Wrote this up last night... there was some kind of problem posting it. So let's try again.
Hi David. Unfortunately, I had other, more pressing things to do at the time and had basically said what I wanted to say on the topic. Plus I knew that I'd probably not open any of the minds that were posting if I hadn't already in that long thread (
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99727).
Let's start here. That is not a link to some other thread; it's a link to THIS thread. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.
But since there seems to be a new crop of perhaps interested JREFers, I'll now post something I've been working on as time permits in anticipation of renewed interest. It's a review and summary of some of the material I presented on that thread,
This thread.
as well as some additional material that demonstrate (I think) how it is the alternative/plasma/electric community rather than the mainstream/Big Bang/gravity-only community that has been most successful in predicting and explaining astronomical observations over time.
I shall break the discussion into somewhat separate topics. Hopefully it will answer some of the questions you posted near the end of the last thread and make it easier for the others to grapple with the issues at hand.
I don't expect to have any trouble. You might, though. It's not a good idea to walk into a forum and challenge someone whose knowledge you have not taken the time to evaluate. You never know what you might be walking into.
Let's start with the issue of redshift because of it's important role in Big Bang cosmology.
See, right here, I know what I'm going to see. This has been DONE TO DEATH. The question is not what you bring; it's what you leave out. But we'll get there.
Part 1 - Problems With Big Bang's Interpretation Of Redshift Compared To Observations
Vesto Slipher started measuring the Doppler shift of galaxies about 1910, although at the time he didn't know that's what they were. He, like others in his era, called them nebula. Almost all of the objects showed a redshift ... that is, the frequency of the visible light coming from the object was shifted towards lower frequencies ... towards the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. For understandable reasons, this was suggestive that the objects were collectively moving away from us. That is where matters stood until 1922 when Alexander Friedmann derived equations from Einstein's theory of General Relativity that indeed suggested the universe should either be expanding or collapsing. Shortly after, in 1924, Hubble measured the distance to the nearest spiral "nebula" and showed that they weren't nebula at all, but other galaxies filled with stars just like the Milky Way. In 1927, Georges Lemaître independently derived Friedmann's equations and for the first time, it was concluded in a paper that the recession of the objects was due to the expansion "of the universe". His model included a redshift/distance relationship similar to that which in 1929 Hubble and Humason obtained by fitting a line through the observational data that had been collected so far. This redshift relationship (with considerable modification to the Hubble constant) would eventually be used by Big Bang cosmologists to interpret the distance to all objects in the universe based solely on their redshift.
Wrong. That was where they started. But that's not where they wound up. Ever hear of type Ia supernovae? Interesting thing about type Ias: their luminosity is dependent only upon the strength of gravity and the strength of the color force. And they're easy to identify: they have a characteristic light curve. But that's not all. They also have a characteristic spectrum, because they fuse carbon and oxygen in the runaway that leads up to the supernova. You thus find a changing spectrum, as the star explodes, and the time for each part is also dependent only upon the strengths of the color and gravity forces.
What I'm saying here is that unless the strength of gravity and the strength of the color force vary
exactly in synchronization, they cannot vary at all and produce the characteristic signature; not merely a signature of brightness, but a signature of varying spectra.
This makes type Ia supernovae "standard candles" that can be used to measure the distance to very distant galaxies; and this can be compared to the red shift distance to check its accuracy. Let's see if you actually know what you're talking about or not, and whether you're obfuscating by hiding information that doesn't agree with your ideas, by checking whether you mention this.
However, it wasn't until 1931 that Lemaître actually published a paper suggesting that the universe began as a simple "primeval atom" or "cosmic egg". Therefore, one might consider 1931 as the real birthdate of the *Big Bang* theory, in which case, Big Bang theorists did not "predict" the expansion as some proponents claim. But in any case, the story doesn't end there ...
Before anyone came up with the Big Bang, there weren't any Big Bang theorists. The standard theory of the universe through the 1930s was the Steady State theory; in fact, its primary proponent, Fred Hoyle, was the one who coined the term "Big Bang." He meant it derisively, but when Penzias and Wilson found the CMBR, everyone moved on. Except you, apparently.
For some 50 years, alternative cosmologists have argued that redshift is not an accurate indicator of recession or distance for every object that's been observed. In particular, they've asserted that many of what Big Bang cosmologists claim are the farthest objects from us ... quasi-stellar objects (QSOs or quasars, for short) ... are in fact much, much closer than Big Bang's redshift relationship indicates. There are many types of observational data to support this assertion. For example, consider the 2003 discovery of a high redshift (z = 2.11) quasar that is between us and the dense core of the low redshift (z = 0.022) galaxy NGC 7319. The galaxy and the quasar in question are shown in the image below.
<snip>
According to Big Bang's redshift equates to distance relationship, that quasar should be about 93 times farther away from us than the galaxy. But several mainstream astronomers have now published peer reviewed articles (such as
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v620n1/60493/60493.html ) that conclude the quasar in question is almost certainly on this side of NGC 7319. They base this not only on the likely density of obscuring matter in that region of the galaxy, but on the light characteristics of the quasar and galaxy in question. Plus, there is a clearly visible plasma filament (jet) linking the core of the galaxy to that quasar (it can be seen in the image above).
Let's stop here for a moment.
First of all, the redshift/distance relation has been confirmed using type Ia supernovae. Second, what does a plasma filament have to do with it? Care to explain that? You throw it out like it's some sort of proof of something or other, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the distance of the object it's supposedly coming out of. Furthermore, even if the quasar IS on the near side of NGC 7319, that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the Hubble constant; one quasar behaving anomalously doesn't necessarily represent a trend.
Another paper,
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0409215 , states that "from the optical spectra of the QSO and interstellar gas of NGC 7319 at z = .022 we show that it is very likely that the QSO is interacting with the interstellar gas." That's hardly possible if the quasar is 93 times farther away than NGC 7319.
You still haven't shown that this is a class, merely that a single instance exists. That isn't sufficient to conclude that the Big Bang is wrong. Try again.
Is there really any question in this case? I don't think so, else Big Bang proponents would be touting peer reviewed papers challenging the conclusion. But they haven't because none have been written. This one case, alone, falsifies the Big Bang theorists' claim that all quasars are remote objects ... that redshift is a perfect indicator of distance.
Strawman. No one ever claimed that EVERY galaxy's redshift is consonant with its distance.
And if this one isn't distant, then probably many of the others are not distant either ... perhaps all of them.
You have shown one object, not a class. You've extrapolated from one object, possibly anomalous, to assert that what is true of that object is true of all objects; this is a
non sequitur. It does not follow. You need to prove the existence of a class in order to support your argument, and you have not done so.
It means that high redshift can be produced by something other than recession at great distance. Yet, Big Bang cosmologists refuse to consider this possibility and continue to insist that all objects follow Big Bang's redshift/distance relationship. The simple truth is that Big Bang cosmologists are in denial because if quasars aren't extremely remote, this causes all sorts of problems for their theory ... as will be discussed in a moment.
First, you haven't addressed the type Ia supernovae, and I don't expect you ever do. Second, you're still reasoning from one exemplar to a class, one you have not shown exists. Third, quasars are not the only very distant galaxies observed, though they are the easiest to see, and you haven't addressed that either.
Another case with quasars aligned with the heart of a galaxy is the so-called Einstein Cross.
<snip>
According to
http://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/061006einsteincross.htm, in the 1980's astronomers discovered what appeared to be four quasars, with redshifts about z = 1.7, buried deep in the heart of a low redshift (z=0.04) galaxy. Sound familiar? To explain this away, mainstream astrophysicists invoked gravitational lensing, despite a calculation by Fred Hoyle showing that the probability of such a lensing event was less than two chances in a million (by the way, for the record, there are now several other cases like this which is all the more unlikely).
Oh. My goodness. There are less than several million galaxies that we can see. That's what you just asserted. You do realize that the Hubble deep field has 3000 galaxies in it, and represents one two-millionth of our sky, right? Do the math. That means we can see six billion galaxies.
Oops. We should be able to find twelve THOUSAND such lensings if we go looking for them.
Next.
But theoretical calculations by Halton Arp suggest that if these were lensed quasars, they should be more elongated around the circumference than they are. On the contrary, if anything, all four appear to be elongated in towards the galaxy center. Arp also showed that the central galaxy would need to be massive (and be brighter) to explain the sort of gravitational lense that Big Bang supporters imagine here.
Why is that? I do believe you just said that black holes should be bright.
Oops.
I believe they're called BLACK holes. Did you happen to miss the fact that black is not bright? Perhaps you weren't paying attention.
And there's more. The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the cross and Halton Arp, using that data, was able to show that at the wavelength of redshifted hydrogen Lyman alpha emission there is connecting material between one of the quasars (D) and the central galaxy.
Please produce the reference. This is a claim, one that I am not aware of support for. Note most carefully that showing that there is material emerging from a quasar that is in the same direction as the center of a foreground galaxy's core is one thing, and showing that that material is interacting with that core is entirely another.
Halton Arp is a distinguished but elderly scientist. You might be aware of Clarke's Laws; the First of them applies in this case:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. "
Dr. Arp has a great deal of trouble accepting the fact that there are millions of quasars visible to us, and of those, thousands are gravitationally lensed. He therefore has the unfortunate habit of concentrating on one, which when we had only seen ten or twenty was a significant sample, but which now that we have seen thousands isn't any more. And this is the reason Clarke made that the First law. Data change. One must be prepared to change with them, or one will be left behind.
What bothers me is, what does all this have to do with the Thunderbolt project? What proof is there that Dr. Arp believes that any of this has anything to do with the assertion that the electric force is more important in the evolution of the universe than gravitation? If you cannot show this, then Dr. Arp's work is being used for woo, and I actually object to that more than to the woo itself.
A high redshift connection has also been discovered between quasars A and B which passes in front of the connection between the nucleus and quasar D. Plus, the brightness of the four quasars was observed to increase over a period of several years from 1991 to 1994. Arp's explanation (which will be discussed in more detail later) is that the galaxy has ejected four quasars, which are growing brighter with age as they move farther from the nucleus. The mainstream's lensing explanation is that individual stars pass in front of the quasar are producing additional gravitational lensing.
Ummm, again, I need to see a reference. My understanding was that the proposal is that since if the quasar were at the same distance as the foreground galaxy, and were actually four different objects, it would be impossible for them to change as a result of a causally connected sequence of events within a few years, since they would be hundreds of thousands of lightyears apart, this means that they cannot be separate objects, but must be multiple images of the same object.
You have stated here that the "mainstream" says these effects have something to do with a star passing in front of the quasar's image. My understanding is that the assertion is very different from that, that the assertion is that they are four images of the same object and it is therefore unsurprising that they could appear to change from the same cause faster than the speed of light allows if they are separate objects.
But there's a worse
faux pas at issue here.
If gravitational lensing is happening, it takes hundreds of thousands of light years to happen; the light is bent in different directions, and even at the foreground galaxy, the light paths must be hundreds or thousands of light years apart when they actually pass through the foreground galaxy.
But you've said that trained, qualified astrophysicists say that a single star passing in front of "the" image (there are four images by the time a star could get in the way, separated by hundreds of light years at minimum) causes variations that are always synchronized between the four images. This is impossible; there are no stars that are hundreds of light years across, or even a single light year for that matter.
So no matter how you slice it, this is another strawman; you've deliberately misrepresented the opposing argument to make it look ridiculous. We have experience on this forum with people who do that. We know what that means.
So now they are not only assuming lensing by a supposed perfectly aligned black hole at the heart of the galaxy but lensing by specific stars in the galaxy too. Gnomes stacked on gnomes.
If any further proof were needed, this clinches the case.
I see no reason to continue, either to read your drivel or to respond to it. It's obvious what we're dealing with here. Good bye.
