Abstract
ACCORDING to the steady-state theory of the universe, new matter is continuously being created out of nothing1,2. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, however, precludes the possibility of proving ‘nothing’, that is, absence of energy, unless the time of observation is infinite. Now, whatever the explanation of the famous red-shift phenomenon in astronomy, the result is always a finite volume for the observable universe; any observer, irrespective of his position, finds himself in the centre of an analogous observable universe. On the Sandage scale3, and assuming a Euclidean space for simplicity, extrapolation of Hubble's law yields a value of about 1.3 × 1010 light years for the radius (R) of the theoretically observable universe.
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References
Bondi, H., and Gold, T., Mon. Not. Roy. Astro. Soc., 108, 252 (1948).
Hoyle, F., Mon. Not. Roy. Astro. Soc., 108, 372 (1948).
Sandage, A., Astrophys. J., 127, 513 (1958).
Bondi, H., Cosmology (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1960).
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ŽUPANČIČ, A. Creation Rate of Matter and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Nature 207, 279 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/207279a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/207279a0
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