Superluminal Recession Velocities

The backbone of standard cosmology is the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker solution to Einstein's equations of general relativity (GR). In recent years, observations have largely confirmed many of the properties of this model, which is based on a partitioning of the universe's energy density into three primary constituents: matter, radiation, and a hypothesized dark energy which, in LambdaCDM, is assumed to be a cosmological constant Lambda. Yet with this progress, several unpalata...

The redshifts and luminosities of Type 1A supernovae are conventionally fitted with the current paradigm, which holds that the galaxies are locally stationary in an expanding metric. The fit fails unless the expansion is accelerating; driven perhaps by "dark energy". Is the recession of the galaxies slowed down by gravity or speeded up by some repulsive force? To shed light on this question the redshifts and apparent magnitudes of type 1A supernovae are re-analysed in a carte...

The apparent superluminal growth in the size of a sufficiently large part of the universe can be ascribed to the special relativistic effect of time dilation.

An introduction to the physics and mathematics of the expanding universe, using no more than high-school level / undergraduate mathematics. Covered are the basics of scale factor expansion, the dynamics of the expanding universe, various distance concepts and the generalized redshift-luminosity relation, among other topics.

We make the hypothesis that the velocity of light and the expansion of the universe are two aspects of one single concept connecting space and time in the expanding universe. We show that solving Friedman's equations with that interpretation (keeping c = constant) could explain number of unnatural features of the standard cosmology. We thus examine in that light the flatness and the quintessence problems, the problem of the observed uniformity in term of temperature and densi...

We measure the speed of light with current observations, such as Type Ia Supernova, galaxy ages, radial BAO mode, as well as simulations of future redshift surveys and gravitational waves as standard sirens. By means of a Gaussian Process reconstruction, we find that the precision of such measurements can be improved from roughly 6\% to 1.5-2\%, in light of these forthcoming observations. This result demonstrates that we will be able to perform a cosmological measurement of a...

Recent SN1a data have probed deeper into space than ever before. Plotted as distance vs. recession speed, a disturbing non-linearity is found which has led to speculations about "dark energy" which somehow acts like anti-gravity. This study finds a full explanation in relativity theory. The metric of space shrinks, in the presence of a gravitational potential, V, by exp(V/c^2). Early in the big bang, when the SN1a's sent their signals, V was larger than now. By fitting the da...

The Hubble radius is a particular manifestation of the Universe's gravitational horizon, R_h(t_0)=c/H_0, the distance beyond which physical processes remain unobservable to us at the present epoch. Based on recent observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with WMAP, and ground-based and HST searches for Type Ia supernovae, we now know that R_h(t_0)~13.5 Glyr. This coincides with the maximum distance (ct_0~13.7 Glyr) light could have traveled since the big bang. Ho...

There are two redshifts in cosmology: $z_{obs}$, the observed redshift computed via spectral lines, and the model redshift, $z$, defined by the effective FLRW scale factor. In general these do not coincide. We place observational constraints on the allowed distortions of $z$ away from $z_{obs}$ - a possibility we dub redshift remapping. Remapping is degenerate with cosmic dynamics for either $d_L(z)$ or $H(z)$ observations alone: for example, the simple remapping $z = \alpha_...

We investigate the direct determination of expansion history using redshift distortions without plugging into detailed cosmological parameters. The observed spectra in redshift space include a mixture of information: fluctuations of density-density and velocity-velocity spectra, and distance measures of perpendicular and parallel components to the line of sight. Unfortunately it is hard to measure all the components simultaneously without any specific prior assumption. Common...