Is the Universe Really Continuing to Accelerate Its Expansion?



In 1998, three men Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess made a discovery that the universe was not only expanding but that this expansion was increasing.[i] Now this is shocking as one would think that after the Big Bang, the universe would slow down its expansion as it was this initial explosion that caused the expansion to begin with. Logic would dictate that the mass of the universe and the gravity associated with this mass would cause the universe to shrink. Just like throwing a rock into the air, gravity would eventually cause the rock to fall towards the Earth after gravity has overtaken the acceleration of the rock. So why doesn’t this seem to be happening to our universe? Why is the expansion increasing? I don’t believe that this accelerating expansion actually is happening. In fact, I think scientists have come to the wrong conclusion and I will explain why

First, however, let’s look first at how these men discovered the accelerating expansion.

Since we can’t go out into the universe and physically measure the speed at which an object is moving, something else needs to be used. In this case, the three men used a technique that is called, “Redshift” to determine the relative speed of objects moving in the universe. “Redshift” is when you look at an object that is giving off light and is moving away from you the light will start to look redder the faster it is moving away from you. If a star is moving towards the Earth, it will look bluer instead of red. This is like the Doppler Effect that gives you that distinct change in sound when a car comes at and then passes you. In the case of the Redshift, it is light that changes. By looking at specific bright stars and measuring their Redshift, scientists can determine if that star is moving away from the Earth faster or slower than a star in another part of the universe. That is what these three men did. They took measurements of supernovae (exploding stars that are very bright) and compared them to each other and found that the deeper they looked into the universe (that is, the farther away), the faster these supernovae were moving away from the Earth. Thus they came up with the notion that the universe is expanding and that expansion is accelerating!

Now this is a very logical and well thought out thesis, however, they haven’t factored in the fact that the deeper you look in the universe, the further back in time you are seeing. Light takes its time to get from stars that are light-years away. If a star is roughly twenty light-years away, it takes roughly twenty light years for us to actually see that light. Even though I have argued that light is not limited to the Speed of Light (roughly 300,000 km per second), the visible light that humans can detect moves at the Speed of Light and takes time to reach us, just like it takes eight minutes for visible light to reach our eyes from the Sun. What we see in the night sky is an historical view of the universe, not the current way it exists. This is incredibly important to remember and needs to be factored into any theory that relies on observing stars and supernovae. This wasn’t done in when these three men came up with their theory that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace. This is the fatal flaw in their theory.

When you look further and further into the night sky, you look further and further back in time, so what these three men are actually observing is the slowing down of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.

I know that may seem confusing but think about it; the farthest we can see with the most powerful telescopes is billions of light years from Earth. This means we are looking billions of years into the past. Back then it would have been closer to the Big Bang and closer to the event that caused the massive expansion of the universe. The stars that we see from that time would be seen as getting farther away, faster than ones closer to us because expansion would have slowed down due to gravity, thus slowing down the stars closer to us. As you pull back the telescope to closer and closer stars, you end up closer and closer to our current time period and with it, a slowing down of the expansion.

I know that this flies in the face of a theory that was so good that it won the Nobel Prize but if you value logic then this current theory is flawed. It’s flawed because it ignores what teachers have been telling students for years; the starlight you see in the night sky is from a long time ago and could be from a dead star that hasn’t shone in years. I think it is time that we either completely trash the theory that it takes time for starlight to reach the Earth so that the theory of the accelerating expansion of the universe can work or we trash the theory the accelerating expansion of the universe theory. Both cannot be correct.    

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[i] These three men were later given the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

Too Much Knowledge Can be a Bad Thing

I read a very interesting article the other day called, Beware ‘the curse of expertise’ (http://business.financialpost.com/2013/07/10/beware-the-curse-of-expertise/?__lsa=96c0-6d2f). In it, the writer describes how many organizations fail to achieve change or move ahead of technology because they have people who are ‘experts’ in an area and these ‘experts’ tend to block “breakthrough solutions”.

Now it isn’t always that these people want to purposefully block new solutions or innovation but with all of the knowledge they have acquired makes them biased against change that doesn’t fit in with their preconceived notions. Unfortunately it is these people that are listened to and the ones with the new, innovative ideas are ignored.

What really made this article interesting to me isn’t the business side of ‘leveraging technology’, ‘shifting the paradigm’, ‘thinking outside the box’ or whatever business buzzwords you would like to use but how this affects scientists; in particular, physicists. Many theoretical physicists make most of their breakthrough research while they are still young and have not yet become ‘experts’. They haven’t learned that what they are thinking goes against the current thinking of how things are supposed to be. Often a scientist in his/her young age will grab onto a concept and if they are talented enough or dogged enough to find an answer that explains the concept, they bring their conclusions to the scientific gatekeepers only to have their heads patted in derision and told that their answers are wrong. That is what happened to Albert Einstein when he first came up with the Theory of Relativity. Almost nobody took Einstein’s theory seriously at first and it was only after decades of research that people finally accepted his theory. In fact, you can go all through history and see when people with revolutionary ideas would bring their new ideas to the public only to have the ideas dismissed out of hand by the leading thinkers of the day: ‘The Earth is flat, anyone can see that it isn’t round’, ‘The Sun revolves around the Earth, not the other way around’, ‘Tiny microbes cannot make a human being sick, they are too small’, etc.

What happens to these revolutionary thinkers is that they are put in their place by the gatekeepers and told to stick to what we know is true. After years of learning what can and can’t be done, their internal biases stop them from coming up with new and wonderfully inventive new theories. They stop pulling apart other people’s theories and take them as gospel, they learn that what everyone knows at the moment is the truth even if the ‘truth’ is that many of the theories don’t work in every situation. The revolutionary becomes the gatekeeper, the one who tells budding scientists that their new ideas are wrong and the cycle begins again.

This is the reason why scientists come up with fantastic new ideas when they are younger and lose that ability when they get older. They learn too much and become the gatekeepers! The internal dialogue with young scientists goes from ‘why not’ to ‘so-and-so already says it can’t be done’ or ‘this theory says that can’t be done’. So instead of someone challenging the status quo and coming up with a breakthrough, scientists become cowed by their knowledge and breakthroughs are left to the younger generation.

What older scientists need to understand is that current theories are not all correct. Just because someone has ‘tested’ the theory, doesn’t mean it is proved or that it is correct. Challenge the status quo, rip into theories and find out why they do or do not work. Just because someone has travelled down that path, do not assume that they have found everything on that path to find or even if that is the correct path! We do not know everything, and even though you will hear scientists bemoan that there is very little ‘new’ left to find, there is actually more out there than current scientists could even dream of. It is up to you to go out and find that new information and when you are told that your ideas don’t fit with the current understanding of the universe or that your theory is just plain wrong, don’t give up. Look closer at your theory, breakdown your reasoning and facts and make sure that you are correct but most of all, don’t stop trying new theories! It is breakthrough theories that help human beings move ahead, not sitting on the status quo.

Gravity and the Theory of Relativity

According to the Theory of Relativity, gravity does not exist in the same way as Sir Isaac Newton believed it did. Newton believed that gravity was a force between two objects that attracted them together whereas Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity says that gravity is just a matter of curved space-time (I write “space-time” because the Theory of Relativity now blends space with time to give four dimensions). That is, an object bends and “curves” space around the object itself with the more massive the object, the greater the bend in space-time. This would mean that the Moon orbiting our Earth is following a curved path in space that is invisible to our eyes.

This also means that “gravity” bends our three dimensional space into a two dimensional invisible “curve” in space.

Since both the Moon and the Earth are quite massive, under the Theory of Relativity they must each “curve” space-time around each object but since the Earth is more massive, the Moon orbits it. At least, that is how I understand it. The more massive object wins and its “curve” in space-time is the one that is used. This raises a lot of questions.

If a massive object curves space-time then why don’t all of the planets orbiting the Sun orbit in the same path? According to the Theory of Relativity an object can create one curved path as its mass doesn’t change, so how do multiple objects in different sized orbits occur? Why don’t the moons of Jupiter, for example, break away from their orbit of Jupiter and follow the Sun’s orbit instead? Why does Jupiter’s “curve” override the Sun’s when it comes to its moons? What curve in space-time are humans following when they obey the laws of gravity by walking across the Earth?

If you think about gravity as “curved space-time” and only think very simplistically of one object’s gravity and its effect on another object (for example, the Earth’s gravity effect on the Moon), then it is very easy to see how the Theory of Relativity can apply. However, life is not that simplistic and there are many more objects in the universe than that and many different combinations that Relativity cannot seem to address.

Also, what allows objects to breakout of that curve? Are you punching a hole in the curve or riding over the curve? That would indicate a two dimensional curve and changing three dimensional space into a two dimensional curve is not possible. You can’t throw one of our three dimensions away because it is more mathematically pleasing.

I have seen a lot of people try and explain this phenomenon of gravity being “curved space-time” by having four people hold a flat bed sheet at the corners. A fifth person takes a heavy ball like a shot-put and drops it on the bed sheet. If the people at the corners of the bed sheet keep pulling on the edges to keep the bed sheet near as flat as they can, the ball rolls to the middle of the sheet where it has made a dent or curve in the bed sheet. This is how, the presenter would say, that an object “curves” space. Then they would take another ball, this time a much smaller, lighter one and drop it on the bed sheet only to see the second ball make its way to the first. The presenter would say that this is how gravity works. The second ball is just following the “curve” and doesn’t need to be attracted to the large ball in the centre of the bed sheet.

There are two major problems with this presentation. One is that you need gravity to pull on the shot-put to cause the curve in th efirst place and also to cause the second ball to move towards the first. If you tried this presentation in space, there would be no gravity to aid you, causing the balls to do not much of anything. The second is that you are trying to show three dimensional space as a two dimensional field (the bed sheet is the representation of two dimensional space). Again, there are three dimensions, so you can’t get around that one. Plus the ball is in three dimensions, so how can can you have a three dimensional object and a two dimensional object interact? You can't!   

If you believe that the bed sheet presentation is a true representation of how gravity works under the Theory of Relativity, then how do objects circling another object like a satellite circling the Earth, fall from its orbit? In the presentation the bed sheet has a downward plane caused by the first ball and this downward plane is what causes the second ball to move towards the first. In the presentation, Earth’s gravity is actually working on the second ball and forcing it down the plane of the bed sheet. If this was reality, there is no gravity to force an object down the plane of the “curved space-time” because “curved space-time” is gravity, so how does the curve force a satellite towards Earth? It doesn’t.

The simple truth is that the Theory of Relativity does not explain gravity but Newton’s theory of gravity does.

The Einstein Effect: How Einstein Got Relativity Wrong but Discovered Something Else Entirely (Part One)

The Theory of Relativity has practically become a law today in modern physics. New students who go on to take courses that deal with this theory are pretty much told by their teachers that this “theory” has been proven in every case and that it would become a law if we could travel closer to the speed of light to once and for all confirm Albert Einstein’s work. It’s a done deal, now we just have to understand why this wonderful theory doesn't work with the rest of physics. Why doesn't this spherical object (the Theory of Relativity) fit through the square hole of Physics?

I’ll give you a shocking answer to that question. It doesn't work with the rest of physics because the theory isn't correct. Yes, the math is correct and the some of the outcomes too are correct, but when Einstein’s theory is applied to light and light speeds, what the theory really does is explain an effect similar to the Doppler Effect, except with light. This is why I have named it the “Einstein Effect”. I will discuss this effect later in the blog.

Now, if you pull apart Einstein’s theory you will find flaws with it but in order to find those flaws, you have to understand the original theory. So, for the lay people in the audience (and hopefully I am not writing this just for myself), I will break it down to the absolute core in order to bring a simple understanding to this complex theory.

The core of this theory is this; physics is the same everywhere throughout the universe but certain things, like speed and what an object looks like, are relative. By “relative” I mean different from one place in the universe as compared to another place in the universe. Sir Isaac Newton’s law of absolute rest no longer applies as an object that seems to be at rest can now have motion and those in motion can be at rest. For example: a rock sitting on the ground seems to be at rest and under Newton’s laws, it would be. However, relative to someone in the International Space Station orbiting the Earth, the same rock is moving because it is on the Earth and the Earth is rotating on its axis. The speed of an object now depends on where you are observing it from, not from an absolute state of rest. This changes things when you are doing calculations and has deeper implications than I care to get into but I will give you one more example so that you understand.

If you are driving along a road at 55 km per hour and another car comes from behind you at 60 km per hour, with the Theory of Relativity you can say that, “relative to me, that car is going at 5 km per hour” and you would be correct. The 55 km per hour you are driving is relative to the pavement you are driving on (or what Newton would have called “absolute rest”) but the 5 km per hour is relative to the speed of the car passing you. The person in the car passing you could say that, relative to them, your car is moving backwards at 5 km per hour and this too would be acceptable. It is all from your point of view.

Now, I also mentioned that Relativity changes the way an object can look. This has to do with the speed of light and this is where it gets a lot more complicated.

The speed of light which stands at 299, 792, 458 metres per second in a vacuum hasn't been observed going any faster, no matter where it has been observed. In an airplane, in a car, in space, no one has seen the speed of light go faster than 299, 792, 458 metres per second. Light can be slowed down by passing it through objects but it doesn't seem to speed up. Even when the laws of physics demand that it speed up, it still does not do so. For example, if a man on a train is pointing a flashlight in the direction he is travelling and someone standing still next to the train tracks has a device that can measure the speed of light coming from the flashlight, the result should be the speed of light plus the speed of the train. This doesn't happen. The laws of physics don’t seem to fully apply to light.

When Einstein thought of how the speed of light did not increase and he applied it to relativity, he ran into a huge problem. The speed of light has to be able to increase in order for relativity to work properly, so what can he do? Well, he looked at the formula for speed (S=D/T (speed equals distance over time)) and came to the conclusion that if the speed doesn't change and the distance doesn't change, then time must change. That was the only logical solution. Now, instead of light speeding up or slowing down, time sped up or slowed down to accommodate a consistent speed for light to move. Mathematically it worked and after years and years of people running successful experiments, eventually most of the scientific community relented and accepted his theory.

It was this theory that brought us the famous E=mc² where mass and energy are interchangeable and also helped bring about the Nuclear Age where humans were able to harvest the energy stored in the mass of certain types of material; sometimes for good and sometimes for bad.

Yet this theory doesn't quite fit with the rest of physics. When approaching the speed of light, this theory works great but slow things down to normal everyday speeds and the calculations don’t seem to work as well. The core concept works (remember, everything is relative) but if you look into the actual mathematical calculations involved, they are mind-numbingly complex. They also have a speed limit built into them. This speed limit is 299, 792, 458 metres per second, the same speed as light. You can put numbers into the calculations, but the resulting speed at the end will not be higher than 299, 792, 458 metres per second because as speed increases, so does mass until it reaches infinity at the speed of light!

Why would a theory need a built-in limiter like this and why are people so proud of that fact? It’s like putting a top speed on all speedometers around the world of 100 km per hour and then telling everyone how your theory that cars cannot go faster than 100 km per hour is true.

It is the inconsistencies that brought me to believe that something was wrong with the Theory of Relativity and I will go into this more in my next post.

Two Dimensional (2D) Objects

Two Dimensional Objects; do they really exist?

My answer is no; two dimensional (2D) objects cannot exist in the real world, only in mathematical calculations and in theoretical scenarios.

In order to exist, an object must be made of three dimensions; length, width and height. If you can see it or detect it, it must be a three dimensional object.

Now you may be thinking, aren’t the very words written on paper or even in this blog an example of 2D objects? Again, the answer is no.

If you take a piece of paper with writing on it and look at it from the edge, you probably won’t see the height of the ink as it rises above the paper, but it is there. The ink has height and rises from the paper, if it didn’t you wouldn’t be reading this sentence right now. Take that paper and place it under an electron microscope and the ink on the page will look like a mountain range.

Electronically, the words on your screen have a depth to them. You can't really see the depth by moving the moniter, but the depth is there.

Even though there is no possible way a 2D universe can exist with the current laws of physics, this hasn’t stopped people from thinking about a theoretical 2D universe. For example, an author by the name of Edwin A. Abbott wrote a book in 1884 named Flatland. This book introduced characters that lived in a two dimensional universe. In this universe the rain came from one direction, north, since there was no “up” for it to rain down on and people were triangles, squares, circles and straight lines. Somehow light exists in Flatland from somewhere as the residents actually view other residents and things happening around them. Since there is no “up”, the author cannot say the light comes from a sun or another light source so he never answers that question. Since people in three dimensions actually see things (and colours for that matter) after light reflects off of the surface of an object, the author doesn’t say how objects without a surface facing them (that is, without height) can be seen. The author also doesn’t say how anyone can tell a triangle from a square.  If the “person” can only see its edge, how can a figure be discerned? In fact, if a triangle person doesn’t have an edge, that is it doesn’t have any height at all, how can it see? The only place for the eyes would be in the centre of the object facing “up”. However, since there is no “up” or third dimension, how can eyes be placed there? If they could, they still couldn’t look all the way to what is beside it as this requires height. Also, in order for an object to move freely like the people described in Flatland, they would need to be independent of the ground; that is, they must be unattached or untethered. In order to be unattached, there must be space between the two objects and in order to have space this requires a third dimension; height. Finally, if 2D objects did become “people”, like in Flatland, how do they interact? Sound needs three dimensions in order to work, light wouldn’t work as it too needs three dimensions to work and sexual intercourse and general interaction would be impossible as each “person” has no height and therefore would pass through each other because there is no thickness to stop them from doing so. Things may be incredibly flat in Flatland, but they are not two dimensional.

However, for some reason, even great scientists have not figured out these problems with two dimensional objects. Even Albert Einstein used 2D objects in some of his “thought experiments.” For example, in a lecture before the Prussian Academy of Sciences on January 27, 1921, Einstein talked about how you could take a “disc” and put it on a spherical surface and then push that disc across the spherical surface forever as you would not reach anything to obstruct you. He calls this, “two-dimensional continuum that is finite, but unbounded.” Einstein then takes the disc that is on the sphere and, using an outside light source and a flat object below the sphere like a giant piece of paper, manages to create a shadow of the disc on the object below. His theory was that by manipulating the disc on the surface of the sphere, one changes the size and shape of the shadow formed by the disk. Einstein then goes on to say that this can be translated into the, “three-dimensional case.”

Huh?

By using the three dimensional sphere, a light source shining down on the sphere from above and an object below the sphere, you are actually already in three dimensions! Just because the main focus of your concept was on the sphere’s surface, does not negate the three dimensional objects you were using.

Today scientists use the concept of 2D objects to help them understand a three dimensional universe better. Scientists and those without a scientific background seem to like the idea of two dimensional objects as it ‘simplifies things’ when trying to deal with complex ideas. For example, how would gravity work in a two dimensional universe? There isn’t a “down”, so gravity cannot pull from below an object, so would there even be gravity? If there isn't an "up" and a "down", does gravity matters? Some scientists believe that gravity could still exist but that it can warp the universe like someone taking a piece of paper and rolling it into a torus or doughnut-shaped object. The creatures of this “two dimensional” universe would live on the surface.

Now first of all, paper is not two dimensional, it is three dimensional but if you start “curling” a two dimensional universe, it is no longer two dimensional, it is now three dimensional. Second of all, how can you step out of the two dimensional universe in order to curl it? You can only move in two directions, if you moved outside the universe to curl it, you automatically have another dimension.

Also, two dimensional brains would, by their very limited nature of just two dimensions, find thinking much more difficult as a third dimension adds volume and extra space for a brain to exist. I mean, if you took a three dimensional brain and pulled it apart molecule by molecule, took those molecules an formed a "sheet" or one incredibly thin layer, the sheer size would take up the size of a football field! Two dimensional “people” would have to be huge in order to incorporate the brain alone or suffer a vast lack of intelligence!

While scientists may be able to mathematically create a 2D universe, the reality is that it just doesn’t work. As I have shown above, there are far too many problems with a universe limited to two dimensions so much so that it is not truly two dimensional.

It might be fun to think up a two dimensional universe as a concept but like thinking of pigs that spontaneously sprout wings and fly to the moon, it is just not possible.

Dust Bunnies and Dark Matter

As most of us know, dust is an all-surrounding thing. No matter how much we clean our houses, apartments, work areas, automobiles or even our computers, dust continues to mount its daily attack on humans. If left unchecked, dust can collect into a thin layer or even more sinister, it can collect into a loose ball that even a slight breeze can move. This formation is known as the “dust bunny” and it waits in hidden areas until you have guests. Then it comes out to embarrass you. Oh no!

The universe has the same problem of “dust”. Very large clouds (and I do mean very large clouds) of “dust” tend to gather together because of gravity and as the dust gathers, the attraction coalesces into stars and/or planets and/or moons depending on the amount of dust that is around. In fact, our star, the Sun is actually an incredibly large “dust bunny”!

Now what if there was “dust” that was so small that we couldn’t detect it? “Dust” as small as the smallest thing we know of (which scientists call the “Planck length”) or perhaps even smaller. What if this very fine “dust” existed in the universe and was floating about in otherwise empty space? As it floats around, the dust combines and forms its own “dust bunnies”. These unstable formations eventually fall apart and go back to their original form of “dust”. This would account for the particles that scientists say blink in and out of the universe, even ones in a vacuum.

This “dust” would also explain "Dark Matter". The combined amount of dust in the vacuum of otherwise empty space would quickly add up to many times the mass of regular matter that we see everyday. Now this might seem impossible but the vast majority of space is empty of regular matter. If it was filled with dust that was imperceptible, the mass of all that “dust” would quickly add up and have a real effect on the universe. The totality of this mass of dust would create a gravitational effect that could change the movement of planets, stars and even galaxies.

To wrap your head around this concept, take for example the weight of the ant and the weight of an average human being. The weight of one human far exceeds that of any one ant, but if you take the weight of all the ants in the world they actually reach the same weight as all the human beings on the planet!

Artificial Gravity: Will a Spinning Space Station Really Create Gravity for Astronauts?

I have spent a long time thinking about various scientific subjects and one of the subjects I think about a lot is artificial gravity. If humanity continues to search the stars, then there will need to be some form of gravity on our spaceships to make that travel more, "human friendly" or most of space travel will need to be done by computers. Without gravity near that of the Earth's pulling down on the human body, long-term exposure to a lack of gravity will eventually cause the human body to start to become ill. Bones become weak without gravity. Muscles, especially the heart muscles become weak. Digestive systems are impaired as they use gravity to aid in their processes.

So gravity is very important for humans and some sort of artificial gravity will need to be created to for humans to do long-term space travel.

One of the ways scientists believe they can create artificial gravity is by creating a ship with a torus (doughnut) shaped hull and spin that hull so that the ship spins like wheel on a car. Centrifugal force is supposed to be created and an object in the spaceship will be forced against the hull. The hull itself feels like it is pushing against the object (centripetal force) and if this object is a human being, it feels like gravity has been created. The faster the wheel spins, the stronger the centripetal force (the push against the feet of the human) and the more the feel of "gravity".

If this is confusing, think of a clothes washing machine.

The washing machine has a cylinder inside it that contains the clothes and this cylinder moves depending on the washing cycle. In the last cycle, the drying cycle, the cylinder moves at its fastest and if you looked inside while this was happening, the clothes get pinned along the inside of the cylinder. Since there are holes in the cylinder, the water get flung off the clothes through centrifugal force but the clothes stay pinned to the cylinder wall as they cannot fit through the holes.

If you take that scenario and expand it to the size of a spacestation, the theory is that humans will be the "clothes" and the cylinder is the interior of the spacestation.

Simple right?

However, there is one thing missing in space that the washing machine on Earth doesn't have: gravity.

What is happening in the washing machine is that is it manipulating gravity to cause the clothes to become pinned on the inside of the cylinder. Gravity is the force that is pulling the clothes down. That is why when the cylinder is moving slowly, the clothes tumble along the bottom of the cylinder. As the speed picks up, the clothes tumble higher and higher until the speed of the cylinder is fast enough to move the clothes faster than gravity can overcome the clothes and pull them down. The speed of the cylinder redirects gravity and uses it to pin the clothes to the inside of the cylinder. Without gravity, none of this is possible.

So, if someone builds a spaceship like a large doughnut or wheel where astronauts can walk around in, parks the spaceship in orbit or even somewhere in space, spins this "wheel" at a fast rate, there will be no artificial gravity created to pin astronauts to the floor of the spaceship. What will happen is the spaceship will spin around the astronaut.

Aha! some scientist will say, if the astronaut started with his/her feet firmly planted on the "floor" of the spaceship (perhaps tied down) when the spaceship was first started spinning, then the inertia of the spin will be transferred to the astronaut and he/she will feel gravity.

Sorry, this won't happen.

The astronaut will get pulled along with the wheel and will be in sync with the wheel but the astronaut will not feel "gravity" as there is nothing to pull the astronaut towards the floor. He or she will feel the wheel spin, but when the spaceship gets up to speed, and they unhook themselves from the floor, they will still float away. The act of spinning doesn't pull the astronaut towards the floor, it just spins. 

If this could actually work, then why aren't astronauts in the International Space Station currently in orbit not pinned to the side of a wall or the floor? They are spinning around the Earth at roughly 17,240 miles per hour, a speed that should be enough to create an artificial gravity through centrifugal force, so why are the astronauts still floating? 

The answer is, there is no gravity to manipulate so once the ship gets up to speed and is in a stable orbit, the lack of inertia causes the astronaut to float freely in space. The space station and the astronaut are both moving at the same speed, so without gravity or inertia, there is nothing to keep the astronaut from floating where he or she pleases.    

So there you have it... any movies that you see where they spin a spaceship or space station in order to create gravity is wrong and if anyone is dumb enough to create a spaceship and put it into space with one of those "wheels" to spin and create gravity, you will know the result well before they do.