New Theory: The Universe Isn't Expanding, It's Just Gaining Mass
Maybe They're All Just Getting More Massive This image shows a galaxy cluster, called 1E 0657-56, located 3.8 billion light-years away from Earth. NASA/STScI/Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al. But you'd never know, because everyone is getting more massive at the same time. Whoa. One cosmologist is proposing that the universe isn't actually expanding, as the standard theory goes. Instead, the redshift effects astronomers see could mean that everything is just gaining more mass, while possibly staying in place, or even contracting. The theory, which comes from a University of Heidelberg physicist named Christof Wetterich, hasn't yet been peer reviewed, Nature News reports. Interestingly, Nature News also reports that the idea isn't testable because masses are measured relative to one another, so even if the universe were gaining mass, we'd never know, because they'd all still be the same relative to one another. Nevertheless, Wetterich told Nature News that the advantages of his idea include: 1)...