Do you think, recent astronomical findings about expansion of the space and drifting apart of galaxies, can turn out to be a space mirage?

The expansion of the Universe is a well established and observed fact. Your question in part implies a common misunderstanding of Einstein's Relativity Theory. It's true that the Theory shows that nothing with mass can reach the speed of light. However, it goes on to show that space itself certainly can, thereby carrying the observed Universe with it.

I started becoming dubious of accelerating expansion when scientists started coming up with some rather outlandish theories trying to explain certain things in physics that didn't fit in with the current models. As Einstein said, "if the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts" There could be many reasons for red shifts we see in galaxies. traveling through gas and dust, gravity stretching out the light, and one theory with reasonable credibility so far says the speed of light is slowing down. There are so many things we still don't know

Wouldn’t rule out anything, but pretty unlikely. Einstein’s general relativity is what we use to model the universe, and it explains how accelerated expansion can occur.

The trick to understanding it is twofold - understanding that gravity is not caused by just mass, and understanding that general relativity allows a kind of repulsive gravity that can expand the metric of space..

The cosmological solution of General relativity - the FLRW metric - depends on both the average energy density of the universe and the everage PRESSURE density of the universe. Positive pressure results in normal gravity, but negative pressure results in the expansion of space. According to the FLRW metric, if dark energy exists, it will create a tension in space that results in negative pressure. To be completely fair, some physicists don’t like the idea of negative pressure at the level of the universe, but the same result from the same equations can be had by saying that if the energy density of dark energy remains constant as the universe expands, we really don’t have to introduce negative pressure. Unfortunately, this leads to a discussion of how we cannot prove conservation of energy in general relativity and this is not the forum for that. The condition for accelerated expansion occurs when 3 times the (isotropic) average pressure density is greater than the average energy density of the universe.

Essentially the above replaces the cosmological constant with an actual source of energy that results in space expansion as opposed to Einstein’s original thought that is was just a property of space. Note that there is nothing that explains what dark energy is, but just explains what would happen if dark energy (and pressure) exists in some form.

So, to sum it all up, we have a really nice explanation of accelerated expansion from general relativity, a theory which has passed every predictive test. It is likely a correct explanation, and is consistent with what we believe happened during the rapid inflationary period shortly after the Big Bang.

No, it is not going to turn out to be a mirage because the Milky Way Galaxy Local Group AND the Andromeda "I local group of galaxies are moving TOWARD each other, NOT AWAY from each other.

The misconceptions ARE YOUR misconception, When YOU project and transfer YOUR misconceptions onto scientists, you are ALWAYS wrong. You RIG the logic from the beginning, so anyone who does know the scientific facts AND understands how the science AND how the scientific method works can out logic you from the beginning because of FALSE FACTS. and premises YOU have made.

When y ou start off with FALSE STATEMENT you are ALWAYS going to be wrong. Galaxies ARE NOT moving away From us FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT IN A VACUUM This is FALSE premise that you means your logic is WRONG and circular. You RIG the logic from the VERY BEGINNING by using a FALSE PREMISE. with "fast" . NO scientist has siad this. IF they have PLEASE CITE YOUR SOURCES. The speed of light IS NOT CONSTANT IN ALL MEDIUMS. another FALSE premise on your part.

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Andromeda I (M51) and and the Milky way Galaxy will go THROUGH each other , possibly more than once and then merge to form a large elliptical galaxy. Galaxies DO merge with each other. we see that happening with OTHER galaxies.(M51)

Galaxies form clusters, super clusters and galactic 'sheets' with galactic voids.. NONE OF THIS CONTRADICTS that the entire Universe is ALSO EXPANDING Galaxies and galaxy clusters and super clusters Really ARE moving away from each other and getting further apart.

these observations ARE NOT RECENT ( well, that rate of expansion is increasing IS recent. THAT may be a mirage or an illusion).. Hubble's work was done int the 1920s through the 1950s. The orginal Big Bang paper was written by a Catholic priest who become Monseigneur was published in 1927, that was 91 YEARS ago. How "recent" does something have to be published to be "recent" for you.? Anything that happened BEFORE i was born is NOT recent, and i am tuning 65 years old in less than 2 months.

Anything more than 5 years old is NOT "recent.".

ANYONE who thinks the expansion of the Universe is an optical illusion or mirage is making a very poor attempt to justify their scientific ignorance and is showing off and trying to intentionally provoke people so their own ego gets fed by the reactions of others. Emotional parasites who feed on the anger of other people need to to try understand that their behavior is unacceptable unless they CAN PROVE to multiple people that something is a mirage or optical illusion.

Evidence DOES NOT HAVE TO BE TANGIBLE. do be legitimate evidence. WHY CAN SOME PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND THAT/

WHY are you ignorant and WHY are you SO PROUD that you are ignorant that you BLATANTLY display your ignorance online for the entire world to see.The VERY SAME THING happens with the scientific method, but it is called peer review. The accusations that there is to much speculation and making wild guesses IS PART of the scientific method. WHY CAN YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS. Your attempts to to provoke and dis- credit scientists FAIL because you DO NOT understand the science OR HOW the scientific method works.

The expansion of the Universe is NOT mirage or an optical illusion. If you do N OT UNDERSTAND how red shift and blue shift works, WHY don't you ask knowledge seeking questions instead of posting RANTS THAT MAKE ACCUSATIONS? I am sick and tired of all these attempts to PROVOKE but NEVER asking legitimate knowledge seeking question because you really are curious and WANT to learn.All you seem to really want is to ARGUE.

PLEASE explain WHY Andromeda 1 and the Milky Way Galaxy are getting closer together?

M51, colliding galxies, false color image

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4disyKG7XtU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mchzu-eB_wg

The rate of expansion is from about 70 to 74 km/sec/Megaparsec. So the expansion speed is faster if measured over longer distances, it is more than the speed of light at distances over about 14.3 billion parsecs. The discovery of that expansion was almost 100 years ago, not that "recent". Matter cannot go faster than light, space is not matter, so that rule does not apply to space. It is pretty well documented by various research techniques.

I think you have a basic misunderstanding of the expansion of space, and about how distances and speeds are determined for astronomical scales. The galaxies are NOT moving at anything close to the speed of light. It is the empty space between galaxies that is is expanding. The expansion rate is very slow, about 7% per billion years.

Nope.

I also couldn't care less.

The supposed accelerating expansion due to an unknown dark energy may indeed be an illusion based on observations that our local area is traveling through space at a high rate of speed supposedly caused by another unknown/unexplained called "dark flow". In any event, we may be be fooling ourselves as to how the universe was/is operating and also have no way of knowing what is going on in the far reaches of the universe right now in real time. All the data we receive in the form of light or other rays is from a time long ago given the vast distances and limits of light travel speeds. Only time will tell what we can truly determine is a correct understanding.

"Dark Flow-The Illusion of the Accelerating Expansion

There is another theory that suggests that the accelerating expansion of the universe is an illusion called "Dark Flow". We perceive it as accelerating because of the way our region in the cosmos drifts through the rest of space. This according to Christos Tsagas, a cosmologist at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. According to his theory, our relative motion makes it seem as if the universe as a whole is expanding faster and faster, when in reality its slowing down, which is what we would expect of gravity.

This theory would get rid of the issue of dark energy and avoid the other theory of the Big Rip. Instead of the universe being ripped apart, this theory would have it come to a stop and then begin shrinking. According to Tsagas, the acceleration of the universe in our area is caused by its motion alone. The universe beyond our domain isn't accelerating outward, but rolling to a stop.

Tsagas' explanation of things builds on a recent discovery by Alexander Kashlinsky, a cosmologist at NASA. Over several years, Kashlinsky and his colleagues have shown that our region of space-time, an area of around 2.5 billion light years across, is moving relative to the rest of the universe, fast.

Tsagas's theory is also partly supported by recent observations that have confused cosmologists. Data collected from space, including the cosmic background radiation and light from supernovae seem to show the universe has a preferred axis, or that it stretches more in one direction than the other as it expands."

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" If concepts like Tsagas' "dark flow" are true, it may force us to change how we perceive our place in the universe and ultimately lead to new theories. We can't have both dark energy and dark flow, its either one or the other and each one paints a different picture of things and leads to different theories. Hopefully new data from instruments can help us get a better grasp on things leading us to a grand picture on the fate of the universe."

http://tech-stew.com/post/2012/04/23/Predicting-th...

The closest galaxy Andromeda is moving towards us, not away, due to gravity, and we can only see less than ten percent of the overall universe. There's the known universe, which all seems to be expanding, faster now than it used to. I have a simple explanation for that, there's this stuff bouncing around, hot energy, like hot air in a balloon, pushing the expansion, because there's all these particles bouncing around against each other at the speed of light, causing outward pressure, against the gravity of themselves, and all the other energy, in the form of mass.

This is what they call dark energy, but according to the first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed it only changes form, and according to the stress/tensor part of general relativity, all forms of energy have gravity. They think this dark energy has properties unlike any other sort of energy that can be seen, for no particular reason, simply because they can't see it. I say if it has a propulsive force, it's a form of propulsive energy, and as any rocket scientist would know, all forms of propulsion have limits because you need to push something back in order to push something forward in space, especially against the gravity of all the energy in the universe, and there's a limited amount of it, then I reckon the stars burn out, everything cools down, and all of this energy and light and gas and dark energy gets sucked into black holes, black hole galaxies, black hole galaxy clusters, and they become smaller and smaller places of dense mass and gravity, growing in size and gravity, with lessening propulsive force in between.

They have dark energy not only maintaining it's force, but growing as space grows in size. They think it's a force unlike any sort of energy we've ever studied, simply because they don't know what it is. How is that science? Perhaps they got the idea from Einstein's cosmological constant, which he called the largest blunder of his career and based on a static state universe where the stars hang in the same place in the sky forever. This is obviously not right. Causality requires an endless chain, and it's not an endless expansion, its expansion when it's hot, then contraction when it's cold, hot air expands, cold air contracts, what goes up must come down, it could not be simpler.

Energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared, mass equals energy divided by the speed of light squared, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and the second law of thermodynamics, all thing in an enclosed system gain entropy unless something causes them not to, that is reset at each big bang, which obviously heats things up to as hot as they can be, each time, and is caused when the black holes containing all the energy in the universe come smashing back into each other from a great distance, at great speed.