The age of the universe much older

 The following is my Sunday thought, and it came to me in the last half hour.

I have long been wondering about what is going on with our universe and our current interpretation of it. Of course, I have a theory about the large-scale structure of the universe: that it is a fractal, an inverted fractal. That theory has had no traction, but it allows me to think freely, perhaps more freely than others. And I have no skin in the game.

 The following are my thoughts this morning on the age of the universe.

I have recently been thinking that we are getting a distorted picture (more than we think) of the universe and are not taking into account special relativity at its outer reaches. I also think that our current age of the universe — 13.8 billion years old — is too young. I think this number is about as wrong as thinking the Earth is 3000 or 4000 years old. I think we need to be thinking 'deep cosmic time', like Hutton's geological deep time, and if this is true then the age of the universe will be older by magnitudes of several thousand. 

What is more, I don't think there has been enough time for us to get all the elements of the elementary table that we have on Earth.  We have them all, and they have been produced in some 14 billion years. Those elements had to have come before the formation of our star, the Sun, so that leaves only eight or 9 billion years.  And from my quick evaluation of our galaxy, it doesn't appear to be many element-producing stars.  Something is wrong, and I'd really like to discuss it. At least open the discussion to new thinking.

Here are my thoughts from this morning.

What if we assume the CMB is valid but not its current conjectured age and position? It is believed that the universe has cooled from an 'infinitely hot beginning' to its current, CMB, 2.7 Kelvin.

Also, what if we assume that Hubble's red-shifting, expanding universe is also valid.

I think because there is a discrepancy between visual observations of galaxies at the outer reaches of the known universe right near the Big Bang CMB I said to be, there has to be a rethink.

This is what I think. 

That the universe is much older, and a clue may be in the CMB. How long would it really take for the universe to cool down if we use red-shifting principles? That is to say, even at the outermost reaches, we can still see galaxies in visible just before they redshift to the infrared. Use those principles to calculate how long it would take to cool from an extremely high temperature to 2 Kelvin.  A long time — deep time, and that is what I think the universe is telling us. 

With respect to the observations of galaxies by the James Webb space telescope, I think they may be frozen because of special relativity. Yes, they are snapshots of the past, but that past is frozen. In reality, they have moved on more than we think.  I think the only reliable or useful Hubble numbers are the red shifting in the near universe. 

Beyond that, I think the universe takes on a hierarchical structure, assembling the growth of what is called a fractal. Observation seems to show this. This does challenge the cosmological principle, but that is not my problem.

Of course, I can see problems with what I'm suggesting, but I would sure like to discuss it. I have long been thinking that the CMB is just a red herring and may have to go. That it is only a property of the universe but nothing special. This is not me saying that there was no Big Bang; it's just saying that it, the Big Bang,  is far further out and far further back in time than we think. There had to be a Big Bang origin, just as the standard model says. But on the other hand, I look at what the fractal tells me, and it tells me that things are emergent. That the universe should be bottom-up, just like an economy. So I still have a lot of thinking to do.

My thoughts for the day.  Have a nice one.

Blair