first rough approximation. There may be other associations that can be seen to be more likely as better methods emerge for looking at and visualizing the complex pattern. Objects in the Local Group are currently being entered into a database. The first plot of these objects is shown here.

Left unlinked on our side are still Carina, Sextans, Sculptor Dwarf, Leo 1, Leo II, IC10 and UGC 10822/DR .

Left to link those with on the other side are M110, IRASO 4547 +00, PGC 63566.1, Leo III, DDO 210 and Pisces Dwarf.

Somewhat farther away, Sextans A, Sextans B and UGC 4115, UGC 3974 appear to be related images of each other.

There is the problem that the National Geographic uses data from the Encyclopedia Britannica™ which is an older terminology that has been replaced. Modern databases list some of the objects under different names or catalog numbers.

The distances to these relatively nearby galaxies vary considerably between different sources. Measuring the distance using parallax does not work beyond the limits of our own galaxy and no one had any reason to search for more accurate distances for these galaxies when there was much more to be discovered at greater distances.

This new model would have tremendous predictive powers but first the transverse velocities of the nearby galaxies would have to be observed much more accurately than is currently being done. A small velocity extended over three million years (the time delay from here to the wall and back) would result in significant movement.

The predictive power would be the ability to possibly see objects that are behind the zone of obstruction of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Beyond the Local Group…

After the Local Group there is a huge gap of millions of light-years until another set of similar images appear. Now the images get more complex.

The Encyclopedia Britannica™ says,
"Beyond the Local Group are two nearby groups ... the Sculptor group and the M81 group. Both of these are small clusters of galaxies that are similar in size to the Local Group. They lie at a distance of from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 light-years... The best studied of these is the M81 group, whose dominant galaxy is the spiral galaxy M81. Much like the Andromeda and Milky Way systems, M81 is of Hubble type Sb and luminosity class II... The M81 group also has a few normal galaxies with classifications similar to those of galaxies in the Local Group, and it was noticed by some astronomers that the linear sizes of the largest H II regions (which are illuminated by many OB stars) in these galaxies had about the same intrinsic sizes as their counterparts in the Local Group."

And beyond that…

At 15 million light-years lies M83, described by David Malin in his book "The Invisible Universe" as "a mirror to the Milky Way".

Encyclopedia Britannica™...
"The Virgo cluster is the (next) closest large cluster and is located at a distance of about 50 Million light-years in the direction of the constellation Virgo. About 200 bright galaxies reside in the Virgo cluster, scattered in various subclusters. Although spirals are more numerous, the four brightest galaxies are giant ellipticals, among them M87." (italics added)

Those four galaxies would be our Milky Way, Andromeda (our first reflection) and an aligned reflection of that system.

That's what the experts have noticed about the four major groups of galaxies that lay closest to us. Let's take that as a starting point...

The Big Five Groups of Objects

The Milky Way, Andromeda (M31), M81, M83 and M87. Note that after M31 at 2.5 million light-years, each one is double the preceding one's distance appearing at 12.4, 26 and 57 million light-years away.

If you look at those five groups in 3D, strangely enough, they all lie in the same plane. Somewhat like the plane of our solar system except that each of these groups are on the edge of a large oval or maybe closer to an egg shape with nothing at the center.

Side View of the Big Five Objects

The fact that they are all in the same plane indicates a surface of revolution, like either an egg or pear shaped enclosure that would then have an axis. A point on that axis determines a plane on which would appear the most direct reflections. We can see this is the case by looking at a 3D galaxy database, such as the Tully database. The universe still doesn't really have a center but it does have an axis.

Top View of Plane

Seen from different angles the same five objects resemble the patterns of galaxies seen in the heart of the Virgo Cluster.

The patterns of these systems are much like what one would see in a big room with opposite walls of mirrors that are not quite parallel. There will appear a curving wall of repeated reflections. The patterns are much more complex if the wall is not flat but with changing curvature and the images are spaced out by the time it takes for light to traverse the roughly seven million light-years or so across the now smaller but still very large universe.

In 1986 Lapparent, Geller and Huchra published maps of the galaxies that showed large scale patterns in the galaxies, a sort of foam-like structure made of galaxies distributed around the edges of bubbles which then loosely linked into walls of those bubbles. The walls formed a crude sort of a stick-man form. The structure made by the above five closest major galaxy clusters is the same size as the repeated bubbles that make up those structures. Those kinds of walls are what you would expect to see inside large reflective, curved surfaces. More recent results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey add another wall still farther out. Both sets of walls can eventually be used to determine the radius of curvature of the universe's surface.

Here's how this works. The apparent image of M83 is actually made of three reflected segments which unfold to give the observed distance. The arrow pointing away from the Milky Way is the view of ourselves that we see as M83. Since there is more than one solution to each object, except M31, it will take analysis of many objects before the actual shape is determined.

Many highly intelligent people have been drawn into the field of theoretical physics by the complexity of trying to explain the mysterious nature of the observed universe with red shift. This new information only complicates the problem but at least the early discoveries are now within the abilities of today's technology. The mystery just shifts to another level, new questions arise and the complexity continues in another field of analysis.

There is so much information available that it can be a little overwhelming. There are now billions of galaxies known and plotted. Fortunately, computers can do this but programmers are needed to know what to look for. The next wall will be considerably more difficult to locate since there will be no direct reflections, only multiple reflections involving at least two unknown walls. As accurate position and velocity data become available, ray tracing techniques currently developed to provide more accurate light dispersion for film animation and 3-D CAD rendering programs could be used to determine the real history of our galaxy, a history which is right before our eyes if you know where and what to look for. Like a visual form of archeology, we can see just what our galaxy and our nearest neighboring galaxies looked like about three million years ago and then continuing all the way back to the very beginning of it all.

To see all this in living color we need the Starry Night™ program again.

Click here for the program instructions and a not very impressive picture of what you are looking for.

About the Big Bang Model

The Big Bang and the expanding universe model took hold in the 1930's after the red shift was discovered. This was the simplest explanation of the red shift and assumed that the one number signifies both the distance and velocity of the object. The discovery of Cepheid variable stars provided an initial calibration for distances out to about 50 million light-years which is within the range of data considered here.
We cannot test the concept directly over such vast distances so we can only assume its properties.

The current big bang and the expanding universe model should begin with...

If the universe could somehow have become compressed to an infinite density without any evidence of a closing velocity and if we knew the bulk modulus of compression of the molecule, the nucleus and of all the electrons, then the expanding universe model might explain the observed evidence of the red shift. However, science of today has no explanation of how it all got compressed and if it did, how much energy it would take to do that. But, with nothing else to believe in, that's what we use as our model of the universe.

There is evidence that the red shift is more complicated than just that.
During the past several decades there has been found a digitized pattern in the red shift that was ignored, denied and then buried since no one knew what to make of it. Now that reflections are seen to be involved, that would be predicted by the repeated number of reflections, each time losing a little frequency in the process. If there could be another component to the red shift (other than that of Doppler shift effects), such as the possibility, mentioned by at least one poet, and considered by many an astronomer, that the light just "gets tired", losing frequency by some kind of energy loss process over the vast distances of space then this more complex red shift results in a much simpler, more predictable and much more interesting universe.

And about Dark Matter...

There have been major problems with the expanding universe proposal right from its beginning. Most of the matter needed to make it work is missing.
From the Encyclopedia Britannica™, "the mass-to-light ratio... exceeds by an order of magnitude what can be reasonably ascribed to the known stellar populations. A similar situation exists for every rich cluster that has been examined in detail. This dark matter problem for rich clusters was known to the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky as early as 1933."
We have been looking for the missing 90% of the matter in the universe ever since.

It was hoped that enough matter could be found to show that the universe would expand to some maximum size and then collapse again to complete a continuing cycle. But no supporting evidence has been found so imaginary dark matter was invented but even dark matter doesn't solve the problem that the expanding universe, now seen to be accelerating, will continue to expand forever. That means that there is no good explanation of how the whole universe became compressed into a singularity.

No dark matter is needed in the closed, reflective model. All the matter is right here, relatively nearby, where we can see it and there is a whole new story to tell.

And then there's this...

We are seeing galaxies out there at a distance of 12 billion light-years that are newly forming. That requires some serious mental gyrations to explain with an expanding explosive universe but in a closed, reflective and rotating universe that is just what you would expect to see, more distant images being of younger galaxies, ourselves and our neighbors at an earlier age, spaced out into more and more distant groups, each one a nicely illustrated history of the universe.

And finally...

About the residual background radiation temperature of 2.7° K

In the expanding universe model, the uniformity of the radiation is used as proof of the correctness of the model but the number itself is not used to predict anything observed.
In a closed universe, the number has a lot more meaning.
Now that number can be used to predict and confirm certain characteristics of the universe.
Imagine this situation...
You are in a standard high school auditorium with all the lights off, windows covered and the heat/air conditioner off.
You light some of a pack of matches and let them burn out.
If you knew the size of the auditorium, in theory and with much difficulty you could measure the increase in the temperature inside the auditorium and from that extremely small number would be able to calculate the total number of matches that had been burned from the total energy that had been released.
This is what the background radiation signifies and what it predicts.
The 2.7° K is our room temperature. From that you can get the total number of stars that have lived and expired in addition to all those still contributing to the total amount of heat released since the beginning of the universe.
That's considerably more than the amount of heat you get from all the stars on a moonless night since we are buried deep within a galaxy.
Locally it gets lost in the temperature of the air between you and the stars.
This could be called the natural universe warming trend, the Second Law of Thermodynamics in action, which currently appears to be 2.7° C every 12 billion years or so.

While on the subject of radiation, this new model for the structure of the universe allows for a much simpler explanation of the nature of the electromagnetic spectrum. Questions that arose with the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 can now be answered more clearly. Simply stated... the ether is. The old concept of the æther makes perfect sense in a closed space and finally explains it all (well, almost all).

Thanks to David Moser, without whose vast knowledge of astronomy this whole thing would never have happened, to R. Brent Tully for all the work he did on his database of galaxies, National Geographic™ for their Map of the Universe, the Encyclopædia Britannica™, David Malin for his beautiful pictures in "The Invisible Universe" and to Bob Linn for making the 3D model of the big five objects in SolidWorks™ .

Richard Moser, thermodynamicist, B.S.E.M, M.S.A.E.

October 2007

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