Arp objects, QSOs, Statistics

[Dancing David]

Yeah the Grandmother of All Gnomes for sure!

 

[Zeuzzz]

.
Ah, the hit and run seagull spamster drops another piece of woo!

May one enquire as to how much of the ElectricUniverse marketing budget you are being paid to spam internet discussion forums such as this one?

Or perhaps you're trying to tell us that you think science (astronomy, cosmology, etc, in this case), if it were done properly, would be conducted entirely by YT video clips?

What does the ElectricUniverse have to do with the material in the documentary I linked to ??? Thats primarily about cosmology, redshifts, The Big Bang, and Plasma Cosmology.

So now linking to any youtube video counts as 'advertising'? Should I also now be banned from this forum, for simply linking to an documentary? You should move to PF.

And there is a difference between a "youtube video", and a documentary that is available to see on youtube. Its the same galaxy-quasar connection no matter where you see it.

And I'm curious, why do you call this documentary that I quoted woo? It was produced by various very well established scientists. If you can find any scientific innaccuracies in it, then please post them here. If you can't, ask yourself why that is.

http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=article&access=bibcode&bibcode=2004A%26A...421..407LPDF

The problem of the apparent optical associations of galaxies with very different redshifts, the so-called anomalous redshifts
(Narlikar 1989; Arp 1987, 1998), is old but still unresolved. Although surprisingly ignored by most of the astronomical community, there is increasing evidence of examples of such anomalies. Statistical evidence has grown for such associations over the last 30 years (Burbidge 1996, 2001). For instance, all
non-elliptical galaxies brighter than 12.8 mag with apparent companion galaxies have been examined (Arp 1981), and 13 of the 34 candidate companion galaxies were found to have QSOs with higher redshift. Given a probability of less than 0.01 per [....] the global probability of this to be chance is ∼10−17. Bias effects alone cannot be responsible for these correlations
(Burbidge 2001; Hoyle & Burbidge 1996; Ben´ıtez et al. 2001). Weak gravitational lensing by dark matter has been proposed as the cause of these correlations (Gott & Gunn 1974; Schneider 1989; Wu 1996; Burbidge et al. 1997), although this seems to be insufficient to explain them (Burbidge et al. 1997; Burbidge 2001; Ben´ıtez et al. 2001; Gazta˜naga 2003; Jain et al. 2003), and cannot work at all for the correlations with the brightest and nearest galaxies. The statistical relevance of these associations is still a matter of debate (Sluse et al. 2003).

And the statistical relevance of the associations seems to be exactly what this debate is about, although I have not explored this thread much past the last few pages, I'm busy at the mo and this will be my last comment for a while. I guess it all depends on the probability of finding these accidental allignments, how many have been seen, and how reliable the data on them is (which I dont think anyone is questioning?). Davids post that he showed me here seems perfectly reasonable, and I would be interested to see the numbers of the probablities involved in all the 'accidental' allignments to date. So theres no need for all the comments like the one above DDR, both positions are currently perfectly tenable. Goodbye.

 

[Wangler]

If they were ejected in separate events (i.e. have different ages) then why is there an identical direction of ejection?

I'm not sure that they claim an identical direction. I thought I saw one of these papers, perhaps one about quantized redshifts, that said that the spread of quantized redshift apparently covered any Doppler related redshift.

So, they were saying that any Doppler related red or blue shift may have actually been there.

I will try to find the exact paper, and link it.

 

[Wangler]

.There seem to be just two papers BeAChooser is interested in discussing (those on NGC 3516 and NGC 7319).

Wrangler, I'm no longer sure about.

Dancing David clearly wants to stick to why he started this thread in the first place (and the paper on NGC 3516 would fit nicely within that scope, I think).

And I would like to have the unanswered questions in post 207, 208, and 209 answered.

However, at some point I think we should get onto the question of what a quasar is; if we don't I feel this thread will grow much longer.

I am still interested in hearing more about any theories presented for intrinsic redshift.

I really think that additional statistical analysis should be performed on the galaxy/QSO associations. I still think that the minor axis alignments, the over-density around bright galaxies, and the "quantized" redshifts are compelling, but not quite conclusive.

As for what is a QSO....is it really that difficult:

any of a class of celestial objects that resemble stars but whose large redshift and apparent brightness imply extreme distance and huge energy output

, courtesy of Miriam Webster.

Isn't a more scientific definition any stellar-appearing object, with certain broad emission lines, and high luminosity, non-thermal energy output?

 

[Dancing David]

Hiya Zeuzzz,

This paper http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=article&access=bibcode&bibcode=2004A%26A...421..407LPDF

while a very nice review of a bunch of papers makes frequent use of the kind of statistics that I argue against.

They make repeated arguments that the probability of it being a chance alignment is low.

But that is the whole point of my argument in post 162 of this thread.

There is a sample of dots in a matrix here, from the limited sample, you can not draw any conclusions about the likely hood of the association.

It can be totally and completely random, there may not be anything other than random alignment at work. They have not taken sampling frequencies of thousand of objects at all. They use an average density for objects of magnitude and that won't do it.

instance, all
non-elliptical galaxies brighter than 12.8 mag with apparent companion galaxies have been examined (Arp 1981), and 13 of the 34 candidate companion galaxies were found to have QSOs with higher redshift. Given a probability of less than 0.01 per [....] the global probability of this to be chance is ∼10−17. Bias effects alone cannot be responsible for these correlations
(Burbidge 2001; Hoyle & Burbidge 1996; Ben´ıtez et al. 2001).

And I am sorry, this above quote is wrong. From a very small sample, even for instance of "all non-elliptical galaxies brighter than 12.8 mag with apparent companion galaxies" is not even a reasonable sample to talk about much less draw conclusions from. It is a paper from 1981 and Arp at that time was not trying to control for sample bias. The fact that they supposedly eliminate the elliptical galaxies makes the sample bias worse. They cite Arp’s paper but they don’t discuss the methodology, what was the original sample size, how does it compare to current numbers.

The mere assertion that sample bias is not a factor is just that, a statement, there is nothing in this paper which actually shows any sort of controls or desire to find normative values for distribution, there is no statistical power here, and they do appear to be using a posteriori statistics.

 

[Dancing David]

I am still interested in hearing more about any theories presented for intrinsic redshift.

I really think that additional statistical analysis should be performed on the galaxy/QSO associations. I still think that the minor axis alignments, the over-density around bright galaxies, and the "quantized" redshifts are compelling, but not quite conclusive.

As for what is a QSO....is it really that difficult:
, courtesy of Miriam Webster.

Isn't a more scientific definition any stellar-appearing object, with certain broad emission lines, and high luminosity, non-thermal energy output?

Ithink that Arp's mechanism for anomalous redshift is part of the issue, he doesn't really have one. There is a suggestion of a solution to the equations of GR that Arp’s says would make it possible, but there is nothing outside of that.

Such a thing should have visible effects on many areas, and all we have is the anomalous redshifts.

And the definition of a QSO is crucial to sample bias.

 

[Dancing David]

Arp on Narlikar and others :
http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/is_physics_changing

Arp again:
http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/Pre2001/V05NO3PDF/v05n3arp.pdf

and again:

http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2005/PP-03-01.PDF


You will note a number of things:

1. No singularities

2. No confirmation in a lab

3. Nothing to point to other than the alleged redshifts.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Astronomy, in a few hundred words ...

The sky has now been 'imaged' from ~TeV gammas to ~1 MHz radio waves.

The angular resolution is ~1" (or better) in the (soft) x-ray band, UV through to mid-IR, and also in parts of the radio spectrum. For most of the rest it's ~1' (or worse). Objects smaller, in angular size, than the resolution are 'point sources'.

A point source in one wave-band (the optical, say) can often be confidently matched to a point source in another (mm microwave, say), by astrometry - the estimated location of the 'point' on the sky (in RA and Dec) can usually be estimated with an uncertainty ~10 times smaller than the resolution. Of course, this doesn't always work ... within the 'point' in some gamma ray band there may be a dozen or a hundred x-ray or IR point sources, or even two or more extended sources.

Often a point source in one wave band has no matching point source in any other wave band; if the observations have been done carefully, this enables you to make estimates of the upper bound of the 'brightness' of that point source in the other wave band(s); later observations, made with more sensitive instruments, might detect something of course.

Leaving aside solar system objects (easy to categorise as such by their movement over time periods of seconds to hours) and transients (point sources, in any wave band, that were not there yesterday, here today, and not there again tomorrow), what are the billions of point sources that astronomers have catalogued?

A great many are 'stars'; many are 'quasars'; some are 'galaxies', 'BL Lac objects', 'supernova remnants', 'globular clusters', 'HII regions', and so on.

What is the basis for classification? Here's where it starts to get interesting!

When a new class of object in the sky is discovered it is classified strictly by what is directly observed - its brightness, its colours, its spectrum, it variability, its environment, and so on. GRB (Gamma Ray Bursts) are a good, recent example.

The race is then on, among astronomers, to understand what this new class of object 'is', 'in reality'. Before too long a consensus emerges, and the classification shifts to the underlying model; the many classes of variable stars show this very nicely - the class name (e.g. 'RCrB', or 'R Coronae Borealis' stars) reflects the name of an object that is regarded as the standard (often the first, historically, to be discovered) and the class is defined, observationally, by its light curves, colours, etc, but the term now refers ultimately to 'the reality' ('These are rare, luminous, hydrogen-poor, carbon-rich, variables that spend most of their time at maximum light, occasionally fading as much as nine magnitudes at irregular intervals. They then slowly recover to their maximum brightness after a few months to a year. Members of this group have F to K and R spectral types', in this case).

So too with 'quasars' ... or 'quasi-stellar radio source': the first objects to be observed were, indeed, 'quasi-stellar' (meaning they are point sources, in the optical wave band, as observed by telescopes of the time ... the HST hadn't been invented then), and 'radio sources' (meaning they had been detected as point sources by radio telescopes of the time). Soon, however, it was discovered that some 'quasars' were not quasi-stellar (there was some 'fuzz' around them, even in the Palomar Schmidt plates; at higher resolution in the radio, many turned out to be 'double-lobed'), nor 'radio sources' (they had spectra and colours and time variability that were similar to 'true' quasars but no radio source was detected, at the time). Later it was discovered that many quasars resembled the nuclei of certain galaxies (Seyferts).

And so on, through Lyman forests, x-ray sources, IR sources, jets, BL Lacs, and much, much more.

To distinguish the wide range of different kinds of objects, various sub-classes were defined, like QSOs (quasars without the radio), OVV quasars, type 2 quasars, RLQs, RQQs, ... Among astronomers, in the papers they wrote, this plethora of definitions and (sub) classes occasionally caused confusion, but as long as papers were written with the expected care, such confusion was quite limited.

Not so for the general public, and doubly not so for those not trained as astronomers (or almost any branch of science; the issues of classification and definition are pretty similar) ... and especially for BeAChooser (and some others)!

So, what about today? What's a 'quasar' today?

First, make sure you understand how the author(s) of a paper is/are using the term; that usage is primary.

Second, in general, a quasar is an AGN (active galactic nucleus; this Wiki page is a good start, provided you take on board all the usual caveats about Wiki pages), or is the accretion disk plus super-massive black hole at the centre of an AGN.

Questions?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

(continued)

(first part, that I have already responded to, omitted)

Therefore where previously I effectively multiplied the probability of any given galaxy having 5 quasars with Karlsson redshifts by 25,000 (1,237,500 / 5 * 0.10), now I'm going to multiply the new probability calculated for NGC 3516 by only 20,600. Doing so produces a probability (for finding the 5 quasars with the specific z's near NGC 3516 amongst the total population of quasars/galaxy associations) of 3.06 x 10^-7 * 20,600 = .0063 .

Now let's complete the calculation by again adding in the fact that all 5 objects are aligned rather narrowly along the minor axis. I'll just use the dart board example I used previously, where I found that the probability of throwing 5 darts in a row that land within a 15 degree zone extending from opposite sides of the center of the dart board as being 3.9 x 10^-6 per galaxy. And again, we have to multiply by the number of galaxies with 5 quasars that can be aligned. With only 20,600 such cases possible (conservatively), the probability of finding 5 quasars aligned along the minor axis is therefore 3.9 x 10^-6 * 20,600 = 0.08 which makes the total likelihood of encountering this one case if one carefully studied the entire quasar population equal to 0.08 * 0.0063 = ~0.0005 .

That's a very small probability. Yet Arp found such a case after looking, not at all the galaxies that have quasars near them, but by looking at only a tiny fraction of those galaxies. Which makes his observation even more improbable. Perhaps significantly so.

.
As I said earlier, this can be tested, and has been tested, using much bigger datasets ... in the L-C&G paper that BAC himself earlier cited, for example.

In light of BAC's evident confidence in the soundness of the results of his calculations (quoted here), I wonder what he will make of the L-C&G paper?

In any case, we have no idea how many galaxies Arp looked at, because he didn't say. That alone makes most of the above moot - without any knowledge of the prior, what validity can the conclusion have?
.

And he not only found that case, he found two others that have large numbers of quasars with values close to the Karlsson values aligned with the minor axis of galaxies. Recall that NGC 5985 had 5 that are lined up along its minor axis with redshifts of 2.13, 1.97, 0.59, 0.81 and 0.35. The corresponding delta to the nearest Karlsson values are 0.03, 0.01, 0.01, 0.15, 0.05. Let's ignore the 0.81 and 0.35 values for the moment and find the probability of encountering the first three values, on a combinatorial basis. With an increment equal to twice the largest delta (i.e., 0.06), that probability is 1/((50 * 49 * 48)/(3*2*1)) = 1/19600 = 5.1 * 10^-5.

.
And this is, as has been pointed out, very bad statistics.

First, more than one object was already known before Arp even started looking for optical counterparts.

Second, all your material is a posterori ... and there is no quantitative, a priori, hypothesis anyway.

Third, neither Arp et al. nor you seem to have even considered stating a null hypothesis, much less testing one. For example, what sorts of quasar alignments have been found - using the same 'search and ye shall find' method - around some class (clearly specified, a priori) of star?

Fourth, no simulation of the method, using a mock catalogue for example, seems to have even been considered, much less tested.

And so on.

BeAChooser, you might like to consider what would happen if the kind of approach you have presented, in these few posts, were to be applied in, say, drug testing. My guess is that the FDA (or equivalent authority) would throw any submission for general release based on this approach out (with, no doubt, some very sharply worded comments), but if by some extraordinary oversight general release were permitted, many crippling law suits would follow in very short order.
.

As in the other case, we still have to add in the effect of the other data two points. Following the same approach as before, the probability of seeing the 0.35 value with an increment of 0.1 is 1/30 = 0.033. The probability of seeing the 0.81 data point with a increment of 0.30 is 1/10 = 0.1.

Therefore, the combined probability for NGC 5985 is 5.1 * 10^-5 * 0.033 * 0.1 = 1.683 x 10^-7. Accounting for the actual number of quasars that might be seen near galaxies in groups of 5 and the fact that all these objects are aligned with the minor axis gives a final probability of 1.683 x 10^-7 * 20,600 * 0.08 = ~0.0003 .

That's another very small probability. And finding two such improbable associations when Arp didn't look at all that many galaxies/quasars in order to find these cases, is makes this even more improbable.

.
Oh? And you know that he didn't look at many others because ...?

And, some years after this Chu et al. paper, L-C&G did a study and published a paper which knocks the case presented in the post I'm quoting for six.
.

Any way you look at it, DRD, this finding does not bode well for the theory that quasar redshifts are not quantized and have nothing to do with the galaxies that they are near. And I draw your attention to the use of Bayes' Theorem that I outlined in my earlier post to David (post #151).

I can update that case for the new probabilities calculated above as follows.

Suppose apriori we are really sure that the mainstream theory about quasars and redshift is correct. Let's say Pr⁰(A) = 0.999, leaving just a little room for doubt. That means Pr⁰(B) = 0.001. Fair enough?

Next, we "measure" that sequence of 5 redshift values from NGC 3516 that are all aligned with the minor axis of the galaxy. And based on the calculation I did above, the probability of that sequence of values and alignment occurring under the assumption that hypothesis A is correct (P_A(x_i)) is calculated to be no better than 0.0005. At the same time, we can say that P_B(x_i) = 0.9995.

Now let's compute Pr¹(A) and Pr¹(B).

Pr¹(A) = (0.999 * 0.0005) / (0.999 * 0.0005 + 0.001 * 0.9995) = 0.33

Pr¹(B) = 0.67

In other words, based on that single observation, the probability that your hypothesis is correct has dropped from 99.9% to 33% and the probability that the quasars' redshifts and positions aren't just a matter of random chance has risen from 0.1% to 67%.

.
And, in the light of L-C&G's paper, how would you go about re-estimating/re-calculating?

What results do you get?

In advance of knowing what redshifts other quasars around NGC 3516 are (quasars unknown at the time Chu et al. published, and unknown to you today), how would the calculations proceed, using unknowns for those redshifts? Take several cases: one with only one 'new' quasar, one with two new quasars, and so on. In each case, assume the 'new' quasar(s) has a redshift that is random in [0, 2.1]
.

That theorem shows that finding these cases significantly reduces the probability that the mainstream hypothesis about quasars is correct. At least enough that it would behoove the mainstream to take a closer look rather than just try to dismiss this out of hand as they have done, and you and David are now trying to do.

.
I don't know how you concluded that anyone dismissed this out of hand, perhaps you'd like to share your thoughts with us?

In any case, as I (and DD, and RC, and ...) have explained, there are extremely good grounds for dismissing this, ranging from the very bad use of statistics, the bad astronomy, and (above all) the results that have been published since Chu et al.

(to be continued)

 

[BeAChooser]

Why is the possible chance associations you meantion not comparable to the discussion here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php...&postcount=162

Well it's rather obvious you don't understand my calculation, David. But I think others do.

And you still haven't addressed representative sampling at all:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php...&postcount=163

But I did in my calculation. There is no "sampling" in the way you mean ... just calculations that show how extremely unlikely 2 different observations would be, under the mainstream's model, even if we were to examine every quasar and galaxy that is observable.

Nor have you addressed you mistaken use of probability after the fact

I think I'll let M. López-Corredoira and C. M. Gutiérrez address that one for me. From http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cach...ies+NGC+"minor+axis"&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us _ : "Some clarifications concerning the typical rebuff 'it is just an a posteriori calculation'. ... snip ... we would like to address the question of “a
posteriori probabilities”. It is said that one should not carry out a calculation of the probability for an a priori known configuration of objects (for instance, that they form a certain geometrical figure) because, in some way, all possible configurations are peculiar and unique. We agree while we speak about random configurations which do not indicate anything special. For example, if the Orion constellation is observed and we want to calculate the chance of their stars being projected in that exact configuration, we will get a null probability (tending towards zero as the allowed error in the position of the stars with respect the given configuration goes to zero), but the calculation of this probability is worthless because we have selected a particular configuration observed a priori. Therefore, the statistics to be carried out should not be about the geometrical figure drawn by the sources, unless that geometrical configuration is representative of a physical process in an alternative theory (for instance, aligned sources might be representative of the ejection of sources by a parent source). In this last sense, we think that much of the statistics already published is valid and indicates the reality of some kind of statistical anomaly. It would be useful to look out for physical representations indicating peculiarities beyond mere uniqueness. We disagree with the claim that all attempts to calculate probabilities of unexpected anomalies are a posteriori whose validity may therefore be rejected. Some astrophysicists, when looking at our images, argue along the lines that it is curious that some of our objects fall on the filament, but that since they do the probability is 1 and there is therefore nothing special about our galaxies. According to this argument, everything is possible in a Poissonian distribution and nothing should surprise us. But we believe that statistics is something more serious than the postmodern rebuff that anything is possible. We think that this anti-statistical position, this way of rejecting the validity of the calculated probabilities, is equivalent to the scepticism that those unfamiliar with mathematics express when we discuss the low probability of winning the lottery. ... snip ... imagine that a person wins the lottery four consecutive times with only one bet each time. If we did not believe in miracles, we might think that this person had cheated. We might carry out some statistical calculations and show how improbable it was that he/she could have won by chance. What might somebody say about these calculations, that they are not valid because they were carried out a posteriori (after the person won the lottery four consecutive times)? We would not agree because there is an alternative explanation (he/she is cheating; and this explanation could be thought of before the facts) and the event of winning the lottery four consecutive times, apart from being unique among the random possibilities, would be an indication to support this hypothesis. ... snip ... The question is as follows: what is the probability, P, that the apparent fact be the fruit of a
random projection of sources at different distances? In other words, what is the probability, P, that the standard theory can explain the observed facts without aiming at alternative scenarios?"

That, David, is essentially what I'm doing in my calculations too. Asking what is the probability that the standard theory of random redshifts and random quasar location can explain the observed facts. The calculations made are a perfectly valid answer to that question. Which I suspect is why they are giving you so much trouble.

 

[BeAChooser]

If these 2 quasar-like objects (and NGC 7603B?) were ejected from NGC 7603 in one ejection event then why do the quasar-like objects have different intrinsic redshifts?

I don't think it's been suggested that they came from one event.

If they were ejected in separate events (i.e. have different ages) then why is there an identical direction of ejection?

Perhaps that has something to do with the phenomena that perhaps ejected them? Why do an inordinate number of high redshift quasars seem to align themselves with the minor axes of galaxies? Could it have something to do with what is happening in the nucleus of those galaxies? Why do an inordinate number of higher redshift objects in clusters appear to align themselves with the minor axis of the largest low redshift member of the clusters? Could it have to do with how those other objects are created and evolve?

 

[BeAChooser]

It may be that your views have been mis-characterised, but I think the record, from your own posts, is pretty clear.

You trolling for a response to your faulty interpretation of my "views"?

 

[BeAChooser]

There seem to be just two papers BeAChooser is interested in discussing (those on NGC 3516 and NGC 7319).

No, I also mentioned NGC 5985 recently.

However, at some point I think we should get onto the question of what a quasar is

No one has been stopping you from suggesting an answer. In fact, I believe I asked you to provide an answer earlier. Are you just coy in not providing it? Trying to build suspense?

But like I said, what quasars are is not really important in the calculations I did above. All that is important is that the objects are high redshift, seemingly quantized and curiously aligned with certain features of the low redshift galaxies they are near.

 

[BeAChooser]

Maybe there should be a separate thread on the transparency of spiral galaxies? Clearly there is some confusion over this.

Oh ... are you now trying to suggest that Keel et. al. are confused?

 

[Reality Check]

I don't think it's been suggested that they came from one event.

Perhaps that has something to do with the phenomena that perhaps ejected them? Why do an inordinate number of high redshift quasars seem to align themselves with the minor axes of galaxies? Could it have something to do with what is happening in the nucleus of those galaxies? Why do an inordinate number of higher redshift objects in clusters appear to align themselves with the minor axis of the largest low redshift member of the clusters? Could it have to do with how those other objects are created and evolve?

Hi BeAChooser. I am not an astronomer but I look at the picture of NGC 7603 and I see a galaxy whose minor axis is pointed towards us. If the 2 quasar-like objects were ejected along the minor axis then I would expect them to be either behind NGC 7603 (and so not visible) or in front of NGC 7603. But they are off to one side, i.e. on the line of the filament from NGC 7603 to NGC 7603B.

Perhaps you can apply your probability calculations to this situation. I suspect that they will show that it is highly unlikely that 2 separate ejection events would place the ejected objects precisely in the curve of the filament.

Another problem with the quasar-like objects. The object that is further away from NGC 7603 has a lower redshift (z=0.245) then the one closer to NGC 7603 (z=0.394). Why? Shouldn't it be the other way round if the objects have "intrinsic redshift"?

 

[BeAChooser]

As I said earlier, this can be tested, and has been tested, using much bigger datasets

I think you continue to demonstrate that you don't actually understand the calculations I've made. There is no bigger dataset than what I assumed in my calculation, DRD. I used what the mainstream itself has concluded are all the available/observable quasars in the sky and very conservative assumptions as to the distribution of the quasars near galaxies. And I still end up with probabilities that are exceedingly low for finding the 2 specific observations for which I did calculations.

In any case, we have no idea how many galaxies Arp looked at, because he didn't say.

No, but I think it's safe to say he didn't look at them all or even a large fraction of them. Wouldn't you agree? Or are you so caught up in dismissing this, that you've lost the ability to reason?

That alone makes most of the above moot

It's not moot at all. If Arp only looked at half the possible galaxy/quasar cases, then the likelihood of him finding the 2 observations would be half of what I calculated. And we both know that he probably didn't come even close to looking at half the possible data points. Did he.

.
BeAChooser:
With an increment equal to twice the largest delta (i.e., 0.06), that probability is 1/((50 * 49 * 48)/(3*2*1)) = 1/19600 = 5.1 * 10-5.
.
And this is, as has been pointed out, very bad statistics.

First, more than one object was already known before Arp even started looking for optical counterparts.

No, my calculation is quite valid. It has nothing to do with what Arp did or what objects were known when Arp started looking. I'm looking only at what we know NOW. And those FACTS plus the mainstream's own conclusions regarding quasar densities and redshift distribution suggest it's very unlikely that we'd even see those cases if we examined every single quasar/galaxy combination there is. And your desperate hand-waving to make what the calculation suggests go away is quite obvious.

Second, all your material is a posterori

It doesn't matter. If I use your model to calculate the probability of certain events occurring and I find those probabilities are very very small even though those events have indeed occurred, that might be an indication that your model is wrong. That's what the Bayes' Theorem calculations suggest. That your model is wrong.

For example, what sorts of quasar alignments have been found - using the same 'search and ye shall find' method - around some class (clearly specified, a priori) of star?

But the alternative model is not suggesting that high redshift objects are aligned with stars. As L-C&G indicated above, that would be an improper use of posterior analsysis.

Fourth, no simulation of the method, using a mock catalogue for example, seems to have even been considered, much less tested.

Like I said, I don't think you actually understand the calculation.

And you know that he didn't look at many others because ...?

Time, for one thing. It's takes a lot of time to locate these cases. And for another, when he started looking we only knew of a fraction of the quasars that have now been identified. Yet he found these 2 case right away. Is that logic hard to fathom?

And, in the light of L-C&G's paper, how would you go about re-estimating/re-calculating?

You keep making these vague assertions. Don't be coy. If you think something SPECIFIC in the L-C&G paper requires I redo my calculation then spit it out. Tell us what it is. Because I frankly don't think it contains anything that changes my results. What I think is that you are throwing that reference out in the hope someone who hasn't taken the time to understand my calculation (like you) will dismiss the results and my conclusions out of hand.

In advance of knowing what redshifts other quasars around NGC 3516 are (quasars unknown at the time Chu et al. published, and unknown to you today)

You are throwing out a red herring. There is no reason to think there are quasars in the vicinity of NGC 3516 that Arp, Chu, Burbidge, et. al., didn't identify when they studied the area around it in detail. I think we can trust that Chu, Arp, etc did a very good job of locating the ones near that object once they realized there might be an anomoly in that case. It is up to you to demonstrate that there are quasars that haven't been considered around NGC 3516. Until such time as you do that, we perhaps would be wisest to trust the scientists who actually have studied this galaxy region in detail and have published papers on what they found.

I don't know how you concluded that anyone dismissed this out of hand, perhaps you'd like to share your thoughts with us?

You are doing it right now.

In any case, as I (and DD, and RC, and ...) have explained, there are extremely good grounds for dismissing this, ranging from the very bad use of statistics, the bad astronomy, and (above all) the results that have been published since Chu et al.

You haven't done that at all. Every single objection that you raised with respect to factors not considered in my calculation, I have shown actually lower the probabilities from that which I initially calculated. You threw Keel at me and I showed you hadn't actually read or understood what they concluded. I've shown that bad use of statistics is not the problem ... its your inability to understand the basis of the calculation. And you keep alluding to the Chu et al paper but you don't ever get specific. What you do is wave it around instead of waving your hands.

 

[BeAChooser]

I look at the picture of NGC 7603 and I see a galaxy whose minor axis is pointed towards us.

I wasn't trying to suggest in this case that they result from the exact same process that forms those objects that seem to align themselves with the minor axis. But the conditions that might produce matter (ala Narlikar) might occur in various circumstances ... especially in highly active cores. Then it isn't inconceivable that some phenomena (a pinch of some sort) could throw items out along a filament ... especially if the filament is produced by something related to that pinching process.

Another problem with the quasar-like objects. The object that is further away from NGC 7603 has a lower redshift (z=0.245) then the one closer to NGC 7603 (z=0.394).

That's not a problem. That's actually what Narlikar's cosmology predicts. As these objects age and become more massive, their redshift drops.

 

[Dancing David]

Well it's rather obvious you don't understand my calculation, David. But I think others do.
...


But I did in my calculation. There is no "sampling" in the way you mean ... just calculations that show how extremely unlikely 2 different observations would be, under the mainstream's model, even if we were to examine every quasar and galaxy that is observable.
...



That, David, is essentially what I'm doing in my calculations too. Asking what is the probability that the standard theory of random redshifts and random quasar location can explain the observed facts. The calculations made are a perfectly valid answer to that question. Which I suspect is why they are giving you so much trouble.

And how can you say that it is not just a random alignment? There is no way to tell a causal relationship from a random one with the stastics you are using.

So how does this type of calculation get around that fact? That it could just be a random alignment and would have the exact same values, the way you do your computation.



So your model would give the same value to a random alignment as a causal relationship. Not very useful.

Any laboratory show that Narlikar's mass aquisition exists, or anything other than the red shifts?

(Serious question, what is there besides the redshifts?)

 

[Reality Check]

I wasn't trying to suggest in this case that they result from the exact same process that forms those objects that seem to align themselves with the minor axis. But the conditions that might produce matter (ala Narlikar) might occur in various circumstances ... especially in highly active cores. Then it isn't inconceivable that some phenomena (a pinch of some sort) could throw items out along a filament ... especially if the filament is produced by something related to that pinching process.

That's not a problem. That's actually what Narlikar's cosmology predicts. As these objects age and become more massive, their redshift drops.

But the object further away should be older than the object closer in and thus Narlikar's cosmology predicts a lower intrinstic redshift. So does NGC 7603 disprove Narlikar's cosmology (and intrinsic redshift)?

 

[BeAChooser]

But the object further away should be older than the object closer in and thus Narlikar's cosmology predicts a lower intrinstic redshift. So does NGC 7603 disprove Narlikar's cosmology (and intrinsic redshift)?

No. The redshift of the objects as one moves away from NGC 7603 are z = 0.391, 0,243 and 0.057. That is what Narlikar's theory would predict. When the object is first created, it isn't very massive and has a high redshift. As it ages, it increases mass and the redshift drops. The objects farther from NGC 7603 would be older so one would expect them to have progressively lower redshifts ... which they do.