Redshift controversy

> Em Sex 27 Fev 2004 21:42, Paul D. Fernhout escreveu:
> (...)
>
>>Anybody know anything about this Electric Sun or related Redshift
>>controversy?
>
> I remember vaguely about a friend saying that there was a guy on the Internet
> who claimed that the redshift is a collective hallucination of the scientific
> establishment.

That might be Halton Arp, described in detail at:
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm

Other links:
http://www.quackgrass.com/roots/arp.html
http://www.dragonscience.com/

Essentially, based on evidence Arp has found telescopically such as that
pairs of very redshifted quasars appear to be associated with
differently redshifted galaxies (which he says generated them, other
astronomers argue it is all coincidence -- every last one, which he
argues is simply extremely improbable), he argues that newly emitted
quasars are redshifted in large part based on a factor other than
velocity, and these base red shifts are even quantized. Thus, rather
than being the oldest and most distant objects proving the big bang and
the expansion of the universe, quasars prove something else entirely...
Essentially, the "conspiracy" version of the story goes, Halton Arp was
a respected award winning astronomer, but as soon as he started
questioning the redshift dogma and expansion of the universe, he
suddenly couldn't get telescope time etc. anymore, etc. as the
established astronomers sought to shut him out of the big toys and the
playground.

The writeup on the above web page looks pretty convincing to me at first
glance (not being an astronomer) -- I would be interested to see someone
debunk it if it is nonsense. I particularly like this from that page,
because it is potentially very optimistic in a sense about ever
increasing resources in the universe: "If you read official explanations
usually placed on images such as these [claims of colliding galaxies],
you will see a preoccupation with the DEATH of stars and descriptions of
COLLIDING and MERGING and CANABALISING galaxies that are SMASHING
together. In actuality it is highly likely, in view of Arp's
observations, that what we are actually seeing most often is the birth
of galaxies and quasars not their deaths. And, instead of collision,
the separation of parent and offspring. Anyone looking at these images
in an unbiased way will see "fireworks!" - the birth and ejection of new
galaxies. And, if the universe is really expanding as Big Bang
proponents say, everything should be getting farther away from
everything else. Collisions of previously unrelated objects should be
highly improbable."

While it might not help with space settlement today, that notion of
galaxy creation both leads one to think there is lots of room to expand
into, and also that there may be as yet unknown ways of making matter
and energy from empty space. It certainly changes the dynamics of space
settlement if you can cruise anywhere in empty space and start making
stuff and power. Maybe those galaxies being born (or even quasars) are
just space faring species that have learned this trick?

To be clear, I'm not saying I necessarily agree with Arp (I only started
reading about this last night) -- just that this is a fascinating
alternative perspective on the nature of the universe, and if is true,
says a lot about how scientific establishments works in practice. Of
course, there are already plenty of examples of that [not saying I agree
with the rest of this page on cold fusion]:
http://www.cheniere.org/correspondence/090902.htm
"The scientific community also defends its present dogma nearly to the
death, and it always has, as any historian of science is well aware.
Check out the actual history of things like conservation of energy
(Mayer), continental drift (Wegener) , the amorphous semiconductor
(Ovshinsky), ultrawideband radar (Barrett and Harmuth), etc. "

For example:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html
"Reaction to Wegener's theory [of continental drift] was almost
uniformly hostile, and often exceptionally harsh and scathing; Dr.
Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago said, "Wegener's
hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes
considerable liberty with our globe, and is less bound by restrictions
or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories."

I remember reading how Ovshinsky was laughed at and called a crank and
shut out of academic science for saying semiconductors could be
amorphous instead of crystalline -- and now we use his ideas in
producing solar cells, recordable CDs, and even batteries.
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/ovshinsky.html

--Paul Fernhout