Fascinating! The further out we look, the more there is to see. And there are still people who discount the idea that the universe is infinite. And I still think our calculations of distance and size are distorted by the refusal to give credit to the tired-light theory, simply because it can't be proven in a laboratory (as told to me by Isaac Asimov when I wrote him about it). That is the theory that, past a certain threshold, all light displays red shift, simply from the distance it has to travel, regardless the object is coming toward us or going away. I think we could simulate the effect in a super computer. But, nobody in the business is willing to admit they might be wrong, and have to reformulate their theories to match observable facts.
@Argiod: The inflationary standard cosmology is the first self-consistent cosmology, and the December WMAP 9 year release has decreased the uncertainty to < 1.5 % on parameters. It is highly unlikely a self-consistent theory and its observations will be replaced.
So "tired-light" or other theories can't compete today. IIRC it was rejected by inconsistency with observations all by its own way before that.
@synoptic: I just detailed 5 reasons why we know our universe is zero energy here: http://phys.org/n...oom.html . A zero energy system can, as I noted there, either come from a spontaneous fluctuation or always existed. In none of those cases there can be an outside agent, or it wouldn't be zero energy.
We now know there are no "creator" gods, no "creations", because it is observably written all over the sky in the cosmic microwave background: "this universe, and all its contents, is 100 % naturally evolved".
Thank you Argiod for your fine Jan. 9 statement. The Big Bang is a creationist model for the sophisticated modern man. There are ample good arguments against it. Google "bigbangcosmythology" for the website "Big Bang Cosmology is Absurd."
Argiod
Jan 9, 2013