The aspiring Dr. Snodgrass had taken a revolutionary view of the Universe and his thesis was directed at overthrowing many years of adherence to the views of Einstein, Hubble, Hale, Hawking and virtually every tenured astronomer.
Emmanuel noted that, prior to Hubble, it had been assumed that the Universe consisted of only one galaxy - our own - and that all those other galaxies photographed by early Astro-photographers were actually nebulae contained within our parent galaxy.
Emmanuel has turned back the clock. He argues that there IS in fact only one galaxy - our own - and that all other galaxies are actually images of it “reflected” back towards the Earth.
Einstein, he says, showed that space is curved, such that images of our galaxy “projected” in all directions eventually curl back and return to their point of origin, sometimes making several passes in doing so. Thus, he says, what we see when we photograph other galaxies is a series of views of our own galaxy at different times in its development, from the early beginnings to its more recent structure.
In this way, he says, our galaxy can appear irregular, elliptical, spiral, or even as a pair of colliding galaxies, in which latter case he says the “colliding” galaxies are mere gravitationally-lensed images of the same galaxy at different points in time.
The exciting aspect of this is that we get a complete picture of the development of our galaxy from its earliest origins. Red shift, he says, is an artefact of receding images of our galaxy, whereas blue shift is exhibited by returning images of our galaxy.
He contends that his theory explains the so called “missing mass” conundrum, as the numerous galaxies imaged have no mass to be missing in the first place and consist merely of photons zipping around.
Emmanuel says that, following on the successful evaluation of his thesis, he hopes to be appointed as the first Professor of Astronomy at the University of Milparinka, and although this would mean lengthy absences from his beloved hometown of Dunedoo, he is prepared to make this sacrifice in the greater interests of science.
He has already started planning a state of the art observatory for the University. He concedes that this would have to be located some distance from the bright lights of the Milparinka Central Business District and has surveyed a promising site at the summit of Billy Goat Hill on Mt Browne station.
A state of the art optical telescope of about one metre aperture would work in tandem with a recently acquired radio telescope which had formerly been part of the CSIRO array at Fleurs, near Sydney and he considers that some serious research work could commence within two years.