Furthermore—and it surprised Gary Lane to find the desire within him—he wanted to prove to Nora Powell that he was not, in truth, the ogre she now believed him. That there had been an excuse for his rudeness.
So he spoke, setting forth the arguments thought out during the flight from Earth's satellite.
"You are all familiar," he said, "with the theory of the 'expanding' or 'bubble' universe.
"We approach an understanding of this by thinking of our existence—our universe of three spatial dimensions with one temporal extension—as a sphere which is all surface.
"Not merely a hollow sphere, you understand. Everything—including empty space, solid matter and energy, is on the surface of this hypersphere. Thus our galaxy constitutes one point imbedded in the surface of the sphere ... the nearest star is another ... the farthest still another ... and so on with each of a billion galaxies.
"It has been suggested that an undefined 'something' is 'blowing up' this bubble, and that as expansion increases, the degree of separation between galaxies widens so that they appear to be running away from each other. The big objection to this theory has been the insurmountable question—if this hypersphere is expanding, into what, since it contains all of Space and Time in itself, does it expand?"
Dr. Anjers interrupted somewhat caustically.
"You reject this theory, I gather?"
"Completely," declared Gary boldly, "and definitely! It has not, nor will it ever, solve the paradoxes we observe. My belief is that though the Greater Universe may be a closed and finite hypersphere, it is not expanding, but static. And it lends itself to real and constant measurement."
Nora Powell said, "But, Dr. Lane—the principles of relativity! The value of h, and the Lorenz contraction—"