Van Rijn Says:
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There is no evidence that the accessible universe has a center or can have a center. The Earth is not at such a center.
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Most of this was collected by Robert Sungenis, author of the upcoming book, "Galileo was Wrong". It is considered controversial, and many people believe they have alternate explanations. (stating up front).
See www.catholicintl.com for more details.
OBSERVATIONS INDICATING EARTH AS THE CENTER
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GRB distributions
One such observation is reported in "The Biggest Bangs: The Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts" (ISBN 0-19-514570-4), by Jonathan I. Katz, professor of physics at Washington University:
The uniform distribution of burst arrival directions tells us that the distribution of gamma-ray-burst sources in space is a sphere or spherical shell, with us at the center (some other extremely contrived and implausible distributions are also possible). But Copernicus taught us that we are not in a special preferred position in the universe; Earth is not at the center of the solar system, the Sun is not at the center of the galaxy, and so forth. There is no reason to believe we are at the center of the distribution of gamma-ray bursts. If our instruments are sensitive enough to detect bursts at the edge of the spatial distribution, then they should not be isotropic on the sky, contrary to observation; if our instruments are less sensitive, then the N ~ S^-3/2 law should hold, also contrary to observation. That is the Copernican dilemma.
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Red Shift Quantization:
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The first claimed observations of quasar redshift quantization came in 1976 by astrophysicist Y.P. Varshni. He presented his data with three possible interpretations, one of which is that Earth was in the center of the universe. Varshni wrote (in Astrophysics and Space Science, 1976, 43:3)
... the quasars in the 57 groups ... are arranged on 57 spherical shells with the Earth as the center ... The cosmological interpretation of the red shift in the spectra of quasars leads to yet another paradoxical result: namely, that the Earth is the center of the universe. The arrangement of quasars on certain spherical shells is only with respect to the Earth. These shells would disappear if viewed from another galaxy or quasar
Varshni was pressured to give an alternate theory of the concentric red shift pattern because the status quo of science did not welcome his earth-centered conclusion. Edwin Hubble saw the same thing as Varshni, only his evidence was from the galaxies he observed in concentric locations. Hubble, rather than denying this evidence, stated that it was "intolerable" to him to have the earth as the center of the universe, and thus he preferred an alternate explanation (The Observation Approach to Cosmology, 1937). Besides, no one really accepted Varshni's alternate explanation ("laser action in certain atomic species in the expanding envelope of a star"), since it did not accord with what they had already proposed about the meaning of red shift. The only one to challenge Varshni's original results was C. B. Stephenson who attempted to explain Varshni's findings by suggesting that the Big Bang produced periodic bands of quasars that spread out over time. Varshni wrote back to the same periodical a few months later critiquing Stephenson's proposal, saying: "Instead of having Earth at the center, now we have to assume that the Universe evolved in fits and starts of quasar production. The concept of preferred epochs for quasar production is hardly any more aesthetic than that of a preferred position for the Earth." (References in "Galileo Was Wrong").
In 1970, William G. Tifft, astronomer at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona showed that a few dozen galaxies were situated from Earth at specific redshifts, namely, in multiples of 72 km/sec in redshift values, as recorded in "Global Redshift Periodicities: Association with the Cosmic Background Radiation" Astrophysics and Space Science, 239, 35 (1996), and "Evidence for Quantized and Variable Redshifts in the CBR Rest Frame," Astrophysics and Space Science, 1997. Even today, Tift continues to insist on a quantization of local galaxies' redshifts. In 1992, Sky and Telescope magazine gave coverage to Tifft's ideas and extrapolated a possible geocentric interpretation to his fitted data ("Quantized Redshifts: What's Going on Here?" 84:128, 1992).
Other references to the same type of work on quantized quasar and galactic redshifts, are Tifft and Cocke writing of this phenomenon in Sky and Telescope, 73:19, in 1987 in the article "Quantized Galaxy Redshifts," as well as in New Scientist of June 22, 1985, in the article "Galaxy Redshifts Come in Clumps." Burbidge wrote about the same phenomenon in Mercury in the article "Quasars in the Balance," 17:136 in 1988. Halton Arp has provided the most information in his book "Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies." He and Burbidge wrote of their work in Physics Today, 37:17 (1984) in the article "Companion Galaxies Match Quasar Redshifts: The Debate Goes On." In 1991, astronomers Bruce N. G. Guthrie and William M. Napier of the Royal University at Edinburgh compared the redshifts from 89 single spiral galaxies and found a periodicity that was very close to Tifft's quantum multiple for this class of galaxies.
The war between Big Bang theorists and their opponents wages even more fiercely as time goes on. As of this writing, in a recent article titled “No Quantized Redshifts,” Sky and Telescope noted that a 2002 study conducted by Edward Hawkins and his colleagues at the University of Nottingham, England, revealed contrary evidence:
…Hawkins…recently sifted through the massive new 2dF [Two Degree Field] redshift surveys of galaxies and quasars to test this idea. These surveys provided “by far the largest and most homogeneous sample for such a study,” writes Hawkins in the October 11th Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society… Among 1,647 galaxy-quasar pairs, no sign of any quantized redshifts appears.
This study was specifically designed to test Arp’s theory that various galaxies and quasars occupy the same vicinity, the former producing the latter when material from the galaxy is ejected. If Arp is right, then obviously quasars are not at “cosmological” distances from Earth, that is, they are not at the farthest reaches of the universe. In addition, Arp holds that the redshifts of these galaxy pairs are quantized, that is, they appear in regular intervals and are not homogeneous. Both of these (i.e., pairing and quantization) would be impossible to explain from a Big Bang perspective.
Out of 250,000 galaxies and 30,000 quasars, the Hawkins team limited their study to 1647 galaxy-quasar pairs for the purposes of “quality control.” Of these pairs they state that:
No periodicity leaps off the page, but since the effect is likely to be quite subtle, one would not necessarily expect to be able to pick it out from the raw data, so it is important to carry out a rigorous statistical analysis.
This, of course, opens the door for disagreements over the statistical data. At this point, opposing sides point the finger at each other. The Hawkins team determines that: “one can manipulate the data in order to specify ones own more optimal window – a procedure that statisticians whimsically refer to as ‘carpentry,” and they conclude that “…the previous detection of a periodic signal arose from the combination of noise and the effects of the window [statistical] function.” Followers of the Arp team see it quite differently. Geoffrey Burbidge asserts that the entire work of the Hawkins team “is a real piece of dishonesty,” since Burbidge’s colleague, William Napier, had already pointed out a serious statistical flaw in Hawkins’ analysis before he published his paper. Napier subsequently submitted a rebuttal to the Royal Astronomical Society alerting the society to Hawkins’ flaw, as well as citing a recent Hubble photograph showing that one of the pairs studied by Hawkins had a luminous filament that physically connected the galaxy to the quasar. Although Hawkins asserts that he and his team “attempted to carry out this analysis without prejudice,” Burbidge concludes that the resistance of Hawkins and other Big Bang theorists is due to the “sociological problem associated with the need to believe” that redshifts are related to distances.
(Confirming Arp’s contentions, a recent report showed that galaxy NGC 7603 and its companion quasar each had very different redshifts but were physically linked by a luminous bridge. The authors concluded it was “the most impressive case of a system of anomalous redshifts discovered so far” ,M. Lopez-Corredoira and C. Gutierrez, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2002, 390, pp. L15-18. The higher redshift for the quasar, Arp maintains, is due to it being newly-formed from the much older galaxy. The same is true for galaxies NGC2775 and NGC2777, which, contrary to conventional wisdom proposing they were merging, is an example, according to Arp, that the former produced the latter, which was confirmed by the fact that the latter had no metal in its spectral lines as well as a much higher redshift than the former. In addition, the galaxies were connected by an “umbilical cord of neutral hydrogen” (Halton Arp, Seeing Red, Apeiron, Montreal, 1998, p. 103).)
In regards to the geocentric question, the battle between the Big Bang theorists and the followers of Halton Arp leaves geocentrism at worst in a neutral position and at best drawing support from both sides of the aisle. On the one hand, Big Bang theorists are more or less caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, since, as pointed out by Arp, they have created the same “Copernican dilemma” that we saw earlier with the evidence from gamma-ray bursters. As Arp states in critique of the Big Bang theory: “For supposed recession velocities of quasars, to measure equal steps in all directions in the sky means we are at the center of a series of explosions. This is an anti-Copernican embarrassment.” In other words, regardless whether quasars are at cosmological distances, the fact that all the quasars are moving away from us at the same speed (as measured by the redshift-distance relation) means that Earth is precisely in the center of the dispersion. On the other hand, Arp has created his own Copernican dilemma, since, as Varshni concluded 30 years ago, quantized redshifts show irrefutable evidence of Earth’s centrality. Hence, whether redshift is cosmological or intrinsic, today’s scientists have no escape from geocentrism.
As for Tifft and company, if there are any claims to the contrary, they simply are far and few between. Napier and Guthrie repeated Tifft's results in 1991, with precisely the same periodicity found by Tifft. So astounding were Napier's and Guthrie's results of the 89 galaxies they studied when they submitted them to Astronomy and Astrophysics that the editors asked them to repeat the studies with other galaxies. This Napier and Guthrie did with 117 additional galaxies, with precisely the same periodicity as the original 89 galaxies (Reference in "Galileo Was Wrong"). So here we have over 200 galaxies with the same periodicity, and which are not in the same galaxy-quasar pairing investigated by the 2dF survey.
Moreover, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (headed by Max Tegmark), after gathering the data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe of 2001 which analyzed the distribution of the CMBR, mapped out the whole universe. Here was his concluding comment: "Our entire observable universe is inside this sphere of radius 13.3 billion light-years, with us at the center." (Reference in Galileo Was Wrong).
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P.S. the quote from Tegmark is available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/wmap3.html
I am not claiming Mark Tegmark believes in Geocentrism. After the above quote, he states:
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This censorship is frustrating, since if we could see merely 380000 light-years beyond it, we would behold the beginning of the universe.
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Clearly a statement of his faith in the Big Bang (not an observation). Some claim the same effect for resolving the Corpenican dilemna.
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07-January-2005, 05:56 PM
