>>Then again, I think Big Bang Cosmology is bunk, so I'm sort of cranky towards the whole idea of determining the size, age, and beginning of the Universe.
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>I entertain an issue with the doppler shifting argument that claims we're in an "expansion" phase now.

I entertain an issue with the doppler shift being something other than the doppler shift.

For example, we see a galaxy quite far away. And we see it has a redshift, a decrease of energy. We could assume that this is caused by the doppler effect, and that the galaxy is actually moving away from us (in other words, the time and space that light traveres to carry information about the galaxy to us is increasing). But we could also assume that this is caused by the light, the photon, actually loosing energy over this ridiculously large interstellar distances.

Since the energy of a photon = h*f that means a decrease in energy results in a decrease in the frequency (E/h = f)

Finally, since the speed of a photon = f * w (frequency times wavelength) a decrease in the frequency menas a decrease in the speed of a photon.

The photons coming at us from halfway accross the observable Universe are actually moving slower than the photons coming from objects more in our neighborhood.

In other words, instead of the distance of the photon's trip getting larger (Big Bang) I think that the distance stays the same and the time of the photon's trip gets larger because its running out of gas.

This is known as the Tired-light model, or steady state cosmology, models which have been apparently "refuted" but I'm not convinced yet.

>In an explosion, stuff on the outside speeds away more quickly than the stuff on the inside. More time to pick up speed through acceleration.
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>In an implosion, stuff near the center would accelerate towards the center more quickly than the stuff on the outside, because the "suck" force would be more intense.
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>In the universe, it would seem, motes towards the center, during a collapse, would be moving towards the center more quickly that those motes on the outside. So, the doppler shift would be red when we looked at the motes further from the center, because our mote would be accelerating away from them at a faster rate.


The only problem with your line of thinking is that there is no "center."

The Big Bang didn't happen at the center of the universe. The big bang happened everywhere. Including right here. Technically we, as every other position in space, is the center of the Universe, according to the Big Bang anyways.