Draft:Atoms All the Way Down

• Comment: It needs significant sources beyond a single article by a COI author Ldm1954 (talk) 23:25, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

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Atoms All the Way Down (AAWD) is a controversial theory of cosmology which holds that (1) the universe is infinitely large and old; (2) galaxies are "atoms"; and (3) stars are "light." It revives a number of theories that were historically important but are not currently embraced by mainstream science, such as Fritz Zwicky's theory of "tired light," Isaac Newton's theory of "corpuscular" light, and Lord Kelvin's theory of the "vortex atom." Most critically, AAWD holds that if stars are "light," then light is not wavelike. Therefore, a Doppler shift is not the cause of the cosmological redshift, which fundamentally undermines the Big Bang theory.

Origin of the Name

The theory is described in detail by a 2002 book entitled, Atoms All the Way Down: What If Galaxies Were "Atoms" and Stars Were "Light"? A Simple Theory for Spiral Galaxies, Black Holes, Galaxy Jets, and the Cosmic Web. The name "atoms all the way down" comes from the story that Steven Hawking tells in the first paragraph of his book, A Brief History of Time:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

History and Context

In 1842, Christian Doppler proposed that light waves being emitted by a moving object will Doppler shift. In the decades that followed, at least one astronomer, William Huggins, attempted to test Doppler's theory but was unable to do so because contemporary scientific instruments were too imprecise. Finally, when the cosmological redshift was discovered in 1913, it was interpreted as a Doppler shift, forming the basis for the Big Bang theory.

But according to AAWD, stars are "light" and light is "stars." Light is corpuscular, as Newton believed, and not wavelike; therefore it does not Doppler shift. The universe is not somehow moving away from the earth; rather, it is eternal and endless. Whether light Doppler shifts--which Huggins tried but was unable to test in the Nineteenth Century--can now be tested using modern instruments. A small test conducted in 2022 using public data has already cast doubt on the Doppler theory.

According to AAWD, galaxies are also "atoms" and atoms are "galaxies." The theory holds that atoms have a vortex structure, as Kelvin suggested; therefore galaxies have a vortex structure, which can account for spiral galaxies, galaxy jets, and other vortex-like galactic features. The universe is a never-ending series of smaller and larger atoms/galaxies, all of which have a vortex shape: it's "atoms all the way down."

Related Theories

AAWD has a number of corollary theories, including:

• Atoms emit and absorb light. If galaxies are "atoms" and stars are "light," then galaxies emit and absorb stars. Matter is therefore created and destroyed constantly, not just at one primeval moment in time.
• Galaxies may "absorb" stars, which could account for black holes "eating" stars.
• If galaxies are "atoms," then galaxies may form "molecules," which could account for the observed large-scale structure of the universe.
• There is a linear relationship in between the color and energy of light, with blue light having more energy than red. There is also a linear relationship in between the color and size of stars, with blue stars being larger than red. The color of a star may correspond to its color of "light," and the size of a star may correspond to its "energy."
• Large galaxies contain smaller galaxies that are all around the same size and in relatively low numbers. These are called "dwarf galaxies," and they may correspond to neutrons in the atom.
• The only visible "particles" in the universe are atoms and galaxies. There must also be "atoms in the atom," which compose the atom's "stars," i.e. light. We refer to these quanta as "photons." They could also be called "sub-atoms." And there must also be "atoms in the atom in the atom," which we could call "sub-sub-atoms." (There must also be objects so large that galaxies are like the size of atoms when compared to them. We could call these objects "super-galaxies.")
• When atoms absorb light they produce electricity, and when atoms produce light they lose electricity. Electricity is composed of particles smaller than galaxies or atoms. It could be composed of "sub-sub-atoms," which are the next available smaller particles in the AAWD universe. In other words, atoms turn "sub-atoms" (photons/light) into "sub-sub-atoms" (electricity), and vice-versa. (They turn electricity/sub-sub-atoms back into light/sub-atoms.) If we apply the "galaxies-atoms" analogy and scale everything up, then "electricity" in the galaxies may be composed of photons, i.e. light (while the galaxy atom's equivalent to "photons"/"light" are atoms/stars).
• The atom may be a vortex of electricity, a.k.a. sub-sub-atoms. The galaxy may also be a vortex of photons, or light. Images of "radio galaxies" may reveal important information about the shared vortex structure of galaxies and atoms. The speed at which galaxy jets rotate may correspond to electric charge in the atom, with a faster rotation being equivalent to a "negative" charge and a slower rotation being equivalent to a "positive" charge. Gravity can be attributed to a vortex's natural capacity to pull in the things around it. Electromagnetism may be caused by the jets' rotation. (James Clerk Maxwell himself first suggested that the vortex atom may cause electromagnetic fields.) "Electron shells" and atomic spin may also be attributed to features of a vortex, such as its number of fluid loops and their relative lengths.
• When galaxies generate "light" from "electricity," they create stars/matter from light/photons. And when they absorb "light" to generate "electricity," they destroy stars/matter to generate photons/light. This must be how the AAWD universe perpetuates itself: each dimension (i.e. galaxies, atoms, photons, and so forth) creates and destroys objects in the next lower dimension, using objects that are "two dimensions down." (Galaxies turn atoms into photons and photons into atoms; atoms turn photons into electricity and electricity into photons; and so on.)
• Galaxy groups like the M81 Group show fluid-like "streams" connecting the galaxies. This may be what atomic bonding looks like.
• In contrast to the importance of cosmological redshift to standard cosmology, AAWD does not assign much cosmological importance to the redshift. The simplest solution for why redshift exists is that it relates only to distance, and not to both distance and radial velocity. This is essentially Fritz Zwicky's theory of "tired light."

See also

• Tired light
• Vortex theory of the atom
• Corpuscular theory of light
• Alternative cosmology