Dwain Willard Higginbotham
Dwain Willard Higginbotham | |
|---|---|
| Known for | Alternative cosmological model challenging special relativity |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cosmology (alternative) |
Dwain Willard Higginbotham is an independent theorist, based in Miami, Florida, known for a self-published alternative cosmology set out under the title "How the Universe Works". He is listed in The Worldwide List of Dissident Scientists.
Ideas
Higginbotham rejects the standard interpretation of cosmic expansion and of special relativity. Instead of a uniformly expanding universe, he proposes that our Local Group of galaxies orbits a now-dormant center of the Universe, which he treats as an absolute reference frame, while other galaxies recede outward from it. He argues that distant galaxies can move faster than light relative to this central frame without violating relativity, because their emitted photons still travel toward us at the normal speed of light, and he interprets the rise times and brightness of Type Ia supernovae in terms of these recession velocities. In his framework the material universe we perceive is a minor fraction—on the order of ten percent or less—of the total "stuff" of the cosmos.
These proposals lie well outside mainstream cosmology and relativity, and Higginbotham has presented them through his own blog and self-copyrighted writings rather than peer-reviewed journals.