mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL IV, No 8 April 30, 2000 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS THE COLOR PURPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mel Acheson RECONSTRUCTING THE SATURN MODEL . . . . . . . . . by Dave Talbott MAY 5th CONJUNCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Amy Acheson SCIENCE HEADED FOR A BIG BANG . . . . . . . . . .by Wal Thornhill >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< THE COLOR PURPLE By Mel Acheson Rediscovering F. A. Hayek's The Sensory Order has been exciting. He began his inquiry into the foundations of theoretical psychology in 1919 before specializing in economics (and winning a Nobel Prize in that latter field in 1974). He didn't publish The Sensory Order until 1952, when he found "with considerable surprise" that theoretical psychology "remained pretty much in the same state in which it had been" 30 years before. He attributed this stasis to "the prevalence during this period of an all too exclusively empirical approach and of an excessive contempt for 'speculation'. It seems almost as if 'speculation' (which, be it remembered, is merely another word for thinking) had become so discredited among psychologists that it has to be done by outsiders who have no professional reputation to lose." (Preface, p. vi, 1976 paperback reprint by University of Chicago Press.) Hayek presents the fundamental problem with which psychology is concerned to be explaining the existence of and differences between the sensory order of our minds and the physical or objective order as delineated by the various sciences. It's the distinction between things as related to us and things as related to each other. For example, the sensory order classifies colors in a circle: red shades into blue through the color purple. But in the physical order the colors are a short segment of a much longer linear continuum, and purple doesn't exist. Drawing on the largely physiological investigations of the previous century, Hayek notes that all nerve impulses are identical. A receptor cell discharges its tiny current; the next cell on the path to the brain is thereby stimulated to fire; and so on until the last cell in the brain fires. There's no continuity in current and no variation in current: cells either fire or not. There's no transfer of specific information. The only thing that distinguishes one nerve impulse from another is its location with respect to all other nerves. The sensory order thus arises from relationships of impulses relative to each other. It's not a manipulation of stimuli carrying information from objects in the physical world but a classification of internal relationships that stand in mutable correspondences to physical relationships. Hayek further notes that these impulses are not isolated. They occur in associations or 'linkages' with each other. Any one impulse will have a 'following' of other impulses. This following includes impulses to and from motor nerves and self-sensing nerves (proprioceptors) as well. The impulses become sorted or classified according to followings, groups of followings, groups of groups, etc. A complex network arises of multiple classification, both in a proliferation of classes and in a hierarchy of classes of classes. And this classification mechanism is dynamic: New impulses don't simply add to what's there, but the whole network continuously modifies and re-classifies itself. Hayek points out the dearth of information about how much of this network we're born with (i.e., is genetically determined) and how much results from learning. But certainly by the time a baby learns to talk, the network is fully functional and further learning consists essentially in modifications or re-classifications of what are literally preconceptions. Perception and conception, the concrete and the abstract, are merely slight variations in the underlying dynamics of the sensory network. One can as easily perceive gestalts as the individual objects composing them. (As an aside, Hayek mentions that ideas of some specific "nervous energy" that carries information or ideas of some "substance" of which mind is composed are actually materialistic conceptions, whereas his formulation, although based on physiology, is not.) What I find exciting are the implications for paradigm shifts. The sensory order that occurs in humans as a result of the particular arrangements and sensitivities of their nervous system must be different from other species. Thus there can be many sensory orders (how things relate to an observer) within the larger objective order (how things relate to each other). Put another way, the objective order (how things relate to x) is just one of many possible orders (where x may be an observer). Truth, or the real, lies not so much in a thing (the "ding an sich") as in relationships. It must be conceived as a multiplicity: Rather than being a singular order of things-an F(x)-it's a family of possible orders-F(x sub n). What does this have to do with paradigm shifts? Two things: First, currently accepted theories claim to be objective, but they're only relatively so: They're "objectified" re- classifications of sunlit reflections of objects we stumble over in the night. We hear the dogs bark, and we use that association of impulses to build our theories. But sometimes the dogs seem to bark at nothing. Except for the occasional lightning bolt, we don't sense electricity. For us, it's nothing. In our sensory order, it barely exists. If we could sense magnetic fields, as hammerhead sharks apparently do, or electric impulses, as platypuses do, our sensory order-and our image of the objective order-would be quite different. Auroras would extend all the way to the ground, perhaps through the ground. They would connect in space from pole to pole. Venus would appear as a spectacular comet with a writhing tail stretching all the way to the Earth. Perhaps all the planets would be classed as "big comets". Or perhaps we wouldn't be able to "see" the planetary surfaces we now see, seeing instead only the boiling tops of their plasma sheaths, and we would think of them as small suns. The Electric Universe would seem obvious and Newton's gravity would seem fantastical. Second, the ever-finer distinctions we make among our associations of nerve impulses can result in increased articulation of present classifications (Kuhn's "normal science"). But it can also result in drastic re-classifications whereby classes of impulses become linked to entirely different classes (Kuhn's "paradigm shifts"). This also explains the "incommensurability" of paradigms: A stimulus that energizes a particular group of impulses in one person (the word 'plasma' for a mainstream physicist, evoking associations of 'ionized gas' and 'ideal gas law') will energize an entirely different group of impulses in an electric-universe physicist ('plasma' evoking 'filamentation' and 'jets'). Hayek again (p. 142): "If sensory perception must be regarded as an act of classification, what we perceive can never be unique properties of individual objects but always only properties which the objects have in common with other objects. Perception is thus always an interpretation, the placing of something into one or several classes of objects. An event of an entirely new kind which has never occurred before, and which sets up impulses which arrive in the brain for the first time, could not be perceived at all." Hence each of the two physicists may be unable to perceive what the other is talking about. The "bottom line" conclusion of these two aspects of the sensory order is that paradigm shifts are just as inherent in our lives as the color purple. Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ****************************************************************** RECONSTRUCTING THE SATURN MODEL By David Talbott [Editor's Note: The following paragraphs are excerpted from the Introduction of the forthcoming volume, WHEN SATURN WAS KING; co-authors David Talbott and Ev Cochrane] IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY It was in 1950 that Immanuel Velikovsky published his groundbreaking work, _Worlds in Collision_. triggering one of the most heated scientific controversies in this century. Based on a reading of mythical and historical material from around the world, Velikovsky described a series of catastrophes which he claimed occurred between 1500 BC and 686 BC, and he said that the agents of these disasters were planets moving on erratic courses. Most controversial of all was his claim that a few thousand years ago the planet Venus roamed the heavens as a terrifying "comet," whose catastrophic near collisions with the Earth brought an end to numerous civilizations. In his labors to comprehend early human history, Velikovsky commanded respect from many intellectual giants of the twentieth century: Sigmund Freud and Freud's first pupil Wilhelm Stekel; Harvard historian Robert Pfeifer; Harry Hess, one of the world's most respected geologists; noted French archaeologist, Claude Schaefer; and Albert Einstein, who edited the physics and mathematics section of Velikovsky's _Scripta Universitatis_. But this respect from such distinguished scientists and scholars would not redeem Velikovsky in the eyes of the larger scientific community, whose responses ranged from anger to misrepresentation and ridicule. The sweeping dismissal of Velikovsky by science implied that no fundamental aspect of his work had the slightest merit. And yet, even if Velikovsky was only correct at some elementary level, his treatment by the scientific elite will rank as one of the darkest marks on science in modern times. The prospect that major theoretical edifices could collapse under the impact of Velikovsky's revelations is hardly a small matter either. THE ESSENTIAL VELIKOVSKY Velikovsky saw in ancient literature, with its pervasive imagery of disaster and improbable monsters in the sky, a story of planetary instability. And he argued that the records of early cultures permit a reconstruction of the crucial events. Whether Velikovsky was correct in the details of his analysis is another matter. But our first interest is in the fundamental concepts- 1. The planetary system was unstable in geologically recent times, and the present order of the solar system is new. 2 Erratic movements of the planets dramatically affected our Earth. 3. Episodes of interplanetary catastrophe occurred within human memory. 4. World mythology and ancient astronomical traditions preserve vivid accounts of these events. 5. Both Venus and Mars were directly involved in earth-disturbing encounters. 6. The planet Venus took the form of an earth-threatening comet. These vital tenets of Velikovsky's work, we believe, will find converging support from both historical testimony and physical evidence. And certainly one cannot deny that, since the publication of Worlds in Collision, a major shift in scientific perspective has occurred.. When Worlds in Collision appeared in 1950, astronomers and geologists were entirely captivated by 19th century models, in which global catastrophes had no place in the history of the solar system, the evolution of the Earth, or the human past. But under the influence of space age discovery, has it been Velikovskians, or Velikovsky's critics, who have have lost the most ground? In the past two decades the notion of cometary catastrophe has emerged as a great fascination to science, and while this fascination is often focused on an apparent global disaster linked to extinction of the dinosaurs, it now extends as well to speculations on more recent cometary disasters. A good example is the work of the British astronomers, Victor Clube and William Napier, authors of _The Cosmic Serpent_, and _Cosmic Winter, offering a theory of doomsday comets that not only sounds a lot like Velikovsky, but IS Velikovskian in more ways than one. VELIKOVSKY'S SATURN HYPOTHESIS In addition to the well-publicized claims of _Worlds in Collision_, Velikovsky had, in an unpublished manuscript, set forth an extraordinary idea. He suggested that in the earliest= remembered time, the Earth was joined with other planets in a planetary arrangement vastly different from anything we observe today. He suggested that the Earth was a satellite of the planet Saturn, a planet Velikovsky associated with a former Golden Age or paradisal condition on earth. He identified Saturn as the "dying god" of ancient lore, and he claimed that a disruption of Saturn was responsible for the mythical Deluge, a global catastrophe which brought Saturn's Golden Age to an end and gave rise to a new epoch dominated by the planet Jupiter. But over the last 25 years of his life the details of his Saturn research remained sketchy, and nothing more than a few pages was ever published. Investigation of the Saturn question did not stop with Velikovsky,however. Over the past three decades a few independent researchers, inspired by Velikovsky's speculatons, have pursued the question in great depth, exposing a collective memory far beyond anything suggested by Velikovsky himself. A SATURN MODEL In the broadest sense, the hypothesis we present in these pages will offer a new way of viewing the human past. Our thesis is that the myth-making phase of human history arose as a direct response to natural phenomena no longer present. Astronomers and astrophysicists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and students of ancient myth and religion are asked to reconsider common assumptions about the ancient world, including many that have rarely if ever been questioned. We agree with Velikovsky that major changes in the planetary order have occurred within human memory and that our ancestors preserved a global record of tumultuous, Earth-threatening events. Moreover, we intend to demonstrate that the origin of the first civilizations is simply inexplicable apart from ritual practices honoring, imitating, and re-living these extraordinary natural occurrences. The dominant powers celebrated in ancient myths and rites were planets moving close to the earth. That the present order of the solar system may be extraordinarily recent, and that planet-sized bodies appeared gigantic in our sky will not be easily believed in an age accustomed to billion-year scenarios of planet formation and evolution. Nevertheless, the model we shall present has one advantage that prior theories based on ancient testimony have lacked: it is specific enough to be easily falsified if wrong. Whatever else one may think of our reconstruction, it meets that universal test of a good theory. The theory holds that our Earth formerly moved in a congregation of planets unlike anything observed today. For earthbound witnesses, the result was a spectacular and at times highly unified planetary form in the heavens, visually dominated by the gas giant Saturn. POLAR CONFIGURATION A fear-inspiring form, constituted by Saturn and an assembly of planets and moons, stretched across the northern sky, towering over the ancient world. We've termed this the "polar configuration" because it was centered on the north celestial Pole. And we've proposed that the history of this configuration is the history of the ancient gods, recorded in the fantastic stories, pictographs, and ritual reenactments of the first sky worshippers. Included in the evidence we shall consider are the following highly enigmatic patterns which can be documented around the world-- * Remarkably similar pictures of a primeval "sun" in the sky, depicted as an immense sphere shining at night. * An astronomically "absurd" crescent placed on the orb of this "sun;" * An equally absurd "star" placed in the center of the "sun." * Universal chronicles of a cosmic mountain, a pillar of fire and light rising along the world axis. * A radiant "city" or "temple" of heaven, providing the prototype for sacred dwellings on earth. * An angry or lamenting goddess, raging across the sky with wildly disheveled hair and threatening to destroy the world. * A fiery serpent or dragon disturbing the celestial motions and throwing the world into darkness. * An ancestral warrior or hero, born from the womb of the star- goddess to vanquish the chaos-serpent or dragon. Is it possible that such diverse images (we've cited only the barest few among hundreds) could have a unified explanation? Our claim will be that the common patterns of world mythology answer to a simple planetary model. And in this sense, our model can properly claim to provide a unified theory of ancient myth and symbolism. It needs to be emphasized, therefore, that this model is fully testable against a massive historical record, and we invite systematic evaluation of the reconstruction by qualified researchers. Additionally, the model will suggest numerous tests within the physical sciences, relating to expected physical markers on planets and moons. If the claimed events occurred, our Earth must have been affected in dramatic ways, and this would include effects so unlikely under the usual assumptions of science as to constitute a series of critical tests. Of course the subject is far too vast to be summarized adequately in a few pages. In several cases the broad themes identified will require separate volumes--they are simply noted, perhaps with an illustration or two. Our immediate goal is to substantiate an underlying idea--that the recurring themes of myth and symbol are not the isolated fragments historians have assumed, but intimately connected pieces of a whole, all tied to identifiable forms in the sky. [NOTE ON THE CO-AUTH0RS OF THE PRESENT VOLUME]- David Talbott was serving as publisher of Pensée magazine's "Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered" series in 1972, when he received a two-page summary of Velikovsky's Saturn material. That began an intensive research project to investigate Saturn's place in world mythology. In _The Saturn Myth_ (Doubleday, 1980) Talbott presented evidence of the planet Saturn's central role in ancient myths of beginnings The book summarized the mythical Golden Age of Saturn and claimed that a spectacular planetary configuration once towered over mankind. It argued further that this unique planetary arrangement provided the objective source for numerous mythical and symbolic forms recorded by ancient civilizations on every continent (world pillar, world mountain, eye goddess, wheel of the sun, celestial city, bull of heaven, etc.)--images that historians and mythologists have always regarded as metaphors with little if any concrete reference in nature. In 1980, Ev Cochrane, then a graduate student at Iowa State University, was pursuing independent research on Velikovsky when a correspondent recommended Talbott's book. His reading of the book led eventually to communication with Talbott and the beginnings of collaboration extending over many years. Cochrane is now the publisher of AEON: A Journal of Myth, Science, and Ancient History, founded by Talbott in 1987. He is also author of the volume, _Martian Metamorphoses_, published in 1997, exploring the role of Mars in the ancient planetary configuration. Talbott, in his turn, published a notebook "Symbols of an Alien Sky" in 1997, offering a visual summary of key phases in the evolution of the planetary assembly. Both Talbott and Cochrane have, together with fellow "Saturn theorist," Dwardu Cardona, published many articles in AEON discussing aspects of the hypothesis. The present book begins the authors' efforts to clarify the reconstruction through a series of volumes. Dave Talbott ****************************************************************** MAY 5th CONJUNCTION By Amy Acheson In response to the many people who have mentioned the upcoming planetary conjunction, here's a short quote: "In February 1524, the seven "planets" were in the astrologically "humid" signs of Aquarius and Pisces. The terrified astrologers predicted floods, earthquakes, and other catastrophes, but nothing special happened." Taken from: Planetary Grouping and the Millennium: Why Panic? By Jean Meeus Adapted from Sky & Telescope, August 1997 Whole article can be found here: http://www.skypub.com/news/special/whypanic.html Meeus retrocalculates all of the 5-planet conjunctions [defined as 30 degree or less separation] since the year 1, and forward at least as far as my current life expectancy. Meeus documents that we somehow managed to survive the line-up of 1962 and the non-existent alignment of 1982 [tightest-packed grouping of all planets of the 20th century; slightly wider than 90 degrees.) Even though the author omits any mention of solar electrical interactions (though tidal interactions are carefully calculated), I think I can safely conclude that the only thing preventing our discussion of the event on May 6th would be the failure of the list server. Unless, of course, we somebody should see fit to celebrate by starting a major war. Sadly, I can't imagine the tabloids or sensationalist book authors offering refunds in June if the world fails to come to an end on schedule. Amy Acheson ****************************************************************** SCIENCE HEADED FOR A BIG BANG By Wal Thornhill Forget the glossy astronomy books and magazines - the Big Bang is pure fiction. The discoveries that prove it will also bring about the end of science-as-we-know-it. Of course, many books and articles have been published recently heralding the end of science - meaning there is little left to learn. The truth is the opposite. Much of what we think we know "ain't so". As always, unlearning it will give us more trouble than learning something new. The belief of scientists in their cleverly concocted creation story, the Big Bang, has become so entrenched and over-hyped that it is difficult to imagine an effective face-saving strategy when the news leaks out that it is nonsense. And let there be no doubt about it, the hard science to prove the case against the Big Bang has been done by an astronomer who is uniquely well placed for the task. [Ed note: see this article with photos and diagrams at Thornhill's website: http://www.holoscience.com/news/science_bang.htm His name is Halton Arp, known for his classic work in "Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies". When he began to announce findings nearly 30 years ago that contradicted orthodox cosmology he was refused telescope time and publication in the standard journals. In frustration he published two books, the first in 1987 titled "Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies", and more recently "Seeing Red". "Redshift" is the term used to describe the shift in frequency of spectral lines toward the red end of the spectrum. It's known to occur when an object is speeding away from us. Edwin Hubble discovered that the luminosity of a galaxy is related to its redshift: the fainter the galaxy, the higher the redshift. He suggested one interpretation of this data is that the greater the redshift (and therefore, the velocity), the farther away the galaxy. Thus, the expanding universe was born. But he was careful not to assume that this was the only possible interpretation of the redshift data. Others since have thrown scientific caution to the winds and used Hubble's hypothesis as a rubbery yardstick with which to measure the size and age of the universe. Arp avoided this unscientific approach and made discoveries that are unequalled in the history of astronomy. Many peculiar galaxies turn out to be what are known as active galaxies. They are often seen to have thin jets of matter firing from their cores, and bridges of matter or radio lobes connecting them with nearby objects. Arp noticed that quasars are clustered in the sky with active galaxies far too often to be a coincidence. Quasars are faint starlike objects whose spectra are highly redshifted. The Big Bang view is that their redshifts are due to the expansion of the universe and the doppler effect as the quasars race away from us at a good fraction of light speed. A high redshift equates in that model to great distance so they should have no association with much closer galaxies. Yet Arp showed that some quasars are connected by bridges or jets of matter to active galaxies. Since the advent of orbiting x-ray telescopes these bridges are becoming abundantly clear. But now we come to the results of Arp's work that will shake the foundations of modern physics. He found that quasars lined up on either side of active galaxies as if they are spat out at regular intervals from the galactic cores, above and below the plane of the galaxy. He then found that the redshifts of these quasars fall back toward normal levels and increase in brightness the further they are from the parent galaxy. In other words, the redshift is a measure of the age of the quasar. Also, the quasars slow down as if they are increasing in mass. Even more shocking was Arp's discovery that quasar redshifts are quantised! IF SCIENCE WORKED AS ADVERTISED, THIS SHOULD BE BANNER HEADLINE NEWS! This raises the specter that our highly prized physics is way off the beam; that we do not understand such fundamental concepts as mass and gravity, nor the real meaning of quantum theory. So our university libraries and bookshops are crammed with science fiction. Nothing short of the biggest conceptual revolution in history will redress the situation. But universities are not in the business of fostering revolutions and the media seems incapable of exposing their nonsense. Based on his experiences Arp wrote, "Investigative journalism so far as science is concerned is dead in the water." He believes that with such a broken-down way of doing and reporting science, breakthroughs must come from individuals outside academia. It is happening. The signs of revolution have been around for decades. But with their backs turned to us and absorbed in their computer screens, those who have derailed science are oblivious to the "Big Bang" that is about to occur. As David Stove, the noted Australian philosopher, wrote in Anything Goes: "Everyone dislikes a sudden loud noise, but it is worse still if you are half asleep at the time." We can expect a bad-tempered reaction when it occurs. The famous mathematician Johann von Neumann seemed to intuit the problem at the heart of the mathematical physics approach when he wrote: "In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." Meanwhile a growing number of independent thinkers have noted that physics lost any remaining connection with reality with the advent of relativity theories and quantum mechanics. Paradoxically, the way forward is to return to classical physics which is based on immutable standards and causality. The equations of modern science are merely descriptive and not causal explanations. The same equations may apply to many different causes. Relativity introduces "rubbery" rather than immutable standards. Mass, length and time change with velocities and observers. As the philosopher Michael Miller puts it: "If a measuring standard varies who-knows-how, then the quantities measured by means of it vary who-knows-how, and the equations connecting those quantities mean who-knows-what. This is precisely the bog in which relativists have mired themselves; their doctrine of curved space is symptomatic. ...Generations of science students have tried to make sense of curved space, and succeeded only in warping their minds." As with past revolutions, the seeds are already sown. A good scientist would be alert, without prejudice, to wider future possibilities. Unfortunately, academia teaches and encourages prejudice and a narrow focus. Arp goes so far as to compare the dogmatism of astronomy unfavorably to that of the medieval church. It is the mission of HOLOSCIENCE to look at the BIG PICTURE and find the promising ideas that could form the new science of this new millennium. Arp's observational work on intrinsic redshift is already a cornerstone for a new cosmology. It depicts a smaller, stable cosmos as part of an infinite, eternal universe. It has almost biological overtones when it traces families of galaxies with quasars being the galactic children in various stages of adolescence. There are two key elements required to explain the dynamics of quasar formation and quantization of redshift. An article featured in the March-April issue of American Scientist drops the first shoe. It demonstrates (again) that plasma physics holds the key to understanding stars and galaxies and the inexplicable (in gravitational terms) ejection of vast gobs of matter at colossal speeds. Experiment shows that a powerful electric current in a magnetic field can create a solar coronal mass ejection event (CME). And since magnetic fields are caused by electric currents, the prime mover is electric discharge phenomena in plasma. From personal experience, electric discharges in plasmas are not a part of the curriculum for astrophysicists. Cosmology should be the realm of plasma physicists and electrical engineers. Another recent example: British astronomers have discovered a "magnetic bubble" around one of Arp's favorite galaxies, M82. Notice that astrophysicists always deal with effects (winds, magnetism) and not causes (electric currents). The diagram of M82 is almost identical to that of the plasma physicist, Eric Lerner, in his book "The Big Bang Never Happened", published in 1992. The red and blue arrows show the observed magnetic field directions and the white dashed curves outline the magnetic bubble structure. The long white arrows depict the direction of the wind from the center of the galaxy. Photo: JAC Electric current (yellow lines) flows along the magnetic field lines - which conforms closely to the image of M82 In that book, a simple, highly compact and efficient ejection engine is described - the plasma focus. It can explain simply the episodic ejection of quasars from the centers of active galaxies. In an Electric Universe infinitely heavy objects are not needed to offset the infinitely weak force of gravity when explaining high-energy outbursts. Black holes and neutron stars simply do not exist. The electrical nature of matter prevents the formation of super-massive objects. The second shoe is dropped heavily by the physicist Ralph Sansbury who has been using his own resources to experiment with laser light and show that there are near-instantaneous electric forces that can account for light, magnetism and gravity. In other words, the electric force is fundamental and all others are derived from it - even the nuclear force. The quantum nature of matter interactions are then seen in a classical sense to be due to electrostatic resonances operating at near-infinite speed between sub-particles that constitute electrons, protons and neutrons. Causality is reinstated in physics. IF SCIENCE WORKED AS ADVERTISED, THIS SHOULD BE BANNER HEADLINE NEWS! (And Ralph wouldn't be working alone in his basement). In the view of HOLOSCIENCE, this is the only model that can sensibly explain Arp's galaxy-wide quantum jumps in redshift. The argument goes like this: a quasar is ejected from a galactic nucleus by the plasma focus effect as an electron-deficient plasmoid (electrons are trapped in the focus longer than the much heavier protons). Now, the phenomenon of mass is due to the energy conserving elastic response of charged particles to external electric forces. If gravity is an electric force, inertial and gravitational mass will always be identical. So, because the electric polarization of stars in the quasar is low at first, the mass of protons and neutrons will be lower than in the parent galaxy. Consequently electron orbits within quasar atoms will have lower energy - light from them will be redshifted. Luminosity will also be lower due to the lack of charge-carrying electrons. Electrons streaming after the quasar create an x-ray jet and vast radio- lobes. Such electron jets are seen clearly in images from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray telescope. The active galaxy Centaurus A showing bright x-ray knots in its jet. An X-ray image of Centaurus A taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory has been superimposed over an optical view of the galaxy taken by the 4-meter reflector at Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory. As electrons arrive at the quasar, the luminosity increases at first and mass and redshift undergo quantum jumps to new resonant states across the quasar or galaxy. >From a NASA news report issued on April 19: "The distance record for a quasar has been broken yet again. At the present time, no other object in the universe has been found to be more distant than the above speck. The recently discovered quasar has been clocked at redshift 5.82. The exact relation between redshift and distance remains presently unknown, although surely higher redshifts do mean greater distance. The above quasar is likely billions of light-years away and so is seen when the universe was younger than one billion years old, less than a tenth of its present age. Like all quasars, this object is probably a large black hole in the center of a distant galaxy." Blah, blah.... Has NASA suddenly become uncharacteristically coy about the meaning of the redshift? The use of the word "surely" implies a question mark. It is usual in academia to ignore and ostracize a dissenter in the hope he will give up. But Arp is not a quitter, he is a big hitter. If ostracism fails then scientists rewrite history as if they really knew it all along. The first step in that process is to equivocate in scientific reports to allow a new interpretation to be introduced retrospectively. Watch carefully! ~Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com **************************************************************