Recent Quasar Observations Support Lots of Mini-Bangs Instead of One Big Bang (wired.com) 263
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.
Sorry, not possible (Score:3, Funny)
97% of cosmologists agree that the redshift is caused by galactic climate change. To state anything else is to be a science denier.
Re:Sorry, not possible (Score:5, Insightful)
Cherry-picking scientific opinions favorable to your own is what science denialism *is*. The denialism in science denialism isn't a denial of truth; it's a denial of burden of proof. Science isn't about truth, it's about evidence. It doesn't care what you believe, it cares how you back up your claims.
A fundamentalist biologists who don't believe in evolution, or Earth Scientists who believe in a Young Earth aren't automatically bad scientists, as long as they don't make unsubstantiated claims. In fact more conventional scientists aren't in much of a different position; every scientist has *some* heterodox positions, otherwise there'd be no point. Every scientist wants to be the one that shakes things up, but they know other scientists are watching them. That's why scientists sound so equivocal; a good scientist knows others are watching, eager to pounce on any overstep.
Arp continued to publish papers supporting his views long after they'd become wildly heterodox. His last refereed paper was the year before he died, and his last invited chapter contribution was the same year he died. You're welcome to agree with him, if you like; that doesn't make you a science denier. Treating that view as equally well established does.
Same goes for anthropogenic climate change. Believing in global cooling, steady state climate (even through divine intervention), or warming mostly driven through natural climate cycles doesn't make you a science denier. Demanding that those views be treated as equally well-established as AGW does.
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Re: "Arp continued to publish papers supporting his views long after they'd become wildly heterodox. His last refereed paper was the year before he died, and his last invited chapter contribution was the same year he died. You're welcome to agree with him, if you like; that doesn't make you a science denier. Treating that view as equally well established does."
We can learn a lot about academia and science journalism by identifying the histories they refuse to tell. Here's a very important one:
Seeing Red
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I'm not sure I agree that is the definition of scientific denialism, but I think you have a point. I'm not a fan of debate where the goal is not to understand a problem but to win. You can often see this i
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I would imagine that consensus breeds its own form of self-reinforcement. That doesn't make it wrong - it just makes it likely that when it is wrong, the evidence will be shocking, and possibly dismissed or actively fought. I guess that's baked into the scientific process of peer review to some extent.
Anyway, this article raises a question I've always wanted answered, so at the risk of inviting some of you to call me a moron, I'll ask it here...
In order to accept generally accepted scientific theories wit
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Re: "So for example, when I hear the lay-person's explanation of carbon dating (that the relative abundance of radioactive isotopes in a sample indicates how long ago that carbon was incorporated from the atmosphere when the sample was a living organism), I always ask myself 'doesn't that assume that the relative abundance of those isotopes in the atmosphere is constant - or at least, that scientists have some way of knowing how that ratio has changed over time?'"
Well done, Rob Y. Your suspicions are dea
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(...) the only people who tend to question the dating techniques belong to ostracized groups - like the creationists.
The problem isn't questioning, it's not providing a theory that provides for predictions and that predicts more than the established theory.
So, pointing problems in this or that doesn't cut it. Problems we find in everything, and they can have a ton of different causes. You have to point out the problem, and then provide a theory that explains this problem alongside everything else that was also explained by the not-so-correct theory so that the state of knowledge afterwards is increased rather than decreas
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The only reason for invoking creationists there was to point out that critiques of dating techniques are not taken seriously because the people pointing them out are not taken seriously. This is important to understand because the creationists can of course be wrong about their understanding of the universe in many ways, and yet still be right about their critiques of radiocarbon dating. Not that anybody here has done so, but we should try to ask these questions about the accuracy of radiocarbon dating wi
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we should try to ask these questions about the accuracy of radiocarbon dating
That's my point. There isn't something to look at, because there is no additional prediction provided by critics of radiocarbon dating. There is no "better theory" linked to that criticism that'd allow one to connect the existing data points in a better way, and without that any such criticism cannot overcome the negative heuristics of current existing research programmes [wikipedia.org].
The link explains this point more clearly than I myself could, so I suggest reading it.
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I agree. It probably happens more today than in the past. Little research bubbles are created. Since things are so specialized, when you need someone to review a paper, you want someone with that special
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It doesn't matter what you believe or personally accept. What matter is how you back up your public claims.
I don't think denialists are skeptics, any more than vaxx truthers are skeptics. They are believers in an alternative hypothesis. But belief per se doesn't make you a denialist. Denialism absolutely *is* a political position, one that demands that a certain belief be given the same treatment as an alternative belief, regardless of what the preponderance of evidence says.
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That word doesn't mean what you think it does.
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Does it not at all bother you that Lemaitre was a Catholic priest?
A. L. Peratt, "Dean of the Plasma Dissidents," The World & I (May 1988), p.197:
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Re: "His background or your feelings about it are irrelevant. Unlike you, we scientists deal in facts...What matters is his idea
Which part of the creation-from-nothing idea most persuades you as a scientist?
Re: "Until you provide a model that explains all of the observations equally or better, the leading models will have the consensus."
We can actually see high redshift quasars moving. They exhibit proper motion. [harvard.edu] How much more reason do you really need in order to ask the question of whether or not th
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Re: "Lemaitre's idea was that all the matter in the observable universe would have started from a singular point. Nobody said anything about creation-from-nothing, although there are some unproven quantum theories that would allow this ... Time and space might not have existed before the moment of Big Bang, and in that case the question about what existed 'before' that moment would be simply invalid. The universe would simply have existed forever."
Okay, which accepted scientific principles permit all of t
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You're conflating concepts between the mathematical map ("a singular point") and the actual territory ("The average density of the observable universe is about 6 protons per cubic meter, and you can get a looooot of protons in a cubic meter."), in order to appear as though no scientific principle is being violated.
Re: "So nowhere are they claiming that there is any actual proper motion going on."
There appears to be a brief mention of these structure-induced errors here [arxiv.org]:
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Re: "Good grief man, you're either a troll or an idiot. No, I'm not conflating anything. And no, the Big Bang singularity was not a mathematical point. It had a measurable albeit extremely small volume. And there is a good chance it was part of a bigger volume, which all inflated at the same rate, outside our observable universe."
This is cosmology we are talking about here, and the "dark" data is very much telling you right now that something important and fundamental is wrong with the idea.
Many practicin
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If you actually look at how historically the heliocentric hypothesis became consensus (although now we think in terms of frames of references), it absolutely bore a higher standard of proof.
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The Virtue of Heresy: Confessions of a Dissident Astronomer
Hilton Ratcliffe (2nd Ed, 2008)
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> It's also important to understand that nobody woke up one day and decided, "Hey, I'm going to
> go find periodicity in my quasar dataset." It was not expected when it was observed
Sure, and since then we used that data in ever-larger sky surveys and realized what we were seeing was the large scale structure of galactic layout with walls and voids. Since the majority of galaxies are found in certain structures, then of course one will find that their red shifts also tend to cluster.
Just look at your ow
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Re: "Sure, and since then we used that data in ever-larger sky surveys and realized what we were seeing was the large scale structure of galactic layout with walls and voids. Since the majority of galaxies are found in certain structures, then of course one will find that their red shifts also tend to cluster.
Can you point me to any examples where this is the argument which was put forward?
This [arxiv.org] is what I ran into:
The World According to Arp (Score:3, Funny)
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."
A long time ago, observing a galaxy far, far away (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:A long time ago, observing a galaxy far, far aw (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
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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 redsh
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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.
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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 [eso.org] (vindication of Arp ejection model)
2. Numerous apparent interaction
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There is the story that I start with when the topic of quantization of redshifts comes up.
Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, p.112:
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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
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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
Who is submitter Chris Reeve (Score:5, Insightful)
that knows more about astronomy than astronomers?
Re:Who is submitter Chris Reeve (Score:5, Informative)
He also thinks Einstein was completely wrong.
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I am always a bit skeptical of these 'here is a piece about scientists who found something interesting and are unsure what is going on, but oh wait they failed to mention the genius of this other guy who was drummed out of the field because other scientists were scared of his truthness!' pieces and wonder about their author's motivations.
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Re:Who is submitter Chris Reeve (Score:5, Funny)
So you are saying he's bucking for a position in the alleged Administration?
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Re: "If he'd just put an ounce of two of that energy into learning science instead of peddling pseudo-science, he probably wouldn't be mocked as much."
Mockery comes with the territory of engaging new ideas in science. I'm not trying to avoid it.
What I do is track scientific controversies. I learn the models, as they've been stated by the theorists. I seek out the critiques of those models, so I can understand what the debate is. I resist the urge to judge the model before I've learned it. I also expo
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Re: Who is submitter Chris Reeve (Score:5, Insightful)
Chris, the two highly significant words missing from your post (and I suspect your mind) are evidence and observations.
You can wax lyrical about "thoughts" and "ideas" all day long, and doing so is perfectly dandy in fields like theology or philosophy. But when it comes to the physical world all theories live or die by the observations. When two theories fit the observations it is standard practice (not always correct) to accept the simplest one.
I'm not putting you on the spot to defend yourself, but I've read many of your electric universe posts and the main thing missing from all of them is any indication that your theory explains any observations better than the conventional scientific approach that gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe.
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Re: "I'm not putting you on the spot to defend yourself, but I've read many of your electric universe posts and the main thing missing from all of them is any indication that your theory explains any observations better than the conventional scientific approach that gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe."
Let's review the situation then:
NASA: Plasma, Plasma, Everywhere [nasa.gov]
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Re: "Dark matter is absolutely needed to explain the structure of the universe at the largest scales. Supercomputer simulations of the evolution of the visible universe only produce anything that resembles the large scale structure of the universe when using Lambda-CDM (i.e. cold dark matter) models. Those same models also produces the elements in the abundances we see today."
Notice that you completely ignored the fact that the jets we observe connected to AGN's exhibit this peculiar counter-rotation. Th
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Re: "Otherwise I might ask why you're not looking for "invisible pink unicorns galloping on a straight line kicking the galaxies in alignment". Because the data is equally suggesting that..."
It bears reminding that there are only two possible forces to work with at the intergalactic scale - gravitational and electric - so there is nothing at all extraordinary about checking to see if concepts related to electric discharges which are valid in the plasma laboratory are also present in astronomical imagery.
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Equal time for crackpots I say! (No I don't.)
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Thanks Chris, this is well spoken. Yours isn't specifically a study of evidence directly, but an analysis of myriad studies and evidences and theories, especially in areas where the science isn't so much "settled", but rather, there are competing and often contradictory explanations for observed phenomenon. This is real science, keep it going. All theories need to be examined for validity, and some are very tricky to rule out.
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I've run into a number of histories which seem to leave the "wrong" lesson, and so even though they carry with them important lessons, these stories are not widely told. The story of the invention of the rocket is probably the best example. The beginning of that story is like kryptonite for a lot of people [youtube.com], so nobody ever tells it. People should learn that part. It's like we are culturally trying to block it out - like it didn't happen.
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I try not to criticize stuff unless I'm really confident and familiar with the idea. So, when I am learning something, I just read and go along with it, and I try to think through its relationship with observations. Are there reasons that this could be true?
It's tempting to think about reasons to disbelieve. I don't recommend focusing on the negatives in the beginning. Your mind is lazier than you imagine. It wants a reason to stop looking because thinking takes effort - and we might not like the answe
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I beg to differ. Newtonian gravity is not wrong and is still used in most physical modeling. But we know that there is a more nuanced description of gravity that works better across a larger range of scales. So most science is "correct" because it produces physical models that reflect the reality that we see. What is always true however is that a reformulation of the physical model may introduce new concepts that extend the domain of the previous understanding. Admittedly a lot of physics is moving in a dir
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While the submission didn’t use the phrase “tired light”, it basically seems to be trotting out that tired old argument.
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lol, realize that Meglon never even responded back in July to Juan Calsiano's explanation to him of Relativity's true origin as the study of aether and electrons: [slashdot.org]
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The best emerging plot line is the living universe concept. This topic elicits really interesting reactions from people. Michael Clarage's presentation offers a good introduction to it if you start at the 5:14 timestamp [youtu.be], but I think there are many more arguments [twitter.com] which could be put forward on this.
Follow through on the implications of that strange concept: We can see that there is life which exists inside of our own bodies at multiple scales of existence: we can have parasites, which in turn have bacteria,
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What was your process for coming to this conclusion? Did you ever take the time to learn the historical debates? For example, are you familiar with Dingle's Paradox [naturalphilosophy.org]? Thinking at the deepest level about these questions means not settling for the first explanation you encounter; you have to keep searching until you find the best, most persuasive challenge to orthodoxy. Dingle's Paradox perfectly illustrates this issue. Most of the explanations do not properly convey the seriousness of the paradox, but th
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So you deny that Einstein says there is no special frame of reference. How then do you say one clock is moving when the other is standing still. It is just as valid to say the moving one is standing still and the Earth and other clock is moving. So both clocks will be slower than the other one.
The reference frame also shows it's ugly head in a rotating frame. Einstein's theory does not work in rotation while the Lorentzian version does. One direction around the rotating disk would cause the light beam to t
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Not believing the electric universe idea doesn't mean believing electricity and magnetism doesn't exist nor that they doesn't affect things. Those effects are important for some astronomical phenomenon and taken into account.
Science isn't about making up ones mind, it's the exact opposite. It's adjusting ones mind whenever there are new proofs requiring changes of the current model.
Your last sentence makes me think you may be trolling however if not you are quite a bit into crankdom, please reverse course b
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Bill Beaty - Doing Science Outside the Mainstream - Part 1 - YouTube [youtu.be]
Ripples, echos, aftershocks (Score:3)
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.
Re:Ripples, echos, aftershocks (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that massively heavy objects in space stretch space time, then it seems logical that a quasar could actually create it's own massive gravity well. From our perspective, looking straight at that gravity well, the quasar would appear to be billions of light-years away than it really it. If for any reason, it suddenly disintegrated into lots of smaller objects in the same way of a cloud of a sparks created by a magicians disappearing trick, then that gravity well would suddenly disappear and be replace with the stars of a a galaxy. Then that galaxy of stars would appear to be way closer than the quasar.
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If you were to take 100 ball bearings, scatter them one by one on the classic rubber sheet example, they would each just have a small gravity well. If you let them all fall to the center, then the sheet would be deformed way more.
Effects are definitely still with us (Score:2)
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.
Why just redshift? (Score:5, Interesting)
"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?
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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
So it's Crackpot Science Saturday now? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re: "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.
I've already shown why this is not the case here [slashdot.org].
Re: "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."
The fact that you made the suggestion points to a process for arguing against Arp which does not actually involve learning his m
Post is very misleading about actual article (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: "Slashdot should do better to not allow posters to insert their crackpot ideas into the submission of what is actually a really interesting article."
All that you've done here is to summarize the textbook theory, the content of the article, and the point I made about the reporting. But to what extent are you actually thinking about the things which you are reading about? What you seem to be suggesting is that Slashdot should never cover any idea which deviates from mainstream scientific thought - eve [thunderbolts.info]
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I'm doubtful from this quote below that you've actually understood what Arp is claiming:
Arp is arguing for an inherent redshift component. He makes this argument by showing bridges connecting objects of very different redshifts; in some cases quasars in
Crackpot (Score:2)
Seems rather well established as a crackpot.
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Recent Quasar ? (Score:2)
Since when is billions of years ago classed as 'recent' ?
Soft sell better for career (Score:3)
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.
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There is no such thing as "settled science".
That denies science itself, and the fact that all theories (and they are -precisely- named that) are permanently open to revision based on new empirical data.
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Supported by "all" empirical data? How do you test for that condition?
Of course, that's a vast oversimplification. Currently we have a half-dozen Interpretations of QM that are equally supported by "all" empirical data. And most of science maintains theories based on a preponderance of data. You are constricting to a very limited domain of science, and as in QM, your restriction does not hold. Then you irrationally generalize it to all of science, in a manner that not only does not represent science, b
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Interpretations of QM [wikipedia.org]
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 i
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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.
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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.
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"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?
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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.
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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 a
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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
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Work on the basic definition of science first, then we'll get into basic logical fallacies like ad hominem attacks.
Thomas Kuhn would be a good place to start.
You need to start simple, clearly.
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You need to pull your head out of your ass.
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You've done nothing resembling "calling me on my bullshit". You haven't even generated a single coherent argument.
Ah well, evolution will take you out for me.
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"It's a non-scientific theory meant to explain away an impetus for cosmology/evolution we don't fully understand, as a place-holder."
I suppose you feel that "random" is a causally-explainable and scientific concept, and not a "placeholder" then.
Okay, go ahead. Show me the specific underlying scientific steps of causality deterministically causing the "random" outcome. Otherwise, of course, "random mutation and natural selection" should be stricken from all textbooks as pseudoscience. No?
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"Random" is more of a "miracle" than "design" will ever be, scientifically speaking.
But as you were, and no need to apologize. Just stay useful.
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Answer the question. The specific, scientifically verifiable steps that causally produce "random" outcomes.
It is only "useless" to you, who neither understand science nor it's demarcation.
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Of course you can't. Just ask Michael Behe.
Translation: "I hold my pastor to one standard of evidence, and my professor to another."
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ID is, arguably, falsified when -all- proposable IC structures are explained. The candidate biological structures haven't even all been enumerated, much less analyzed. That will happen only with the ongoing science of biology.
"Here's a way this particular thing might have happened, maybe" does not remotely falsify IC. It may show an error in Behe's reasoning about a particular plausible example case, it does nothing to refute ID per se.
Nor does a particular evolutionary pathway to the outcome falsify ID
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That show is weird. I rarely watch it, but when I do I like it. Yet I have no desire to watch it.
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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.
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Except that light does curve space.
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Those jets of charged particles would generate magnetic fields and pull the quasars or black holes together, or maybe line them up in neat little rows.
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I once encountered a cosmic filament expert on Twitter. He agreed that the EU idea was actually a scientific hypothesis, but similar to what you've stated above, he said that if it was true that the many plasma filaments we observe are electric currents, then we should see large magnetic fields and even synchrotron emissions associated with them. He presented a detailed conceptual rebuttal - a short two-page explanation. [twitter.com] That interaction was a great example of how people should be discussing these issues
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Of particular interest is the press release by the Space Telescope Science Institute [spaceflightnow.com] - 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. [ua.edu]
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Re: ... Such a passionate defense of nothing ...
... Or, alternatively, you've simply put so much effort into refusing to question modern science that you've at this point cultivated your own inability to distinguish well-formed from malformed challenges.