mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================
Book Review: Seeing Red by Halton Arp

Review by Tom Van Flandern
Reprinted from the December 15 1998 issue of the Meta Research Bulletin,
Vol. 7, #4

DON'T READ THIS BOOK. For if you should decide after reading this review
to disregard this advice, you will need to prepare to have your universe
turned upside-down. Should you then make your way through this small
print, 306-page tour de force, you will very likely come away doubting
what you thought you knew of the large-scale structure of the universe.
The cosmological interpretation of redshift for quasars and active
galaxy nuclei has been challenged often before, although never so
successfully. But one seldom sees serious suggestions that even the
redshift-distance relation for ordinary galaxies may be wrong, as you
will see here. And as if the implied revolution in cosmology were not
enough, your view of the professionalism of scientists and academics in
general, and of astronomers in particular, will be another casualty of
your reading.

One can consume this book to different degrees. For example, a short
summary of the evidence and implications appears on pp. 239-241. If the
writing proves too technical in places even with the aid of the
extensive glossary, one can get the essence of the evidence by just
scanning the plates (8 pages in color), figures, and captions that
appear on almost every page. For example, it's not difficult to look at
the picture of the x-ray filaments in Markarian 205, featured also on
the book cover, and to grasp the deep implications of that image. For if
a low-redshift Seyfert galaxy is physically connected to and interacting
with two high-redshift quasars, one on either side, then redshift can be
neither a distance nor a velocity indicator. And that single picture
then disproves the Big Bang and most of mainstream cosmology in its
present form.

Arp knows the extragalactic sky perhaps better than any other living
astronomer. He builds his case against the customary interpretation of
redshift methodically. The earliest hints of problems with redshift came
in 1911 with the discovery that the bright, blue stars in our own Milky
Way galaxy have systematically higher redshifts than the rest of the
stars by about 10 km/s. Later observations showed that the O-stars in
clusters within our galaxy are redshifted with respect to the B-stars by
another 10 km/s or so -- something called the "K-effect" and still
disputed because it has no accepted theoretical explanation. However,
doubts about the validity of the data were undercut and the K-effect
confirmed by more recent measures of the redshifts of supergiant stars
in the two Magellanic Clouds, nearby companion galaxies of the Milky
Way. These too are redshifted by about 30 km/s with respect to other
stars in those small galaxies. Yet no one suspects that all supergiant
stars in our galaxy or in our immediate neighbors are fleeing away
symmetrically from our own location well out toward one edge of the
Milky Way.

Companion galaxies in general seem to have net redshifts that exceed
that of their parents. All eleven companion galaxies in the Local Group
have redshifts with respect to their parent, the Andromeda galaxy in the
center of the group. Likewise, all eleven companion galaxies of the
neighboring M81 group have redshifts relative to M81. Yet, if these
companions were orbiting their parent galaxy, roughly 50% of them ought
to have been blue-shifted. Although the evidence for companion redshifts
is less definitive for more distant galaxy groups, it is still
statistically significant. Excess redshifts over blueshifts for
companion galaxies relative to their parents is apparently a verifiable
feature of the local universe. And that means the redshift must have
some cause other than velocity.

We begin to get some clues about what may be happening when Arp reminds
us of basic facts about radio galaxies. These were discovered long ago
to have giant, usually double, radio lobes to either side, presumably
the result of explosions and ejections of material from the parent
galaxy. Higher resolution radio telescopes have found filaments
connecting these lobes to the central galaxy. And the ejected radio
pairs are now known to correspond closely with x-ray pairs across the
same galaxy.

That brings us to the keys to unlocking the whole puzzle -- the quasars
-- because quasars also often correspond with x-ray sources. High and
low redshift quasars are associated far more often than reasonable
chance allows. These sometimes display interactions and connections and
often form pairs across low-redshift objects, which unrelated objects
would not do.

Working entirely from the observational data, Arp shows us that
ejections from active galactic nuclei at speeds up to 10% of the speed
of light lead to escape. But ejections at slower speeds may not,
especially since all ejections apparently decelerate on the way out.
Slower objects end up captured at about 400 kpc from their parent
galaxy. But both captured and escaped quasars end up with quite small
peculiar velocities. Moreover, the closest and therefore most recent
ejections have the highest relative redshifts, and the lowest intrinsic
luminosities. This leads Arp to suggest that the redshift of matter is
an inverse function of the age of that matter. As much as one wishes to
resist this conclusion, Arp shows case after case that conforms to it,
many found well after this hypothesis was in print, each with odds of
thousands to one against chance. Moreover, these apparently ejected
quasars with redshifts ordered inversely with distance from their parent
also tend to line up along the minor axis of the parent galaxy.

The generality of these startling conclusions is shown by repeated
examples, such as the Arp/Hazard pair of similar triplet quasars, having
discordant redshifts and a Seyfert galaxy between them. Many other good
examples were discovered by mainstream astronomers. However, even when
looking in depth at single examples, Arp makes a compelling case against
coincidence. A survey of all bright quasars showed that these have a
concentration around the Virgo cluster at the center of the Local
Supercluster, despite having redshifts that should place them far out
into the universe in that direction and make them unrelated to one
another. The most conspicuous quasar in the sky is 3C273, one member of
a pair of quasars almost exactly aligned across the brightest galaxy in
the Virgo cluster center. A peculiar hydrogen cloud known to be in the
Virgo cluster near the coordinates of 3C273 has a long, narrow shape
pointing back toward the quasar, which itself has a jet pointing toward
the hydrogen cloud. An x-ray radiation map (see Figure 5-16) also shows
connections between the cluster to the quasar. Yet the quasar is
supposed to be 54 times farther away than the cluster, according to its
redshift. As Arp says, over 30 years ago, the field of astronomy took a
gamble against odds of a million to one that this situation was an
accident. The newer x-ray and hydrogen cloud evidence have confirmed
that this was a bad gamble, although the field is not yet ready to
accept its losses and move on.

Because redshift is not a good distance indicator, Arp points out that
apparent brightness often is. Quasars near M49 appear relatively random
on a sky map until just the brighter ones in a half-magnitude range are
plotted. Then magically, there appears a line of quasars emerging from
M49 with redshifts decreasing with distance, just as the
observation-driven model predicts.

Whenever secondary distance indicators are available, they support this
picture. In some cases, Faraday rotation caused by traversing a
magnetized plasma can be measured for quasars. So the amount of such
rotation ought to be a distance indicator. But it was then discovered
that quasars with redshifts of about 2 had only 1/3 as much Faraday
rotation as quasars with redshifts of about 1, when they ought to have
had twice as much rotation. By contrast, this is in accord with Arp's
model because the redshift z = 2 quasars are intrinsically fainter, and
therefore generally seen only at closer distances, than those with z = 1.

Arp concludes that quasars are initially faint, point-like objects of
high redshift that transform into lower-redshift, compact objects
surrounded by a fuzz as they evolve. These develop into small,
high-surface-brightness galaxies with more material around them.
Ultimately these mature into normal, quiescent galaxies.

In this new view of relationships among astrophysical objects, Seyfert
galaxies and their close cousins, BL Lac objects, are short-lived
evolutionary stages associated with quasar ejection from active galaxy
nuclei. In effect, Seyferts are quasar factories. Strong quasar
number-counts are associated with a nearly complete sample of bright
Seyferts, as compared with non-Seyfert control fields. Some of these
associations have laughable explanations in mainstream journal articles.
Quasar GC0248+430 is described as a "possibly microlensed quasar behind
a tidal arm of a merging galaxy", which just happens to be a Seyfert.

Indeed, quasars look to astronomers like small portions of active
(Seyfert-like) galactic nuclei. Their pairing across such nuclei, their
alignment with radio emission pairings, the correspondences of x-ray
maps, and the data from optical emission lines all strongly support the
ejection interpretation. If nature has not already provided enough
hints, an apparent magnitude vs. redshift (Hubble) diagram shows that
Seyfert galaxies have too much redshift at fainter magnitudes and do not
follow the same relationship as normal galaxies. Indeed, the Hubble
diagram for Seyferts trends toward that for quasars, which likewise do
not show a normal Hubble relationship between brightness and redshift.
One wonders how many different ways nature must repeat this message
about redshift not corresponding to distance before it sinks in with the
astronomers.

Other astrophysical objects are in accord with this message. Water maser
emissions are also seen in pairs roughly aligned with quasars. X-ray
filaments or jets emerge from Seyfert galaxies and end at quasars, often
in pairs of similar redshift on opposite sides of the minor axis of the
galaxy between. And high-luminosity spiral galaxies have excess
redshifts compared to normal spirals, as judged by the Tully-Fisher
method of judging distances from rotation rates (which is independent of
redshift).

One might well wonder what galaxy clusters have so say about this, since
these are clearly physically associated groupings of galaxies. The
supporting evidence they provide is truly extensive. Classically, whole
galaxy clusters obey a Hubble diagram relation between redshift and
brightness with a dispersion of just a few tenths of a magnitude. But 14
clusters north of Cen A have a much larger dispersion with a maximum
range of 4 magnitudes. Such clusters have no relationship of the type
claimed for ordinary galaxies, and call into question that the classical
Hubble relationship can have the meaning usually attributed to it --
that redshift indicates distance -- for anything. We may simply have
been fooled by both luminosity and redshift being functions of mass,
which would lead to an apparent Hubble relationship despite no true
distance dependence.

Some of the cluster examples are certainly head-turners. Abell clusters
of galaxies with higher redshifts are distributed right down the spines
of both the Virgo cluster and its southern-hemisphere twin, the Fornax
cluster. A complete sample over a large region of the southern sky
showed that the strongest x-ray cluster concentration had the two
brightest galaxies (M83 and Cen A) at its center, despite much larger
redshift for the x-ray clusters. In general, x-ray clusters appear more
commonly with redshifts of about 0.06 than chance allows, which in Arp's
interpretation marks them as young and intrinsically redshifted.

Supporting data includes cooling flow measures, which indicate that at
least 100 solar masses per year are being lost from these clusters. This
implies 100 billion solar masses in a billion years. Where is it going?
The obvious possibilities can all be ruled out. BL Lac objects, at
redshifts intermediate between quasars and cluster galaxies, are
apparently progenitors of clusters of galaxies. Normal galaxies within
certain redshift ranges tend to align on the sky in strings, with the
lowest redshift galaxy near the center. For example, 13 of the 14
brightest northern hemisphere spiral galaxies in uncrowded fields fall
on well-marked lines of galaxies that have concentrations of fainter,
higher-redshift galaxies. And there are anomalous faint, blue, often
active galaxies that fill out clusters in the redshift range between 0.2
and 0.4. These apparently evolve into the higher luminosity, lower
redshift objects seen at 0.02 < z < 0.2. Finally, below redshifts of
about 0.02 we find strings of galaxies aligned through the brightest
nearby spiral galaxies, presumably representing the last evolutionary
stage of protogalaxies before becoming the slightly higher redshift
companions of the original ejecting galaxies. We are so accustomed to
thinking of this sequence as a time evolution that it takes some effort
to re-think the whole picture as a mass-luminosity-redshift evolution at
a nearly fixed time.

So the young-appearing objects with the highest redshifts are aligned on
either side of eruptive objects, which implies the ejection of
protogalaxies and the association of redshift with youth. Increasing
distance from parent leads to brighter, lower redshift objects, so this
is the direction of evolution with age. At redshifts of about 0.3 and
distances of about 400 kpc from the parent, quasars become very bright
at optical wavelengths and in x-rays, and evolve into BL Lac-type
objects -- a short-lived stage because there are few of them. Finally,
these evolve into clusters of galaxies, which are seen to appear at
comparable distances to the BL Lac objects, implying that clusters may
originate from the breakup of BL Lac objects.

There is more. Tight multiple-quasars-image groupings were originally
dismissed as observational errors until the gravitational lens theory
was invoked. Then many more examples were quickly found. G2237+0305 was
essentially a high-redshift quasar in the nucleus of a low-redshift
galaxy. Lensing was the only way out for cosmologists. The four quasar
images were all within one arc second of the galaxy nucleus. But Hoyle
computed the probability of such a lensing event as two in a million.
Moreover, instead of being arcs as lensing theory predicted, the quasar
images are extended back toward the central galaxy. Real arc images
don?t look much like the predicted arcs either, but rather like part of
an expanded shell. This alternative is in better agreement with the
existence of radial arcs, jet arcs, dog-leg arcs, and ejected jets that
end in transverse arcs.

The last main observational area deals with the quantization of
redshifts. In essence, redshifts do not take on all values with equal
ease, as they must if they are caused mainly by the velocities of the
observed objects. For example, redshifts near 0.061, 0.3, 0.6, 0.91,
1.41, 1.96, etc. occur more frequently than chance permits. Smaller
redshifts too occur at preferred periodic intervals, as Tifft has shown
in a study confirmed in an independent sample by Guthrie and Napier. The
existence of preferred values for redshifts proves that either we are at
the center of a series of expanding shells, or redshift does not
indicate velocity. Arp cautions that faint quasars with high redshifts
do not continue to show this effect, perhaps because the form of the
relationship changes at great distances from us (as faintness would
suggest). Also, much of the spread that exists around these preferred
redshift values is apparently due to the speed of ejection, which can be
up to 0.1 c. The average redshift of a quasar pair generally falls
closer to a preferred redshift value than does either individual
redshift. BL Lac objects show the same quantization, but to a less
pronounced degree, as befits their relationship to quasars. Figure 8-16
shows a striking set of bands and gaps for galaxy redshifts in the x-ray
cluster Abell 85 that illustrates the redshift quantization effect at a
glance.

Arp's strength is observational extragalactic astronomy. With theory he
is less proficient, but has enlisted the aid of Narlikar, Hoyle and
others. The concept of mass increasing with age has no adjustable
parameters (the characteristic age being given by the measured age of
our own galaxy), yet allows prediction of intrinsic redshifts for
objects from K-effect stars to quasars, with results better than an
order of magnitude. The Big Bang with many adjustable parameters cannot
do as well. Redshift, then, indicates youth. And the slope of the Hubble
diagram comes directly from our own galaxy's age. Since luminosity
evolves with mass squared, the apparent brightness-redshift relationship
is coincidental, and not an indicator of distance. I am no doubt biased
here by seeing simpler theoretical explanations for Arp's observational
constraints than his variable-mass theory can provide. But Arp concedes
in places that theories need to evolve with discoveries, something that
the Big Bang stopped doing at a fundamental level a generation ago.

Some of the most entertaining reading in this book is provided by Arp's
interactions with his colleagues and with referees and journal editors.
Arp spices up these exchanges with a bit of his own philosophy. Despite
its pessimism, I wonder how any of us could have evolved a philosophy
much more optimistic if we had been in Arp's shoes. Anonymous referees
frequently use abusive language such as "ludicrous", or unwarranted
generalizations such as "bizarre conclusions based on an extreme bias of
the authors wishing to find non-cosmological redshifts". It was not
infrequent to find referees suggesting that the implications should have
been used to prove the observations wrong! A Nobel laureate and former
teacher is quoted as saying "Arp did not get anything right in my
course. I should have flunked him but I could not bear to have him
repeat the course with me."

We see in the anecdotes frequent occurrences of "sniping", unbacked
claims that something is true or false for some reason that is not
presented to the author for rebuttal. One example: "Oh those claims have
been completely disproved." Arp introduces a few names for some of these
battle tactics himself. The "Pleiades maneuver" is one such: Measure so
much background that the statistical significance of the obvious
foreground (such as the Pleiades cluster) is reduced to insignificance.
Reaction to the x-ray map showing the connection of the Virgo cluster
and quasar 3C273 produced five arrogant and patronizing referee
rejections at two journals, and were viewed even by some colleagues
"like a grisly auto accident along the highway".

Sadly, the mainstream is well adapted for survival. So when Arp succeeds
in running the minefield and getting his results published despite the
referees, an unwritten understanding is that no discussion or citations
will follow so the embarrassing result will soon be forgotten. Arp
suggests that a sampling of referee reports, showing "manipulative, sly,
insulting, arrogant, and above all angry" referees, ought to be
published because it would allow people to evaluate the objectivity of
the information they are being allowed to read.

Here are some brief quotes outlining what Arp has learned from these
exchanges.

* "When presented with two possibilities, scientists tend to choose
the wrong one."
* The stronger the evidence, the more attitudes harden.
* "The game here is to lump all the previous observations into one
'hypothesis' and then claim there is no second, confirming
observation."
* "No matter how many times something has been observed, it cannot
be believed until it has been observed again."
* "If you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best
possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with
an academic who is completely impervious to reality.
* "When looking at this picture no amount of advanced academic
education can substitute for good judgment; in fact it would
undoubtedly be an impediment."
* Local organizing committees give in to imperialistic pressures to
keep rival research off programs
* "It is the primary responsibility of a scientist to face, and
resolve, discrepant observations."
* Science is failing to self-correct. We must understand why in
order to fix it.

The book has many more like these.

As with any work of such length and depth, a few errors turned up along
with a few points that are of dubious merit. None of us can be experts
in everything, and we are always pushing the limits of our knowledge and
training. Worth a comment are these points:

* Arp's arguments against tired light models (p. 97) make a common
invalid assumption that quantum particles must be responsible for
the energy loss. But there is good reason to suspect that quantum
particles are by no means fundamental.
* Arp's proposal (p. 219) that even planetary and satellite masses
may be quantized uses an invalid statistical argument when
bridging large ranges of mass. But he may well be right for small
mass differences. Origin in twin pairs by fission usually creates
masses in the approximate ratio of 5:4, which may partly explain
Arp's planet statistics. It might also explain his magical 1.23
redshift quantization ratio if a similar fission process is
responsible for the twin ejections in galaxies.
* On p. 234, Arp cites the surface brightness test, which must vary
as (1+z)^4 in the Big Bang. He applies that to his own model on
the assumption that observations support it. However, the observed
dependence goes as (1+z)^2 . Evolution of galaxies is said to be
responsible for the difference in the Big Bang, but that argument
would not apply to Arp's model.
* On p. 237, Arp incorrectly states that the cosmic microwave
radiation must come from a thin shell, saying this has not been
explained. But that radiation is supposed to have flooded the
universe shortly after the Big Bang, and been cooling ever since.
So every point in the universe is today receiving cooled
radiation, and there is no shell anywhere. Arp correctly goes on
to provide more probable explanations for the radiation than a
fireball residue.
* Arp's use of statistics cries out for him to explain the
difference between /a priori/ and /a posteriori/ probabilities, if
only to assure us that he understands the difference and its
importance.
* It was disappointing to see no mention of the role of giant
elliptical galaxies in the evolutionary scheme of things.

Arp correctly points out that one side in this meaning-of-redshift
debate must be completely and catastrophically wrong. This leads him to
wonder how many other uncertain assumptions might exist in other areas
affecting our daily lives about which we are innocently overconfident.
That is perhaps the most sobering thought of all.

[$25, published by Apeiron in Montreal in 1998; also available from Meta
Research]

/Order/ Seeing Red /by Halton Arp online from Meta Research./
</home/store/advanced/default.asp>

©1991-2005 Meta Research. All rights reserved
Back To Top <#top>      Contact Meta Research
</mailer/form-feedback.asp>      Privacy Policy
</home/about%20meta%20research/privacy_policy.asp>