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Paper: Tolman Test from z = 0.1 to z = 5.5: Preliminary Results challenge the Expanding Universe Model
Volume: 413, 2nd Crisis in Cosmology Conference, CCC-2
Page: 12
Authors: Lerner, E. J.
Abstract: We performed the Tolman surface-brightness test for the expansion of the universe using a large UV dataset of disk galaxies in a wide range of redshifts (from 0.03 to 5.7). We combined data for low-z galaxies from GALEX observations with those for high-z objects from HST UltraDeep Field images. Starting from the data in publicly- available GALEX and UDF catalogs, we created 6 samples of galaxies with observations in a rest-frame band centered at 1410Å and 5 with data from one centered on 2250Å . These bands correspond, respectively, to the FUV and NUV bands of GALEX for objects at z = 0.1. By maintaining the same rest-frame wave-band of all observations we greatly minimized the effects of k-correction and filter transformation. Since SB depends on the absolute magnitude, all galaxy samples were then matched for the absolute magnitude range (-17.7 < M(AB) < -19.0) and for mean absolute magnitude. We performed homogeneous measurements of the magnitude and half-light radius for all the galaxies in the 11 samples, obtaining the median UV surface brightness for each sample. We compared the data with two models: 1) The LCDM expanding universe model with the widely-accepted evolution of galaxy size R proportional to H(z)-1 and 2) a simple, Euclidean, non-expanding (ENE) model with the distance given by d = czH0. We found that the ENE model was a significantly better fit to the data than the LCDM model with galaxy size evolution. While the LCDM model provides a good fit to the HUDF data alone, there is a 1.2 magnitude difference in the SB predicted from the model for the GALEX data and observations, a difference at least 5 times larger than any statistical error. The ENE provides a good fit to all the data except the two points with z > 4, and there are inconsistencies in the GALEX measurements when using this model. Given the importance of any test of the expansion of the universe, we intend to check these preliminary results with additional data.
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