I was just thinking how atoms are like little perpetual motion engines, with there little orbiting electrons spinning endlessly. What if they are not 100% perpetual? what if they are slowly loosing energy and every atom in the universe was shrinking at a constant rate? For an observer inside this universe, would it appear that the universe was expanding when in reality every atom was slowly shrinking?
We know that space itself is expanding because of an observable redshift effect from distant light sources (stars). They are flying away from us at ever increasing speeds. If their atoms were shrinking, the would be slowly and steadily, barely getting farther from us by means of shrinking diameters. Instead they are exponentially increasing in distance, so we can conclude that space itself is expanding, and the sparsely disbursed physical matter (atoms) dotting that space is stable (according to our current observation capabilities).
Distance is relative to atomic scale. Red shift would occur in either situation. The theoretical physics of a shrinking atomic scale universe could be indistinguishable from an expanding universe.
You're saying if the telescope is shrinking and the distant star is shrinking it would produce the same redshift?
Let's just say yes, in this case due to attenuation of energy and other properties and interactions of energy and matter that we don't yet understand. The weak force of gravity across the universe would cause the scale of distance to increase inversely with the universal attenuation of energy both linear and orbital from photons to electrons. Perceived distance increases as energy decreases. It's no more far fetched than wormholes and M-theories. We also know for a fact that atoms grow and shrink as we increase or decrease energy. The processor in your computer is physically larger when it's hot and running than when it's cold and shut down. Now if I was a genus I could probably contrive some supporting equations and maybe even get a government grant.
