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 explained this by having 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 with 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 rotations around some kind of an axis which in theory could be reduced to combinations 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, with Edwin Hubble's discovery of our own galaxy and of other galaxies at much greater distances, and finally his discovery of the red shift of those galaxies, the story of the structure of our universe was completely revised. The easiest explanation of the red shift was simple extrapolation backwards which produced the big bang and the expanding universe.

The new universe is essentially a big expanding ball with a radius 12 to 15 billion light-years but it is a ball and a universe that is said to have no center.

However, this model had some problems. It was first assumed that this expanding universe was part of a continuing cycle of expansion and collapse but it was soon found that there was not enough mass to ever cause it to stop expanding and begin contracting. Just how it got compressed is a question that is not considered or asked. Then evidence was found indicating that the distant galaxies were accelerating which requires the application of a force. Somewhat like Ptolemy's system, the expanding universe model has had to add, not more gears and wheels but unseen and somewhat imaginary concepts such as dark matter and invisible forces called dark energy.

Now, just as centuries ago the invention of the telescope revealed new information to Copernicus and Galileo that changed the conception of our solar system, the invention of the computer and recently developed compilation of large databases containing the actual three dimensional locations of millions of known galaxies has revealed a new structure for the universe. These observations can be seen by anyone with a computer and are available in several commercially available 3D mapping programs of the universe. 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 Fourth Story

The Closed, Reflective Universe

These databases show that there are definite patterns in the distribution of the galaxies indicating a whole new construction for our universe that is not expanding at all. These patterns of galaxy groups begin within our nearby neighbor galaxies and continue outward in the far distant ones.

This new information reveals that we live in a very large mirrored room or cave, with almost perfectly reflecting curved walls. The universe is a closed space, possibly an elliptical or egg-shaped cavity, possibly a cave with an opening.

We are about one million light-years from the nearest wall and around six to 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 evidence you can see for yourself in the National Geographic Universe Reference Map, view 3, The Local Group. The Map of the Universe is available from the National Geographic Society go to that link and search for Universe Map. It should come up with Item # 02011C for $10.99.

However, there is a link to essentially the same map available on Wikipedia at this link and look for the Local Group map. However, the National Geographic map is bigger.

These maps haven't changed for decades. The universe doesn't change, only the details are filled in, the resolution gets better.

The angle of observation for these maps 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.

A better viewpoint made from a 3D plot of the Local Group is shown here as well as an approximate list of corresponding objects for the two sides of the Local Group.

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.

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, when plotted in three dimensions all lie in the same plane.

Side View of the Big Five Objects

The fact that they are all in the same plane indicates possibly a surface of revolution, that each of these groups are on the edge of a large oval or maybe closer to an egg shaped enclosure with nothing at the center but that would have an axis. The most direct reflections would appear on a plane through that axis. 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

Here's how this works.

Expanded Top View with Reflective Walls

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.

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. The patterns are much more complex if the walls have continually changing curvatures. 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.

This new information only shifts the mystery to another level. New questions arise and the complexity continues in another direction that requires not telescopes but computer programs.

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 like a visual form of archeology, we can now see all the way back to the very beginning of it all.

Click here for a very approximate shape of the universe as seen in the Starry Night™ program .

The Red Shift

In the early 1990s William Tifft and John Cocke found that red shifts are quantized, that they were digitized into discrete values. That discovery was largely ignored or denied and then buried since no one knew what to make of it. If each reflection off a wall caused a small frequency shift or loss then the red shift becomes a measurement of the number of reflections and of the distance back in time of the image we are seeing now.

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.

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.

Additional evidence...

In the late 1990s John P. Ralston and Borge Nodland found that there was an axis to the universe that was indicated by the direction of polarized light. Light becomes polarized when reflected off of a surface. A closed, reflective universe has an axis. An expanding, spherical universe doesn't.

There are galaxy clusters, often referred to as the largest known structures in the universe which are about six to eight million light-years in diameter.They are repeated over and over to make foamy walls that extend out to the edges of the observed universe. Those galaxy clusters are the size of the real universe. Those images are the real reflective, closed universe being repeated over and over out to as far as we can see.

Then there is the fact that we are seeing galaxies out there at a distance of 12 billion light-years that are newly forming. In a closed, reflective 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, giving 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.
If you were in a large, insulated, mirrored room and had enough instrumentation you could light several matches, let them burn out, measure the increase in the temperature inside the room and you 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.
This could be called the natural universe warming trend, the second law of thermodynamics in action, which currently appears to be 2.7° C per 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 exists. Now the ether can be the fabric of space that is stretched between rigid, reflective walls. The ether can carry all the forms of radiation we detect in the electromagnetic spectrum.

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 awesome and beautiful pictures in "The Invisible Universe" and to Bob Linn for making the 3D models in SolidWorks™.

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

July 2010

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