Redshift as a mechanical toll

In standard General Relativity, light crossing an expanding cosmos stretches toward red and loses energy. That energy goes nowhere. Physicists accept this by citing Emmy Noether's work: when the geometry of space changes over time, energy need not be conserved. The paper calls this a "leaking bucket."

RSI rejects the leak. It holds that light travels through a physical medium, the Eternal Consonance, with a density of 8.12 × 10⁻¹⁸ kg/m and a baseline tension of 0.73 N. As a light wave works against the stiffness of this field, it gives up energy. Because a light wave's energy is set by its frequency, the toll lowers its frequency, which is redshift, and that energy re-pressurizes the medium.

On this view, the Cosmic Microwave Background is the spent exhaust of a working circuit. Energy is exhaled from the Still Core, pays its toll as it travels, resolves into background vibration, and is drawn back in the Inhale to be concentrated anew. No energy is lost.