Speeding Galaxies. A similar observation can be made about tight
clusters of galaxies. Galaxies in clusters are traveling much faster
than they should, based on their distances from their clusters’
centers of mass.
Distant Galaxies. Massive galaxies and galaxy clusters are now found
at such great distances that they must have formed soon after the
universe began. The big bang theory cannot explain how such galaxy
concentrations could have formed so quickly and so far away (9). The
stretching explanation says that galaxies and galaxy clusters began
before the heavens were stretched out, when all matter was relatively
confined.
Dwarf Galaxy. A vast hydrogen disk surrounds the dwarf galaxy, UGC
5288. This isolated galaxy, 16 million light-years from earth,
contains about 100,000 stars and is 1/25 the diameter of our Milky Way
Galaxy, which has at least 100,000,000,000 stars. The dwarf’s mass is
about 30 times too small to gravitationally hold onto the most distant
hydrogen gas, so gravity could not have pulled the distant hydrogen
gas into its disk. Because the gas is too evenly distributed and
rotates so smoothly, it was not expelled from the galaxy or pulled out
by a close encounter with another galaxy.
Hydrogen gas would have assumed this shape if space was once more
compact and later was stretched out. Before the stretching,
gravitational forces would have been much more powerful, thereby
producing this smooth rotational pattern. This would have occurred
recently, because the gaseous disk has not dispersed into the vacuum
of space.
9. “The discovery of massive, evolved galaxies at much greater
distances than expected—and hence at earlier times in the history of
the Universe—is a challenge to our understanding of how galaxies
form.” Gregory D. Wirth, “Old Before Their Time,” Nature, Vol. 430, 8
July 2004, p. 149.
A. Cimatti et al., “Old Galaxies in the Young Universe,” Nature, Vol.
430, 8 July 2004, p. 184.
David Shiga, “Nursery Pictures,” Science News, Vol. 167, 5 March 2005,
pp. 148–149.
in terms of percentage, how many of the quoted words do you understand?
Strings of Galaxies. It is widely recognized that gravity would not
pull matter into long strings of hundreds or thousands of galaxies—
even if the universe were unbelievably old. Instead, gravity, if
acting over enormous time and distances, would form more spherical
globs of matter. Yet, long, massive filaments of galaxies have been
discovered (10).
These strings of galaxies can be understood if galaxies were formed
when all matter in the universe was initially confined to a much
smaller volume. (In that small volume, stars and galaxies formed
either by the direct acts of a Creator or by the powerful
gravitational forces resulting from so much extremely confined mass.)
Then, the heavens were rapidly stretched out. Just as one might pull
taffy into long strings, the stretched out heavens might contain long,
massive strings of thousands of galaxies. A surprising number appear
connected or aligned with other galaxies or quasars, as prominent
astronomers have noted.
10. “Thirty-seven of the brightest galaxies were detected, including a
quasar, but thousands of galaxies were probably in the string,
according to astronomer Dr. Paul Francis who heads the team. But none
of the existing computer simulation models were able to reproduce
galaxy strings as large as the one the team found. ‘We are looking
back four-fifths of the way to the beginning of the universe and the
existence of this galaxy string will send astrophysicists around the
world back to the drawing board to re-examine [big bang] theories of
the formation of the universe,’ Francis said. The simulations tell us
that you cannot take the matter in the early universe and line it up
in strings this large. There simply hasn’t been enough time since the
Big Bang for it to form structures this colossal.” Science & Space,
“Galaxy Find Stirs Big Bang Debate,” www.CNN.com on 8 January 2004.
Paul J. Francis et al., “An 80 Mpc Filament of Galaxies at Redshift
Z=2.38,” presented to the American Astronomical Society (Atlanta,
Georgia), 7 January 2004. [80 Mpc=1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000
miles=2,400,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers=261,000,000 light-
years]
M. Mitchell Waldrop, “The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe Gets
Larger—Maybe,” Science, Vol. 238, 13 November 1987, p. 894.
M. Mitchell Waldrop, “Astronomers Go Up Against the Great Wall,”
Science, Vol. 246, 17 November 1989, p. 885.
Dwarf Galaxies. Dwarf galaxies are sometimes imbedded in a smoothly
rotating disk of hydrogen gas that is much larger than the galaxy
itself. The mass (hidden or otherwise) of each dwarf galaxy and its
surrounding gas is insufficient to pull the gas into its disk shape
(11), but if this matter was once highly concentrated and then the
space it occupied was recently stretched out, all observed
characteristics would be explained.
11. Robert Irion, “The Hunt for Stealth Galaxies,” Science, Vol. 308,
20 May 2005, pp. 1104–1106.
“The existence of quiescent, extended gaseous disks around a handful
of dwarf irregular galaxies is puzzling.” Liese van Zee, “A Large Gas
Disk Around a Small Galaxy,” National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Newsletter, Issue 103, April 2005, p. 13.
Star Streams. Some stars within our Milky Way Galaxy are moving in
paths and with velocities that show they were captured from
neighboring dwarf galaxies. The stars in each stream also have common
chemical characteristics. Most of these dwarf galaxies have been
completely “consumed” by our galaxy (12). However, one of them,
Sagittarius, is still visible, but its orbit and its core of tightly
packed stars are too far away to be captured by the Milky Way’s
gravity (13).
All this can be explained in two ways: (1) before the universe was
stretched out, Sagittarius and the consumed dwarfs were formed but
much closer to the initial Milky Way Galaxy, or (2) dark matter (if it
exists at all) was distributed in unknown ways that helped form these
dwarf galaxies and placed them in different orbits that allowed them
to be captured and cannibalized by the Milky Way Galaxy. Obviously,
hypothesis (1) is the simpler of the two.
12. “Hundreds of small galaxies have been ripped apart by our galaxy,
creating tenuous streams of stars that slowly mix into the Milky’s
indigenous population.” Rodrigo Ibata and Brad Gibson, “The Ghosts of
Galaxies Past,” Scientific American, Vol. 296, April 2007, p. 41.
13. Sidney van den Bergh, “Clumps That Survive to Tell a Tale,”
Nature, Vol. 402, 4 November 1999, pp. 31–32.
Colliding Galaxies. Some galaxies contain two distinct rotating
systems, as if a galaxy rotating one way collided with another
rotating the opposite way. Based on the speeds of galaxies we see, and
their separation distances today, such mergers would take billions of
years.
Does this mean that the universe must be billions of years old? No.
Before the heavens were stretched out, galaxies would have been closer
to each other, resulting in much greater speeds and frequent
collisions. Today, galaxies are stretched so far apart that, according
to astronomers’ calculations, collisions should rarely happen.
However, past galactic mergings are surprisingly common (14).
If some galaxies merged over billions of years, why haven’t the
different rotations within a merged galaxy homogenized by now?
Obviously, the mergings did not happen billions of years ago (15).
14. “Violent encounters between galaxies appear surprisingly common.”
Joshua Barnes et al., “Colliding Galaxies,” Scientific American, Vol.
265, August 1991, p. 40.
“... merging two spiral galaxies to make an elliptical [galaxy] is
statistically improbable.” James E. Gunn, as quoted by Karen Hartley,
“Mixing It Up in Space,” Science News, Vol. 135, 8 April 1989, p. 219.
15. “Other studies of elliptical galaxies have found additional signs
of recent merging. In some ellipticals, for example, the central
region rotates in one direction, while the outer parts spin the other
way. Such a countervailing rotation pattern would be difficult to
explain if these galaxies formed all of one piece but could come about
quite naturally from a merger.” Barnes et al., p. 41.