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Artist's Progress Report

Quantized Redshifts Compared to High Energy Solutions to Schroedinger's Equation within an Infinite Harmonic Potential

Quantized Redshifts Compared to High Energy Solutions to Schroedinger's Equation within an Infinite Harmonic Potential

Quantized Redshift Data reproduced from, "Quantum Cosmology," by W. Tifft, Cocke, De Vito, 1996, Astrophysics and Space Science, 238, 247


I began my research by reading Tifft's "Quantum Cosmology." Tifft explained that the redshift observed by astronomers had been universally consider to be a doppler effect, caused by the expansion of the universe. However, Tifft had observed that the redshift was quantized and periodic in nature, which is not consistent with a doppler explanation. He concluded some other mechanism must be at work. His observations were confirmed by the Royal Observatory in Edinbourgh, but no universally accepted explanation for the phenomenon has yet been published.

Erwin Schroedinger derived equations to predict the position of an electron. I was struck by the visual resemblence of Tifft's graphs depicting periodicity in redshifts, and the plot of solutions to Schroedinger's equations (SE). I sought to understand the meaning of what I saw, and decided that both Tifft and Schroedinger had attempted to reduce complex multi-dimension realities to two dimensional plots in order to depict periodic patterns.

Although they were similar, high energy electrons in Schroedinger's plot showed curves on each side of a harmonic potential, whereas Tifft's plot resembled curves on only one side of that potential. I tried to visualize why that would be, and realized that if the origin of Schroedinger's plot represented the stars Tifft observed, then one side of the plot represented light traveling toward Tifft, while the other side represented light traveling away from Tifft. Since Tifft would never see the light traveling away from him, he would indeed only see the curves on one half of Schroedinger's plot.

Next I observed that the first curve in Tifft's plot seemed askew compared to the first curve in Schroedinger's plot. But as I looked at Schroedinger's first curves I focused on the points they were intersected by the curve of the infinite harmonic potential. That point on a curve resembled the intersection of the y axis and Tifft's first data curve. I reasoned that Tifft, by his act of observation, determined the boundary of Schroedinger's infinite harmonic potential, Further, he was situated at the intersection of that curve and the first probability curve, which in this model, represents the probability for seeing the redshifts he observed. Hence, it seemed reasonable that this intersection in the SE plot did represent the intersection of the the y axis and the first curve in Tifft's data. I drew sketch #2c to illustrate these ideas.

I have asked my Phyisicist collaborator to plot SE using the cosmic domain instead of the atomic domain traditionally used. If the probability curves resemble my sketches, I will be encouraged to continue sketching. First to show how SE applies to Tifft's other observations of periodicities, and hence demonstrate that these first sketches do not just represent an amazing coincidence. And then ultimately, to depict why SE should apply to the cosmic domain as I felt it would.