Seeing Red about Red Shift
Book Review by Wal Thornhill
SEEING RED: REDSHIFTS,
COSMOLOGY AND ACADEMIC SCIENCE
By Halton Arp
The book comes about 10 years
after Arp's earlier challenge to
cosmologists in his book, "Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies".
Since that time, Arp had moved to the Max Planck Institute for
Astrophysics in Munich, Germany - having been effectively
excluded from his research in the USA. In Germany he was able to
extend his earlier telescopic work by having access to x-ray
images of many of the deep-space objects that were crucial to his
argument that the cosmological redshift was related more to the
age of an object since its birth than to its velocity away from
us.
With this new book, the Big
Bang theory is seen at best to be
theoretical flatulence, at worst it is an indictment of academic
behaviour and the way science is done these days. "Sometimes I
think that Astronomy is not so much a science as a series of
scandals." [Seeing Red, p. 64]. However, some comfort can be
taken by members of this list from Arp's opening remark: "I
started getting letters from scientists in small colleges, in
different disciplines, from amateurs, students and lay people.
The amateurs in particular amazed and delighted me, because it
quickly became clear that they really looked at pictures, knew
various objects and reasoned for themselves while maintaining a
healthy skepticism toward official interpretations."
At the heart of Arp's argument
is the discovery that faint, high
red-shift quasars seem to be physically associated with active
galaxies of normal red-shift. It appears that quasars are
occasionally shot from the nucleus of an active galaxy in
opposite directions along the spin axis. The youngest quasars are
the faintest and have the highest redshift. Older quasars are
brighter, have lower redshifts, and finally become new companion
galaxies with more normal redshift. The whole family are flung
out like drops of water from a double-armed sprinkler with the
parent galaxy spinning in the middle, its axis pointing along the
sprinkler arms. The most amazing discovery of all was that the
quasar redshifts are quantised! It is as if something happens in
the quasars to make matter more massive, stepwise, with time and
so increase the energy of emitted spectral lines (reduce the
redshift). At least that is Arp's challenging conclusion.
From this paradigm shattering
data, Arp proposes that the
Universe we see is much smaller than advertised because high
redshift has little to do with distance. With no primeval bang to
work back to, the Universe becomes indefinitely large and old.
Arp suggests that matter is created in cascading episodes from
existing galaxies. (Unfortunately that merely smears out the
matter "creation" story of the Big Bang without providing any
more insight into this miraculous effect). He traces events in
our region of the universe and constructs a convincing family
tree for our own galaxy, with the interesting result that our
"twin" is identifiable because it seems that galaxies are born in
pairs on opposite sides of the parent galaxy.
Arp's book exposes many of the
creaking underpinnings of modern
physics. Quantum theory has nothing to offer by way of a physical
model to explain the redshift jumps across entire galaxies. And
since there is no real model of how gravity works, there is no
sensible explanation of how inertial mass can increase with time,
nor of its link with gravitational mass. It is not surprising
that the consequences of the total destruction of all their
present smug certainties is too horrible for astronomers to
contemplate. They react to the evidence "... like people viewing
a grisly automobile accident ...", Arp writes.
To complete the ruination, Arp
then demonstrates that some stars
also exhibit redshift anomalies. So we don't understand stars as
well as we thought either. Concerning the birth of stars, the
standard model requires the collision of clouds of dust and gas.
"Now my co-author, Jack Sulentic, and I were disrespectful enough
to suggest that smashing two lumps of gas together was the worst
possible way to make stars. It just heated up the gas and
generally caused condensations to dissipate." [Seeing Red, p.
105].
Arp's discoveries are the most
important in astronomy since the
invention of the telescope. He has developed a map of the visible
universe that makes good sense and shows once again the penchant
for Nature to repeat patterns. This is a feature also of the
Electric Universe model, where electrical discharges in plasma
exhibit an organizing principle that shapes galaxies. When
combined with the plasma focus phenomenon we have an explanation
for active galactic nuclei and the birth of quasars. Quantised
galactic and stellar redshift is simply explained by Sansbury's
new classical physics model of gravity as a near instantaneous
electrostatic dipolar force. In fact, it would have been
embarrassing if quantum redshifts had not been found. Matter
creation is unnecessary when the effective scavenging ability of
intergalactic Birkeland currents is added to the electrical
causation of increasing inertial mass. Arp's work forms a major
piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is The Electric Universe.
Just as the Electric Universe
does away with the fanciful notion
of black holes, Arp reserves some wry comments about this
mythical beast that is supposed to lurk at the centres of
galaxies and suck stars in: "The greatly publicised theory is
black holes where everything falls in. But the observations show
everything is falling out! (Can we count on conventional science
always choosing the incorrect alternative between two
possibilities? I would vote yes, because the important problems
usually require a change in paradigm which is forbidden to
conventional science.)" [Seeing Red, p. 228].
The last chapter of Seeing Red is devoted to Academia. Those who
have followed the "Velikovsky Affair" will recognise the bad
behaviour patterns. Arp brings an insider's perspective as an
outstanding researcher who followed the rules of experiment and
publication only to be met with ostracism and denial. Those who
find it hard to credit stories of church officials refusing to
look through Galileo's telescope will have difficulty when
reading Arp's book to find that the same thing happens in this
so-called scientific age. "... influential people in the field
know what the observations portend, but they are too deeply
committed to go back. The result will surely be to inexorably
push academic science toward a position akin to that of the
medieval church. But if that is the evolutionarily necessary
solution, then perhaps we should hasten the process of replacing
the present system with a more effective mode of doing science."
[Seeing Red, p. 23]. One important mode is scientific
communication. Arp is of the opinion that it has almost
completely broken down through the accepted journals. I believe
that the Internet provides the new scientific protestants with
the communication tool to advance science without requiring the
participation of academics. We don't have to waste our time -
Seeing Red.
____________________________________________
EXCERPTS FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO Seeing Red, Quasars,
Cosmologies and Academic Science by Halton Arp
"I believe the observational evidence has become overwhelming,
and the Big Bang has in reality been toppled. There is now a need
to communicate the new observations, the connections between
objects and the new insights into the workings of the universe-
all the primary obligations of academic science, which has
generally tried to suppress or ignore such dissident
information."
"The present book is sure to outrage many academic scientists.
Many of my professional friends will be greatly pained. Why then
do I write it? First, everyone has to tell the truth as they see
it, especially about important things. The fact that the majority
of professionals are intolerant of even opinions which are
discordant makes change a necessity. Those friends of mine who
also struggle to get the mainstream of astronomy back on track
mostly feel that presenting evidence and championing new theories
is sufficient to cause change, and that it is improper to
criticize an enterprise to which they belong and value highly. I
disagree, in that I think if we do not understand why science is
failing to self-correct, it will not be possible to fix it."
"This, then, is the crisis for the reasonable members of the
profession. With so many alternative, contradictory theories,
many of them fitting the evidence very badly, abandoning the
accepted theory is a frightening step into chaos. At this point,
I believe we must look for salvation from the non-specialists,
amateurs and interdisciplinary thinkers-those who form
judgments on the general thrust of the evidence, those who are
skeptical about any explanation, particularly official ones, and
above all are tolerant of other people's theories."
"The only hope I see is for the more ethical professionals and
the more attentive, open-minded non professionals to combine
their efforts to form a more democratic science with better
judgment, and slowly transform the subject into an enlightened,
more useful activity of society. This is the deeper reason I
wrote this book and, although it will cause distress, I believe a
painfully honest debate is the only exercise capable of
galvanizing meaningful change."
Halton Arp
Reprinted by permission
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