TITLE:
Mass of the Universe and the Redshift
AUTHORS:
Rajendra P. Gupta
KEYWORDS:
Redshift, Expanding Universe, Mach Effect, Cosmic Drag, Cosmological Constant
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics,
Vol.8 No.1,
March
15,
2018
ABSTRACT: Cosmological redshift is commonly attributed to the continuous expansion of the universe starting from the Big-Bang. However, expansion models require simplifying assumptions and multiple parameters to get acceptable fit to the observed data. Here we consider the redshift to be a hybrid of two effects: recession of distant galaxies due to expansion of the universe, and resistance to light propagation due to cosmic drag. The weight factor determining the contribution of the two effects is the only parameter that is needed to fit the observed data. The cosmic drag considered phenomenologically yields mass of the universe ≈2 × 1053 kg. This implicitly suggests that the mass of the whole universe is causing the cosmic drag. The databases of extragalactic objects containing redshift z and distance modulus μ of galaxies up to z = 8.26 resulted in an excellent fit to the model. Also, the weight factor wD for expansion effect contribution to μ obtained from the data sets containing progressively higher values of μcan be nicely fitted with .