The Speed of the Universe

"People often ask me about the universe..." says the daft-punk speak'n'spell robot voice controlled by supposed genius Professor Stephen Hawkings. Well people would ask him wouldn't they. But then people are stupid. Believe me I've met a few.

Today (and over the next few days/weeks) I'm going to tell you about the universe... (yes, I am aware you never asked). I'm going tell it how it really is and point out where current science has got it wrong.

First up, the speed of the universe.

 
It is currently trendy in cosmological circles to believe that the universe is expanding. Not only that, but expanding at an accelerating rate too.

This is nonsense.

The universe is not accelerating. It is definitely decelerating. Not only that but it's possible it could have come close to stopping expanding all together. You want proof? ... Gravity.

The effect of gravity generally makes matter attract other matter. This is why the universe is and always has been slowing down. If the effect of gravitation didn't exist, the universe still wouldn't be accelerating. It would just keep expanding at the same speed. That's Newton's first law right there; the law of inertia.

So what we have is an expanding universe that is not naturally inclined to speed up, even before we include gravity. Once we add effect of gravity to this universe as well as the resulting effect of friction, we have a universe that is definitely slowing down. As a result of gravity and friction in our universe, matter (particularly solid matter) generally doesn't like to be stretched.

Ahhh, you say, but what about the red spectrum shift that proves that all galaxies are spreading out and that the ones furthest away are getting further away faster?
You're not thinking fourth dimensionally!(as the creator of time travel will famously say). I agree those farthest galaxies are expanding toward the outer universe and they are expanding at a faster rate than the nearer galaxies. But you forget, those galaxies at the edge of the viewable universe are 13.7 billion light-years away. We're looking at that area of space the way it was 13.7 billion years ago. It's has taken that long for their light to reach us.

Now lets look at a relatively close neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda. It's only 2.5 million light-years away. Like all galaxies, it is getting further from us, but not at nearly the same rate as those at the edge of the viewable universe. When we view Andromeda, we're seeing it as it was just 2.5 million years ago.

Let's look at those (very approximate) figures again...

Edge of the observable universe as seen:  13,700,000,000 years ago.
The Andromeda galaxy as seen:                            2,500,000 years ago.

So in conclusion, things were flying about much faster a long long time ago, and things are flying about a lot more slowly more recently. Therefore:

The expansion of the universe is slowing.  Q.E.D.

Ha! In your face, Hawkings!

Also I should add that my claim that the universe has now almost come to a stop is based upon the the above fact, the known age of the universe, and the known effects of gravity.
I postulate that at this very moment, at the actual edge of the universe (that we cannot see), the current speed of those galaxies will not be much faster than the relative speeds of the nearby galaxies in the local vicinity.

Can someone get Professor Brian Cox on the phone, I have some news for him.