Expansion = inverse contraction?

From: Colin <chales1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 12:25:12 +1100

Something that occurs to me that I haven't seen any explicit discussion
about and thought someone in the list may have come across it somewhere.

In cosmology we traditionally think of the universe as expanding from
the point of view of any position within it. In our minds it is getting
bigger and bigger.

I am asking why I haven't ever seen anyone discuss the inverse
proposition .ie. That what may be happeneing is that this expansion is
only an appearance and that it may be that spacetime is actually
contracting. If it were contracting then from within everything would
appear to be expanding as we shrink and shrink to nothing.

This is not a 'big crunch'. This is an inverse-bang. 2nd law/fwd time
etc still functions as usual.

Is there something built into the models that forbids this that I simply
haven't got?

Or is it meaningless to make the distinction?

Cheers

Colin Hales
Received on Sat Dec 13 2003 - 20:27:30 PST