Slashdot Mirror
Recent Quasar Observations Support Lots of Mini-Bangs Instead of One Big Bang (wired.com)
Chris Reeve writes: Wired Magazine is reporting that astronomers have since 2014 witnessed up to 100 possible instances of quasars transforming into galaxies over very short timespans, but the article leaves no hint of the trouble this spells for the Big Bang cosmology. The article begins, "Stephanie Lamassa did a double take. She was staring at two images on her computer screen, both of the same object — except they looked nothing alike... The quasar seemed to have vanished, leaving just another galaxy. That had to be impossible, she thought. Although quasars turn off, transitioning into mere galaxies, the process should take 10,000 years or more. This quasar appeared to have shut down in less than 10 years — a cosmic eyeblink."
What the Wired article fails to mention is that the short timespans vindicate the quasar ejection model proposed by Edwin Hubble's assistant, Halton Arp, who insisted that these objects must be considerably closer than the extreme distances inferred by their redshifts:
"The conclusion was very, very strong just from looking at this picture that these objects had been ejected from the central galaxy, and that they were initially at high redshift, and the redshift decayed as time went on. And therefore, we were looking at a physics that was operating in the universe in which matter was born with low mass and very high redshift, and it matured and evolved into our present form, that we were seeing the birth and evolution of galaxies in the universe."
Arp's attempts to publish his quasar ejection model famously led to his removal from the world's largest optical telescope at that time — the 200-inch Palomar. He decided to resign from his permanent position at the Carnegie Institute of Washington on the principle of "whether scientists could follow new lines of investigation, and follow up... on evidence which apparently contradicted the current theorems and the current paradigms." The fact that these quasar changes appear to occur over just months in some cases should raise questions about whether or not the objects are truly at the vast distances and scales implied by their redshift-inferred distances.
The original submission also included a comment with a carefully-documented "list of vindications for Halton Arp" -- and complains again that Wired failed to include any mention of Arp's theory, and it's "dire" implications for the Big Bang theory's assumptions about redshift.
What the Wired article fails to mention is that the short timespans vindicate the quasar ejection model proposed by Edwin Hubble's assistant, Halton Arp, who insisted that these objects must be considerably closer than the extreme distances inferred by their redshifts:
"The conclusion was very, very strong just from looking at this picture that these objects had been ejected from the central galaxy, and that they were initially at high redshift, and the redshift decayed as time went on. And therefore, we were looking at a physics that was operating in the universe in which matter was born with low mass and very high redshift, and it matured and evolved into our present form, that we were seeing the birth and evolution of galaxies in the universe."
Arp's attempts to publish his quasar ejection model famously led to his removal from the world's largest optical telescope at that time — the 200-inch Palomar. He decided to resign from his permanent position at the Carnegie Institute of Washington on the principle of "whether scientists could follow new lines of investigation, and follow up... on evidence which apparently contradicted the current theorems and the current paradigms." The fact that these quasar changes appear to occur over just months in some cases should raise questions about whether or not the objects are truly at the vast distances and scales implied by their redshift-inferred distances.
The original submission also included a comment with a carefully-documented "list of vindications for Halton Arp" -- and complains again that Wired failed to include any mention of Arp's theory, and it's "dire" implications for the Big Bang theory's assumptions about redshift.
There are lots of critics of this viewpoint and they have NOT conceded to any of these ideas. They are waiting for peer review, which has been rumored to have been held up by the PR department at the parent organization, which is trying to get new grants
97% of cosmologists agree that the redshift is caused by galactic climate change. To state anything else is to be a science denier.
Scientific Community: "Are you gonna go to sleep or you gonna stay up and think your weird thoughts?"
Halton Arp: "I'll stay up and think weird thoughts for a while."
that knows more about astronomy than astronomers?
No, that is the literal heaven peeking out from behind that quasar - donâ(TM)t get too close. Saint Peter is watching you
I'm guessing the after effects of the original big bang are still being experienced, billions of years later.
A quasar running off to become a galaxy is about the same as someone spitting gum on the sidewalk in the cosmic scale.
is that the science is settled.
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. --Max Planck
This appears to support the idea of an oscillating universe. Its sinusoidal oscillation pattern would naturally cause the accelerating expansion we are now witnessing. The stars burn, converting matter into light. Matter curves space, light does not. Matter to light conversion expands the universe by uncurving space. After a while, say 500 billion years, stars burn out and black holes start gobbling up the radiation, turning light into matter, curving space, and contracting the universe. We don't know what happens then, but perhaps huge black holes turn into what we see as quasars, throwing out all that matter into a cloud that then condenses into a galaxy. Then matter clumps and stars ignite, repeating the cycle.
He decided to resign from his permanent position at the Carnegie Institute of Washington on the principle of "whether scientists could follow new lines of investigation, and follow up... on evidence which apparently contradicted the current theorems and the current paradigms."
Of course you can't.
Just ask Michael Behe.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
"the universe in which matter was born with low mass and very high redshift"
IMHO, this is just a pitiful attempt at creating doubt about Big Bang Model, and trying to bring back Steady State Model from dead! :-)
That's a scary thought. You know that meteor we said was going to hit in 50,000 years? Turns out we have 5 years...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
Working of Error
It's not the best (although that's subjective, and just my opinion), but worst? Not even remotely close as long as reality tv still exists.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Quasars are long known to be highly variable over a broad range of time scales. That was one of the puzzles "a long time ago" (cough 1970s cough) back in the era after of their discovery, along with their immense power output to account for their apparent luminosity at the cosmological distances indicated by their redshifts. A quasar had to be compact -- Solar System sized to account for their variability, so how can something that small keeping putting out high multiples of a galaxy worth of emissions? This is the context of Halton Arp's theory of quasars-can't-be-what-we-think-they-are.
Since then, the galaxy-with-a-central-ultra-massive-black-hole model had been advanced to explain their luminosity along with the compactness needed for their rapid variability. Furthermore, this model does not posit that a quasar turns into an ordinary galaxy, rather, that when the quasar runs down, an otherwise ordinary galaxy is what is still there. We were able to observe these galaxies, far, far away, with or without their central quasar shining, on account of the electronics revolution in solid-state imaging greatly extending the reach of the 200 inch Palomar telescope.
TFA is about how at least one quasar was observed to be even more variable than we thought, which may cause astronomers to formulate new models of their accretion disks. I don't think we have to as of now reinvoke the quasars as white-holes worm-holes models nor revisit Halton Arp's theories.
I regard Halton Arp as having some interesting observations and some thought provoking theories, I hate it when people smugly proclaim that some radical claim has been "debunked", and the treatment of Dr. Arp is perhaps nothing to be proud of. But it appears Dr. Arp's theories had their day before really good CCD cameras came to be.
It's the worst. Anyone who likes it on any level is a moron. That's why it's on Fox primetime, previously occupied by the Simpsons for decades after it sucked, but was still a far better product. Empirically the show is for morons.
Any single dumbed down laugh track joke in it proves my point.
This is the Galaxy Brain of Flat Earth thinking
Still better than ~114% of reality tv.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
matter was born with low mass and very high redshift, and it matured and evolved into our present form,
So, how gravitationally ejected super-massive black hole pairs or shock waves from one of them lead to something about speed distribution of the mass in the entire universe? And has anybody claimed something different about the average composition of the early universe filled with light elements? And suddenly we are at the mini-big bangs, something I'd like to cause this week-end.
You must be a "scientist", you react so nervously.
Its not on Fox. So that makes you a MAGA moron. You revealed yourself.
"The conclusion was very, very strong just from looking at this picture that these objects had been ejected from the central galaxy, and that they were initially at high redshift,
Were that the case, shouldn't we also be seeing ejected objects with a high blueshift? Why are they preferentially being ejected away from us?
-- Alastair
"Currently we have a half-dozen Interpretations of QM that are equally supported by "all" empirical data." False, or you could name them all and we could debunk them individually as testable vs not.
No, the models have to be supported by all empirical data, that's what 5 sigma requirements are, a measure of how much of the data correlates. You must be new to this concept somehow.
You can have THEORIES until your little heart's content, but you can't propose MODELS without aligning them with all available data - or it won't go anywhere. Keep studying kid.
It's the worst. Anyone who likes it on any level is a moron. That's why it's on Fox primetime...
BBT fan here. Actually it's on CBS.
Hmm... you really are clueless about science.
Interpretations of QM
You cannot "debunk" any of them based on testability. They are all testable in terms of not being demonstrably overtly false, but not in a manner that differentiates one as scientifically preferred. And the model of reality that results from each of them is vastly different.
Everything I've said regarding theories applies in exactly the same way to models. Dodge semantically all you like, but the very reason they are called models is that they are provisional with respect to how we are interacting with the subject matter. They are also fully revisable based on new data, and rarely will you find a single "perfect" model for a given domain, or one that fits "all" the data. We use multiple models, take weather models if you're ignorant of everything in the domain of, say, engineering. Your methodology is nonsense, as is your conceptualization of "science".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
At risk of defending the indefensible, it isn't even. Reality TV, horrible as it is, (and it is), doesn't beat you over the head with a laugh track turned up to 11 on every retarded 1-liner, every speck of pseudo-nerd "dialogue."
It's Roseanne for the INCEL crowd.
Face it the show sucks - and if you try to compare it to dogshit next, you will inevitably find the comparable taste and nutritional value of dogshit. Enjoy your advocacy as you need to. The show is for morons, period.
I'm sorry you're so confused that you're conflating terms? "there exist a number of contending schools of thought over their interpretation." - Not separate models. QED, debunked.
Keep studying kid.
You are conflating "testability" with, well, whatever scientific status you feel like rhetorically arguing against. Irrationally.
QM Interpretations are obviously "models" of what reality is like. I'd feel mildly concerned now that you are overtly stupid, if -your- conflation and evasion weren't so painfully obvious.
Ah well, I'm sure you'll get your Darwin Award eventually.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
"rarely will you find a single "perfect" model for a given domain, or one that fits "all" the data." = That's what a model is. Anything less is an incomplete subset, several of which can be used to display data in composite.
But they're not complete models unless they address all data, including new data. If not, the model is revised until it does. Sorry this is hard for you. Try not to be a dick when you're unclear on the concept though.
Shut up Dwight. Not even the standard model is supported by "all empirical data."
No climate model has been proven to be supported in the same fashion either. Yet they are useful all the same.
The fact is we can't predict the future and we have not yet reached apotheosis.
debunk...that's what 5 sigma requirements are...You must be new...THEORIES... little heart's content...MODELS...Keep studying kid.
Smells like an incel that got his science education from youtube instead of graduate school. Mark it troll and move on.
"rarely will you find a single "perfect" model for a given domain, or one that fits "all" the data." = That's what a model is. Anything less is an incomplete subset, several of which can be used to display data in composite.
They're not complete models unless they address all data, including new data. If not, the model is revised until it does. Sorry this is hard for you. Try not to be a dick when you're unclear on the concept though.
It makes you look stupid.
"They're not complete models unless they address all data, including new data. If not, the model is revised until it does."
And now you've devolved into complete fantasy.
How do you know, right now, worldwide, that no new discoveries were made today that will modify any of your impervious-to-fact models?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
They have to publish their findings, be peer-reviewed, be found by consensus (and challenge) to meet the data - then they can supplant the existing model, if better. That's science.
You are unclear to the point of being dickish and delving into ad hominem... which isn't a great look for someone pretending to be all about the science, really.
They have to publish their findings, be peer-reviewed, be found by consensus (and challenge) to meet the data - then they can supplant the existing model, if better. That's science.
You are unclear to the point of being dickish and delving into ad hominem... which isn't a great look for someone pretending to be all about the science, really.
They have to publish their findings, be peer-reviewed, be found by consensus (and challenge) to meet the data - then they can supplant the existing model, if better. That's science.
You are unclear to the point of being dickish and delving into ad hominem... which isn't a great look for someone pretending to be all about the science, really...
Do you hang out with that plastic eater Luckyo by any chance, get your "science degrees" in the same mail order catalogue or what?
Well done Empiric. That guy's response shows he has never thought deeply about how science works or done a Phil. of Science course. That said, I wonder what you think about ID scientists and their formulation of real testable hypotheses. Michael Behe's "irreducible complexity" for example makes a quote profound testable prediction that biologists could potentially falsify. I would argue that the inertia of the existing paradigm strongly inhibits even the sharing of new ideas (as Einstein found at times) which essentially locks out new ideas, or at least makes their consideration very difficult. I think this in large part due to human psychology and our preference for accepting the widely accepted and rejecting that from beyond.
There is a crap-ton of evidence placing quasars at cosmological distances. Arp's idea is one of the DISCARDED ideas about what quasars are for really good reasons.
Starting with - why are there no BLUE shifted quasars? If they are ejected from galaxies, we should should see ones coming at us as well as receding from us.
We have images of gravitationally lensed quasars while necessarily places them FURTHER AWAY than the galaxies acting as lenses. We've even witnessed time delayed changes in the multiple images from those lenses.
We have pictures of some of the galaxies quasars are embedded in - which have the SAME redshift as the associated quasar! Quite the coincidence that, eh?
We can measure adsorption lines in their spectrums from intervening clouds of gas. Again, allowing us to place minimum distances on the quasars since they MUST be further away than the clouds of gas.
We can measure all kinds of properties - and they all agree: Quasars are at cosmological distances.
Well done, but you very obviously are not actual scientists and you've demonstrated it for all to see by conflating untestable theories with complete models. QED.
But keep studying, those science backgrounds aren't just given away to plastic eaters... good luck.
That show is weird. I rarely watch it, but when I do I like it. Yet I have no desire to watch it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Obviously that's exactly how we challenge models, with new data. If it breaks the model, you need a new model to explain the data, or you need to double-check the data. Hence, science.
Keep studying kid. This is so basic and your need to be wrong about it (for whatever reason, ego?) simply can't be explained by science anymore.
Obviously that's exactly how we challenge models, with new data. If it breaks the model, you need a new model to explain the data, or you need to double-check the data. Hence, science.
Keep studying kiddo.
The post has a ton of misleading information within it, quasars (short of Quasi-stellar object) is a bit of a misnomer. Quasars are associated with Galaxies and the reason some galaxies appear as quasars depends on the activity of their supermassive black hole at the center. When it's very active and eating a lot of mass the galaxy will appear as a quasar, when the feeding of the supermassive black hole shuts down the signature of quasar activity disappears. Quasars are associated with galaxies and do not exist without a galaxy.
The actual article in Wired talks about the new investigations into the physics of matter being accreted by the black hole to explain the rapid shutdown, but the poster erroroneously suggests that this in some way has to do with 'many mini-big bangs,' the article discusses nothing of the sort. In addition, the post mentions that this means that quasars are 'ejected' and not as distant as they appear from their redshift. The redshift of a quasar comes from the galaxy redshift, so even if the supermassive black hole had been ejected, it would still be as distant as the galaxy is. Being ejected from a galaxy will not instantaneously make the black hole substantially closer.
Slashdot should do better to not allow posters to insert their crackpot ideas into the submission of what is actually a really interesting article.
would like to see a summary of the original report and see what parameters they used then that will tell us if the research is similar to other research
again, you're the target demo described above, to the T.
Yes, you can debunk a theory based on testability. It happens all the time in physics. It has happened several times due to the results from Cern.
Here is some insight about Arp - his observations and theories (and a comment about eccentric science would-be-vindicators).
Arp noticed some real peculiarities in astronomical and astrophysical data that started piling up in the 1950s. He observed that red shifts appeared to be "quantized" - to appear in buckets along a line-of-sight instead of being continuous. He also observed that high red shifted objects seemed to be statistically too numerous near brighter, less red shifted galaxies.
He was right about both observations, but he proposed a complex but poorly worked out set of hypotheses to explain them (calling them a "theory" credits them with too much coherence). He proposed the red-shift were not due to the Doppler effect but to some brand new physics (which he could not explain), and that red-shifted objects near closer galaxies were actually ejected from them.
We have since learned that the quantized red-shifts is due to the cellular structure of the Universe, there are vast voids and walls and filaments of galaxies, so there are no red-shifts in the voids, but then they are clustered together in walls and filaments. And the anomalous association of high-red shifted objects is due to gravitational lensing (an explanation that Arp rejected, without having a good argument for doing so). There is a lot of interconnecting data that supports all of this now.
Arp tended to undermine acceptance of his valid observations by insisting on fringey and poorly reasoned theories to explain them, rather than simply pushing astronomy to take them seriously and look for possible causes.
Observing some quasars that appear to turn off too fast may resemble some aspects of Arp's hypotheses, and do require explanation, but they cannot be used to "vindicate" a ramshackle theory that was always weak and has since completely collapsed.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Thank you. Basic shit confirmed, exactly my point all along. I don't know where this "empiric" fakedick comes from but it sure as shit isn't a scientific background if he can't admit that much.
He let his ego drive.
They're not complete models unless they address all data, including new data. If not, the model is revised until it does. Sorry this is hard for you. Try not to be a dick when you're unclear on the concept.
It makes you look stupid.
Never thought deeply about it, and consequently I think he broke when confronted with that.
I now have a dozen AC post responses, regurgitating the same things in the same style, suspiciously like the repetitive spasms of a malfunctioning mind.
I'll leave it there. Time will handle the rest.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Forget about this story. The one thats more interesting is that low frequency earthquake that rang the earth for 26 minutes the other day and was picked up by seismographs all over the world...only no one felt it.
I'm guessing the after effects of the original big bang are still being experienced, billions of years later.
Well, if you think about it all the matter around us - including our bodies - exists because of it and the hydrogen in your body was actually directly created by it. So I think it is fair to say that the "after effects" are still with us. Not to mention the afterglow of it that we can see as the cosmic microwave background.
Seems rather well established as a crackpot.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Since when is billions of years ago classed as 'recent' ?
Time already "handled" it, you don't know the difference between a complete, peer-reviewed and accepted current model and an untested or untestable theory. You said as much. QED, you lost.
Time handled it just fine, no sweat off time's brow. You might need a wet one or something though, you got all worked up to be wrong about this for some reason. Deep breath kiddo.
The internet agrees with me.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_difference_between_a_theory_and_a_model
A theory is a set of statements that is developed through a process of continued abstractions. A theory is aimed at a generalized statement aimed at explaining a phenomenon.
A model, on the other hand, is a purposeful representation of reality.
As you can see, both share common elements in their definitions. What differs one from the other (in my opinion) is that one is aimed at generalized statements(theory) while the other is aimed as a helpful tool to understand specific phenomena(modeling).
Another way to link the two and point out differences is, a model is often used to describe an application of a theory for a particular case. Sometimes it involves a given set of initial and boundary conditions.
For example, the behavior of the Eiffel tower in an earthquake may be modeled by a finite elements computer simulation. The underlying theory employed could be the Prandtl-Meyers Stress-Strain relationship for elastic-plastic flow in metals and, of course, Newtonian mechanics. In other cases, the term model is used more generally to mean some abstract representation or approximation to an underlying theory. In this sense, the P-M relationship above can be referred to as a "model" of the behavior of metals.
Looking at the birth of controversial theories, it seems its better to emphasize the oddity instead of the new interpretation.
If Galileo had said, "Hmmm, look at these interesting observations. It looks as if all the planets go around the Sun, not Earth. Let's investigate further...", he probably wouldn't have got into trouble. Propose the alternative, but don't insist on anything. Just collect more data until it's obvious to peers.
Office politics is still alive and well in science.
Table-ized A.I.
No, time didn't handle it yet. You're still here, evolution hasn't yet eliminated you (which it will).
You continue to goalpost-shift and equivocate.
There are no permutations of your usages of "theory" or "model" which meet the exact scoping necessary to forward your irrational criteria--that there are any theories, or models derived from, or conceptually overlapping them, which are in any sense "final" and curiously exclude the particular subjects of inquiry your bias wants them to.
To rephrase a question among those you continue to evade, at what -exact point- does a hypothesis become "settled science" and thus not subject to revision? I do not fail to understand peer review, or falsifiability criteria, or the standard mechanisms by which theories, and models, are -vetted- and thus pragmatically useful. However, these -never- transmute to "permanent fact", and to suggest so is to deny science. Even if you really, really feel you want to do so in a few particular cases, and imagine your hypocrisy isn't transparent every time you acknowledge there are multiple models for your daily weather, or, acknowledge multiple models exist, as provisional and pragmatic constructs, in any form of scientific work you may, supposedly, be involved in.
You're in the quite tedious false dichotomy camp of "science versus religion" which is perfectly willing to misrepresent science, in particular, hypocritical cases, because you have a line of inquiry you don't personally like. You won't damage your target, you -will- damage science, and that is why you should be opposed, for, as stated, the very short term which is the only timeframe relevant to anything regarding you.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Deep breath kiddo. The internet agrees with me.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_difference_between_a_theory_and_a_model
A theory is a set of statements that is developed through a process of continued abstractions. A theory is aimed at a generalized statement aimed at explaining a phenomenon.
A model, on the other hand, is a purposeful representation of reality.
As you can see, both share common elements in their definitions. What differs one from the other (in my opinion) is that one is aimed at generalized statements(theory) while the other is aimed as a helpful tool to understand specific phenomena(modeling).
Another way to link the two and point out differences is, a model is often used to describe an application of a theory for a particular case. Sometimes it involves a given set of initial and boundary conditions.
For example, the behavior of the Eiffel tower in an earthquake may be modeled by a finite elements computer simulation. The underlying theory employed could be the Prandtl-Meyers Stress-Strain relationship for elastic-plastic flow in metals and, of course, Newtonian mechanics. In other cases, the term model is used more generally to mean some abstract representation or approximation to an underlying theory. In this sense, the P-M relationship above can be referred to as a "model" of the behavior of metals.
K thx bai good luck with your Dunning-Krugeresque dissertations lol, but it's painfully obvious you're in no position to teach this stuff lest of all profess it.
There are no permutations of your usages of "theory" or "model" which meet the exact scoping necessary to forward your irrational criteria.
No resolution to your definitional presentation/argumentation of these terms will stretch to address what you want it to. And your evasion of every question on what specific criteria you used to consider something "settled science" or not isn't helping your case.
Name off more pragmatic models. Doing so addresses no relevant point of the discussion. You have no way of knowing today's "settled science" isn't tomorrow's Luminiferous Ether. Even for the topics that send you into your spastically repetitive robot simulation. Period.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
From what I remember, one of the nails in his theory is the lack of blue shifted objects. Basically ejections should happen in every direction, not just away from us and I don't know of any blue shifted objects beyond the local group.
Extraordinary claims need lots of evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You probably knew that when it hit +5 since most slashdot readers love an oversimplified self-confirming opinion.
Let us take the example of planetary orbital mechanics before Copernicus. You of course believe that the earth is at the center of the solar system with objects rotating around it. If I come along and suggest that the sun is at the center I cannot ask for it to be "treated equally" as these models are in opposition. Of course at this point you would call me a denier and get +5 on ye olde slashdote.
There is the story that I start with when the topic of quantization of redshifts comes up.
Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, p.112:
It looks like there is a plasma physics aspect to quantization that Arp did not realize. Active galactic nuclei have been compared by some plasma physicists to plasma focus devices. If that is true, the inherent redshift component could represent matter of a lower mass (perhaps it is electron deficient). Then, as the ejection moves away from the active center, it would go through a sequence of regions with different densities. Electrons might rapidly rush in. His suggestion in the theory section of his Intrinsic Redshift video is that the preferred redshift values result from the quasar interacting with these different environments (the galactic "hierarchy").
Or, a person could even reason their way to quantum effects happening at very large scales. Either way, it is important to learn what the plasma focus device is. Once you witness the resultant complexity of this simple plasma device, you should start to witness the risk that astrophysicists take when they completely ignore laboratory plasma observations. A person cannot just reason their way to the behavior of the plasma focus, yet it's not a very complex device:
The Big Bang Never Happened
Eric Lerner
Arp is arguing that there is an inherent redshift component to the total. Quasars appear to start, at the moment of ejection, at something like z = 2 - 4. So, it would not necessarily be a disproof to not see blue-shifted objects since the doppler effect component to redshift would add to that inherent value to produce the total. There is something about new matter that makes it redshifted at birth (and people should be allowed to disagree, for now, about what that actually is).
Then, over time, the redshift equalizes w the surrounding environment. Apparently, this can in some cases happen very quickly.
Is there any obvious predictions that Arp makes that current theories fail at? Einsteins relativity for example predicted where Mercury would be in its orbit in a year, something that Newtons theory failed at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Two words: SAFIRE Project.
A list of vindications for Halton Arp:
In most of these cases, cosmologists and science journalists point the public to ad hoc extensions of the Big Bang. Yet, their original model did not predict these observations.
1. Alignment of quasar minor axes (vindication of Arp ejection model)
2. Numerous apparent interactions of objects of wildly different redshifts (not possible with Big Bang, vindication of Arp)
For example, NGC 7603, NGC 4319 and NGC 3628, just to name three. There are many, many more at this point. See the first part of the Universe: Cosmology Quest documentary and Arp's Intrinsic Redshift lecture for a more thorough treatment.
Of particular interest is the press release by the Space Telescope Science Institute - the research arm of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope - promoting the claim that NGC 4319 is not connected by a filament to Markarian 205, the object next to it. These press releases appear to be a case of scientific fraud insofar as they point the readers to visible light photographs from the Hubble instead of the far more radio-deep imagery produced on much less expensive, even amateur, CCD telescopes.
Arp commented:
3. Numerous instances where high-redshift quasars appear aligned with the axes of low-redshift "foreground" galaxies (statistics indicate this occurs far too often for a strict recession velocity interpretation of redshift)
Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, by Halton Arp (1987)
They're the ones who will murder thousands and thousands of words that say nothing in response to even the mildest rebuttal of whatever crackpot theory they're espousing. Every post must be answered with pages and pages of more kookery. Such a passionate defense of nothing. Every rebuttal just entrenches the person further. Bad theories stacked over and over that ignore existing or hand-wave away theories that are supported with, well, actual data. When called on it, there's always an underlying conspiracy (which is just more mangled and badly stapled together crack-pottery). The one truth here is that the kooks will never, ever, ever stop. You're not having a conversation with them, you're simply providing the one thing they need: continuing validation that they are being oppressed and that the vast conspiracy continues. Any new arguments will just be countered with their ever-growing "FAQ" on canned rebuttals hand-waving away reality. Stop oppressing the troll. You can do so by ignoring him.
Sounds to me like Arp's research falls into a category termed "pathological science." Sometimes a scientist becomes so enamored with an idea that they try too hard to make everything fit into their world-view, to the exclusion of other possibilities. Contrary evidence is either ignored or the pet theory is made more elaborate and, to others, less tolerable.
It's a little unfair just to brand scientists with this label, because it's sometimes a matter of degrees and also an unfair judgement after-the-fact. We now can explain the granular redshift distribution, but that explanation was not available at the time Arp was formulating his theories.
But on the other hand, there are some cases that are obvious and the telltale signs of pathological science serve as a useful warning not to take some claims seriously. Cold fusion, for example, falls here. At the same time you might be able to say the same thing about both supersymmetry and string theory, which have both certainly experienced cronyism and certain signs of pathological science -- always a position to retreat back to in the face of negative evidence. But here I'm more forgiving since most of this research has been done with a good amount of empiricism and expectations that were not completely unmotivated or unreasonable.
Finally, I'm again cautious to apply such labels to scientists because we're comparing recent scientific development with an idealized and polished version of past scientific history. Most students learn about science history in the context of learning the science itself, and a simplified narrative of history serves the professors well in this case. It's not taught with all of the hairy, messy details that would better characterize what research was actually like at the time, with all of the heated arguments, politics, and dead-ends of the day.
I think mainstream scientists going astray isn't, perhaps, all that different from fringe scientists going astray. A healthy scientific program needs a blend of ideas and personalities, and to foster creative approaches. We have a terrible stagnation going on today in basic science, and group-think and witch hunting seem to underlie this.
The original definition of "pathological" science is something like this:
If you watch the "Intrinsic Redshift" lecture on Youtube, he tells many stories of fighting with journals and peer reviewers to publish paper after paper after paper. These stories provide an important look at the struggles that a person faces when they publish work which challenges the orthodoxy. You've managed to take away the wrong lesson from the discussion you're reading about. Whatever your process is, it's producing the wrong result. This should alarm you.
That is a brilliant post with a lot of information.Thanks. So transwarp conduits then?
Halton Arp's work is so often a key component in crank astronomy. All the points made are simply and thoroughly refuted, this is a very good series of posts on his work and the today commonly accepted flaws in it: https://dealingwithcreationism... Also note how the arguments for why Arp is wrong are based in mathematics as opposed to the "tracking the controversy" nonsense used by Electric universe advocates who are too dum to do mathematics.