Thanks Thorn,

Especially the Moles et al. paper is a detailed study of the spectral properties of the interaction, I'll try to get the article itself from the library and see if the data are as convincing as the abstract. Maybe some papers can be found to see if the other side of the argument has something to say on that specific example.

Cheers.

You don't have to visit the library, just click the "Full Refereed Journal Article
(PDF/Postscript)" -link from the abstract page.

Here are some papers about NGC 450 / UGC 807:

Seeing Galaxies through Thick and Thin. I. Optical Opacity Measures in Overlapping Galaxies - - White et al. (2000). They don't have any problem at all seeing UGC 807 through NGC 450, they say: "No reddening or extinction was detected in this pair. The smaller galaxy UGC 807 has a redshift 6 times as great as NGC 450 and is thus clearly in the background". It would have been quite interesting if they would have tried to see NGC 450 through UGC 807.

Photometry of the spiral pair NGC 450/UGC 807 and the optical thickness of galactic disks - Andredakis & van der Kruit (1992). Their conclusion is that disc of NGC 450 is almost completely transparent.

The noninteracting spiral pair, NGC 450/UGC 807 - Rubin & Ford (1983). They don't find evidence from rotation curves that these galaxies are interacting.

P.S. I'm new here so hi everyone!

__________________
"Stupidity gets denser in a crowd" - Old Finnish saying. [My website and My BLOG] [Nimblebrain forums]

Hi Ari Jokimäki, welcome to the UT forum,

Also, thanks for the papers and insights here. I especially liked this one:

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Thanks antoniseb! B)

__________________
"Stupidity gets denser in a crowd" - Old Finnish saying. [My website and My BLOG] [Nimblebrain forums]

Hi Ari,

Thanks for the links, it seems there are two different explanations for the same observation (or rather the same objects), but are the conclusions of both views legitimate when the data are studied? I can't see how those studies can give such different results, any ideas?

Cheers.

P.S. And thanks for saving me a trip to the library .

Well, I'm only a layman, so I don't understand those papers fully. But I'll give it a go anyway, perhaps someone more knowledgeable steps in and corrects my misunderstandings.

First, the two papers (White et al. and Andredakis & van der Kruit) dealing with seeing UGC 807 through NGC 450. In either of those papers they doesn't seem to get any indication that NGC 450 would disturb the light of UGC 807. I find this suspicious, especially when it comes to reddening. If UGC 807 would really be a background object, I think it's light should be more or less reddened from those parts that are behind NGC 450. And considering that UGC 807 is only partly "behind" NGC 450, there probably should be increasing amount of reddening when measured starting from the edge of UCG 807 not behind NGC 450 and proceeding towards NGC 450. So I don't agree with conclusions of these two papers.

I don't know much about rotation curves, so I can't say if Rubin & Ford paper is legitimate or not. But they "attack" this issue in the Moles et al. paper. It seems to me that Rubin & Ford might have a point, because I don't know if I buy the arguments of the Moles et al. paper on this issue. But again, as I'm not familiar with this subject, it is very difficult to form an opinion about this.

One possibility might be that UGC 807 is foreground object that is not associated with NGC 450. This would explain why there's no good evidence for interaction and why UGC 807's light is not affected by NGC 450.

__________________
"Stupidity gets denser in a crowd" - Old Finnish saying. [My website and My BLOG] [Nimblebrain forums]

Hi Ari,

The older papers are both included in the discussion by Moles et al. and there is disagreement on one point only: the rotation curves of the galaxies don't show strong peculiarities (Moles at al. include new data that show more irregularities), but the argument is that while interaction is evident when the curves are disturbed, if the curves aren't disturbed it doesn't exclude interaction.

I think your conclusion is correct, one would expect reddening if UGC 807 was behind NGC 450. This is a bit like the example of the quasar "in front of" NGC 7319, where there is also absence of reddening.

Well, for mainstream science that would be even harder to swallow. At least an interacting pair means either one of the galaxies can be interpreted as being in front.

Cheers.

Ok, but I just would like to have some stronger evidence for interaction before I believe it.

Quote:

Originally posted by VanderL@ This is a bit like the example of the quasar "in front of" NGC 7319, where there is also absence of reddening.

That's a bit different issue, because for quasars we don't know very well what the original spectrum is, so it's more difficult to determine the amount of reddening. In that sense I find this NGC 450 system better candidate for intrinsic redshifts.

<!--QuoteBegin-VanderL
Well, for mainstream science that would be even harder to swallow. At least an interacting pair means either one of the galaxies can be interpreted as being in front.[/quote]

I'm not sure I understand your point. I think that in this case we can interpret either one being in front regardless of possible interaction.

__________________
"Stupidity gets denser in a crowd" - Old Finnish saying. [My website and My BLOG] [Nimblebrain forums]

Hi Ari,

I agree with your first point,
The quasar is seen in a dense core (optically luminous) part of NGC 7319, so I would expect even stronger reddening than in this NGC 450/UGC 807 example, where the overlap is at the edge.


One of the galaxies has a higher redshift (UGC 807), if that galaxy was in front, Big Bang cosmology would be in deep trouble and Arp would be correct in his assertion that redshift has an intrinsic component (other than gravitational).

Cheers.

I have been told that galaxies have less dust in the bulge than in the disc, so it is possible that amount of reddening is less also. But my point was that we cannot be sure if that quasar is reddened or not, because we don't know what it's original color is (if we assume that it's a background object). It might originally be even whiter than it appears through the bulge of the galaxy, and reddening just has made it somewhat less white. I don't actually believe that quasar to be behind NGC 7319, I'm just saying that reddening in my opinion is not conclusive argument in this case.

I agree, but this same applies to my proposition also, UGC 807 would be just enough forefront so that it wouldn't interact with NGC 450. Or perhaps it would be so close to NGC 450 that there would be tiny amount of interaction causing these unsure signs of interaction.

__________________
"Stupidity gets denser in a crowd" - Old Finnish saying. [My website and My BLOG] [Nimblebrain forums]

Can't we compare the colour of some "naked" quasar to the colour of NGC7319's quasar and conclude/approximate the colour of the latter?

As far as I know, spectra of quasars differ from each other, so we can't make very good conclusions about reddening. We can make some kind of estimation about it if we compare it to other quasars, and this is what they did in the Galianni et al. paper (chapter 5.1) linked earlier in this thread.

__________________
"Stupidity gets denser in a crowd" - Old Finnish saying. [My website and My BLOG] [Nimblebrain forums]

Although I believe that Quasars possess intrinsic redshift I was always suspicious about "periodicity" and “ejection”.
The idea of ejection of Quasars from the galaxies (certain type) has in my eyes no other purpose then to convince mainstream in associations of Quasars with low redshift galaxies.
They can easily be associated without being ejected.
The periodicity is incorporated in Arp’s view from Tifft’s, Cocke’s, Napier’s and Guthrie’s work , but as we all know astronomy is all about statistics until new equipment is available.
http://www.setterfield.org/Redshift.htm#me...eaningquantized
So, my advice: don’t base your alternative theory on something that lies so far away where the results easily can be due systematical hardware error, statistical error etc.
In other words avoid to found your theory on Pioneer anomaly or dimming of Supernovae at z=6.
The proponents of EU model took the periodicity in quasar’s spectra as a fact that supports alternative views.
Arp is not cautious man, nor is it thunderbolts.info and other EU sites.
If there is no periodicity or ejection what then?
http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf...506/0506366.pdf

From Tim's thread, Ian started to divert conversation a bit and Neired asked him to post it here, so I hope no one minds if I start it:

Having read dozens of Arpians published papers, I have been amazed at how generous the peer-reviewers and editors have been, to allow so much sloppy science to pass (there are, of course, some very good papers by the Arpians).[/b][/quote]

Ian, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the basis for your statement was the book Seeing Red, which I happen to be in the middle of. Nereid, from what you're saying it sounds like you haven't read the book. If I'm wrong, then I'd love to hear you show point by point how Ian's statement was distorted. If you haven't, then I don't see how you can address something you are unfamiliar with.

I would like to see your examples of Arp's sloppy science though.

[Edited by Nereid: fixed [ quote] and [/ quote] tags]

Here is an interesting article about recent xray observations of Stephan's Quintet.
http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf...506/0506761.pdf

There are a good number of images here, and quite a bit of text, which I have yet to read. I post it here not knowing what the article says or indicates, but SQ is a favorite of the Arp team.

I expect that this will tell or show us something about whether there is a bridge of excited atoms between the Quintet and the galaxy with the very different red shift.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Minor nitpick: actually the situation in the Stephan's Quintet is that it contains four higher redshift galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B and NGC 7319) and one lower redshift galaxy (NGC 7320). So one might expect a bridge between NGC 7320 and some other Stephan's Quintet galaxies (if intrinsic redshifts are sought).

There is another galaxy (NGC 7331) near Stephan's Quintet which has roughly the same redshift as NGC 7320. There has been some suggestions that Stephan's Quintet would originate from NGC 7331 and specifically there has been some bridge issues discussed regarding this supposed association between Stephan's Quintet and NGC 7331. Perhaps you meant this?

To me the bridge between Stephan's Quintet and NGC 7331 wouldn't necessarily be very significant intrinsic redshift evidence because the bridge might just be between NGC 7331 and NGC 7320 which have similar redshifts.

__________________
"Stupidity gets denser in a crowd" - Old Finnish saying. [My website and My BLOG] [Nimblebrain forums]

Ian, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the basis for your statement was the book Seeing Red, which I happen to be in the middle of. Nereid, from what you're saying it sounds like you haven't read the book. If I'm wrong, then I'd love to hear you show point by point how Ian's statement was distorted. If you haven't, then I don't see how you can address something you are unfamiliar with.

I would like to see your examples of Arp's sloppy science though.

[Edited by Nereid: fixed [ quote] and [/ quote] tags] [/b][/quote]
As this was Ian's comment, I'm somewhat reluctant to continue the discussion without his participation.

However, the heart of what Ian wrote is:I stated that I believe the last paragraph is a gross distortion.

First, Arp published many papers, over a long period (and may well be still publishing papers). There papers have appeared in a variety of publications, many of them the leading peer-reviewed journals in astronomy and astrophysics. So the first gross distortion is clear: that Arp was able to publish in peer-reviewed professional journals in astronomy and astrophysics clearly contradicts the claim that 'it was all irrelevant, bad science'. (unless, of course, Ian is claiming that publication in peer-reviewed journals is not part of the scientific process).

Second, conflating 'tables in the wrong order' with 'irrelevant' and 'bad science' (i.e. they are all 'excuses') is to strongly imply that 'the scientific process' has nothing to do with science. I really doubt that Ian meant this (his posts, here in AT alone, seem to show that he believes the scientific method is a valid approach to use when doing science, and a good basis for discussing what we know about the universe.

Third, Arp wrote, and had published, many papers making claims other than "here are some observations I made (or analyses of observations others made) of a class of objects that seem to have the same morphology, and seem to have the same kind of redshift; that's interesting." Some of his papers have nothing to do with this 'class of objects*'; some claim interpretations beyond the observations; some present theories; ... Not surprisingly, the critiques of Arp's work include critiques of his observations (both techniques and analyses), of his interpretations, and of his theories. So the third gross distortion is clear: Ian's statements generalise far beyond the scope he intends.

Fourth, some of Arp's work on quasars and AGN galaxies has indeed been criticised as being 'bad science'. Surely Ian and jaydee wouldn't want it to be any different?! Surely Ian and jaydee aren't claiming that everything Arp has published (or wished to get published) is 'good science'?! If there are specific examples of his work which you feel has been inaccurately characterised as 'bad science', how about presenting these, so we can all discuss them? So the fourth gross distortion is clear: an open discussion and debate of observational findings and their interpretations is 'good science', not bad.

{I think I'll stop here; if any reader wishes to assert that Ian's statements are NOT gross distortions, then maybe I will continue.}

*BTW, can someone let us know what this 'class of objects' is?

I have not read the book; from the publisher's blurb and comments such as Ian's (and your own), I expect that if I did I'd get extremely angry.

To remind readers of something I wrote:Here's the distinction jaydee: in writing a book, you can say anything you like; in publishing a book, the publisher has no obligation to check anything the author says (except where it might be break laws on copyright, libel, etc; I note that in the US the laws on libel allow an author to say almost anything without fear of being prosecuted, let alone convicted). In getting a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal, you need to meet a much more rigourous set of standards, on 'trivial' things (formatting, layout of tables, references, and so on), and on not so trivial things (e.g. consistency, correct attribution, logic, sufficient detail, and so on).

And before I forget, an important distinction which hasn't been all that clear in our discussion so far: it's not like Arp is an entirely lonely figure; if you check the literature, you'll see that he often (frequently?) is but one of several authors (and sometimes not the lead author?); you will also find many, many papers with conclusions apparently quite consistent with Arp's views, written by people other than Arp. It might actually be interesting to do an analysis - how clearly can one demarcate an 'Arp camp' and an 'anti-Arp camp'?

Now, for the 'sloppy science'. Let's start with a backgrounder; Bill Keel's is, IMHO, a good one. He's spent much of his professional career studying interacting galaxies, quasars, etc (i.e. much the same field as Arp), and I think you'll find his summary quite non-partisan.

My main 'beef' with Arp et al. is in how he turns the 2D sky that is all that we can 'see' into 3D pictures (AFAIK, parallax is the only 'sure' method of getting a 3D picture, and that is presently limited to a depth of no more than a thousand pc or so) - firstly, how do you distinguish between what's 'foreground' and what's 'background', and second, how do you estimate at least the relative distances between 'foreground' and 'background' (if you take the trouble to read the posts in this thread, you'll get an idea of what this is about).

The 'classic' paper in this regard, for me (for historical reasons), was not even written by Arp! It's López-Corredoira and Gutiérrez - "Two emission line objects with z > 0.2 in the optical filament apparently connecting the Seyfert galaxy NGC 7603 to its companion". I have no particular problem with the observations - they seem to have been competently made and the data reduced using standard methods. However, it's what they make of these observations that I found astonishing (caveat: this is a preprint; I do not know how different the actual published paper is). Leaving aside such hyperbole as "A knot (object 2) is perfectly centered in the line of the filament and positioned where the filament connects to NGC7603B" ('perfectly'? in a paper reporting an astronomical observation??), the content part (i.e. NOT in 'Discussion and conclusions') of the paper ends with these words: "That is, there should be one object like these per each square of 3-7 arcminute size (20 arcminute size for NGC 7603B); much larger than the area of the filament (~100 arcsec2).". In other words, they have taken the 'sky' average distribution of certain classes of objects (quasars/Seyfert1s; HII galaxies) and applied it to this one particular case! No mention of the 'sky' dispersion (more or less 'we know that these objects are not distributed uniformly on the sky; a measure of this non-uniformity is {x}; applied to this case, we would expect that there would be between {a} and {b} (1 sigma)'), no caveat about the pitfalls of this kind of statistical analysis, nothing.

I'd be happy to walk you through this 2D/3D thing jaydee (I think I saw - elsewhere - that you mentioned that you don't have formal training in this field), if you are interested.

As near as I can tell from comparing the xray images in this paper, and the optical images of SQ, and from reading the paper, there is no bridge connecting the forground galaxy NGC 7320 to the rest of the "quintet".

The paper DOES talk about the dynamics of dense galaxy clusters capturing and/or stripping galaxies passing through the cluster. At least one of the affected galaxies is moving fast enough that it is not bound to the cluster, and must be a roving intruder.

Still the evidence in this paper (while never discussing Arp's claim) seems to contradict the Arp team's (and other Alternative Theorist's) claim that SQ is evidence that red shift does not correlate to distance in every case.

Perhaps I have missed something. If an Arp supporter wants to go through this and find something I've missed, I'll be happy to look at this again.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

"Extremely angry"...

This reminds me of the "extreme" reaction the church had to Galileo's work. I don't want to make you more angry but I do want to share with you that it comes off to me as though the psychological reasons the members of the clergy got extremely angry when presented with Galileo's observations are the same psychological reasons you are extremely angry with being presented with Arp's observations. (You did say your main "beef" with Arp relates to how he views the 2d sky, so it does seem to be the observations that are getting to you, not his theories).

In any event, your extreme anger is my Exhibit A on why peer review is a flawed model that works against allowing alternative observations (let alone theories) to see the light of day. Arp did say that he is constantly confronted with angry peer reviewers and your reaction supports his contention.

OK, selection bias. As TheThorn has said, that "explanation" only cuts it for so long. While some of what Keel writes is interesting, and certainly done in a much better spirit than some other Anti-Arp rhetoric, it is far from proving sloppy science.

You are reading half the story. Read "Seeing Red" without bias or anger, ignore his theories if you want, just stick to his observations. Then compare it to what you read by Keel, and then you can come to an informed judgement. You are basing your judgement of sloppy science on incomplete information.

Um, you missed the point. He is saying that there are too many observations where a 2D sky shows interactions that disprove current theory. He is attempting to have the mainstream community see that it has made a mistake in their assumptions of what is the 3d sky. He is actually looking at the observations without putting the redshift/distance correlation "theory" first. Your beef with him is that you want him to accept the theory you accept before looking at the observation. You've either totally missed the picture, or you are so attached to theory that you can't separate out observation from theory anymore.

The Big Bang theory is chock full of assumptions. From dark matter, to dark energy etc, etc... You don't seem to mind the massive stretches Big Bang cosmology requires while sitting on top of insufficient data. Yet just because parallax is the only 'sure' method of getting a 3d picture you want Arp to ignore 2d pictures that seem to show interacting galaxies because that would require assuming that he knows the distance he can't know because parallax is presently limited to a depth of no more than a thousand pc or so. Well that's your opinion. But interacting objects are evidence. They should be examined without getting angry.

While I'm not thrilled to use statistical analysis to determine the probability of these interactions, at the same time, Arp presented more than enough evidence, if you actually look at the observations, to show that there are serious reasons to question the dogma of today.

If they interact, you may not be able to accurately determine the correct distance, however they are worth further study. Maybe you *will* eventually find a way. Studying Arp will actually probably help you in that direction. He seems to be one of the few pointing out the importance of NOT making the assumption that we DO know the distance, so it is ironic that you are criticizing him for presenting evidence!

Arp has been pretty clear in separating out theory from observation. And in his book that you don't want to read he clearly decries that some journals that are supposed to at least allow the observations to be published without the theory are not doing their job and censoring the observations. That's what I call politics. And that is one of the reasons that people are suggesting you actually read his book. You won't find all you need to know in the journals.

Arp has been pretty clear in separating out theory from observation. And in his book that you don't want to read he clearly decries that some journals that are supposed to at least allow the observations to be published without the theory are not doing their job and censoring the observations. That's what I call politics. And that is one of the reasons that people are suggesting you actually read his book. You won't find all you need to know in the journals. [/b][/quote]
Thanks Jaydee, for repeating the need to separate observations from theory and how this separation is important in evaluating Arp's work. And Nereid, you mentioned your intention to write a rebuttal of Arp's work (is it coming along?), how can you plan to do this without first reading Arp's book?

Cheers.

A lot has been made in criticising Arp for using statistics to formulate probabilities for chance associations. I'm not a fan of these statistics myself. There is an old saying, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. I don't blame Arp for using them. And I'm not saying that there isn't a place for them. But as someone else has pointed out, it isn't very convincing in an argument to put the question to bed...it's too easy to laugh off statistics...and to get a good number is hard to truly quantify.

Either objects are associated or they aren't. No set of statistics will truly answer the question.

With that in mind, take a look at this link:
http://www.quasars.org/3c212.htm

Now when you have 2 horseheads like that, how can you possibly come up with an accurate statistic telling you the likelihood of it being a chance association?

It seems to me that with so many associations and then the above link, at some point you have to lift your head out of blaming statistics for anything and actually putting some resources to testing these questions and most of all, at least allow the observations Arp is making to be published in the appropriate journal.

And since I posted the link, I'm curious what both the pro and anti Arp crowds have to say about it.

BTW, anyone know who is behind that quasars.org website?

Yep, it is Eric Flesch, I'm not sure if the website is still updated regularly, but if you click on the "catalogue" link you see it is actually a quasar database.

About the link you posted, it warrants a deeper, closer look in more wavelengths, I don't think such images are just coincidences. That's something you can conclude only after a detailed study.

Cheers.

Original paper about 3C 212: Deep Spectroscopy in the Field of 3C 212 - Stockton & Ridgway (1998)

Interesting thing about 3C 212 regarding Arp's model is the redshifts of the objects; usually in these pair alignments we have lower redshift object in the middle, but in this case we have higher redshift object in the middle. Arp's model requires that newly created objects have higher redshift than older objects. In 3C 212's case the two quasars aligned across 3C 212 would be considered newer objects, created in the nucleus of 3C 212 and then ejected out of it. So the redshifts of the two aligned quasars should be higher than the redshift of 3C 212, because we can't have younger object ejecting older objects. We can ease this problem by considering proper motions that also cause redshifts (and blueshifts). For example the z = 0.93 object might have been ejected towards us with high velocity, so this ejection velocity would lower the original redshift. In that way we can have original redshift for the z = 0.93 object to be higher than z = 1.05 object in the middle. But it still would be discomfortably close.

It would be interesting to know the redshift of the other quasar in the pair alignment, I would expect it to be higher than z = 1.05 (during a discussion in another forum about this object I even predicted that it will be z = 1.36 ).

__________________
"Stupidity gets denser in a crowd" - Old Finnish saying. [My website and My BLOG] [Nimblebrain forums]

If would like to discuss interpretation of images and statistics jaydee, let's start here.

Please tell me why you think the galaxy wasn't vomitted out of CG4?

Once we've handled the 'easy' cases, we can - if you're interested - get into the more difficult ones.

I'll read through the recent posts in this thread, and comment further on them later.

(BTW jaydee, do you have a beef with only extra-galactic astronomy and cosmology? or are you upset with all of modern astronomy and space science? perhaps other parts of physics? other sciences too??)

Why? Because anybody who has read Arp's work carefully knows that it is AGN and morphologically disturbed galaxies for which almost all examples indicating an ejection scenario are found. Gas clouds within the Milky way do not meet this criteria.

However, if someone were to propose that the galaxy in that picture was ejected from CG4 it is a simple matter to test the proposal. The galaxy is ESO 257-19 which happens to have readily available Tully-Fisher data. Using the rotational velocity from Mathewson&Ford (1996) and the corrected B-band magnitude from HyperLeda, the distance to this galaxy is 34.3 Mpc (+5.0 Mpc/-4.2 Mpc with the data uncertainty provided in HyperLeda).

Obviously this is a chance alignment given that it in no way matches Arp et al's previous examples for ejection AND that an independent distance to the galaxy is readily available which demonstrates that the galaxy is not inside the Milky Way.

Of course in examples for which there are no redshift independent distances we must look for other forms of evidence such as bridges of material between the objects in question: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0401596

__________________
"The scientist who asks the right question reconnoiters a new patch of the unknown, and may, with luck, bring it within the constricted but expanding boundaries of the known."

~Timothy Ferris (The Red Limit) 1982

ROTFLOL!
That was a good one

It is a hobby of mine to look at cases, no matter which field of science, where observations that don't conform to sacred theories get unscientifically treated.

I'm not fond of the big stretches that many physicists make. Too much math and not enough plausible explanation of observations.

But I happen to love astronomy, space science and physics.

DGR,

Has any Anti-Arpian who participated in this thread acknowledged yet the "win" for Arp you posted many pages ago? I know Nereid needs another 6 months or so to address the issue, but has anyone else even responded to it? Or are they only willing to address Arp when the evidence is against him?

That's pretty vague, which "win"? How would I find and identify the post you are referring to? Personally, I count myself as not a believer in Arp's cosmology, but I have not seen any posting by DGR or anyone that I would call a "win".

Help us out here, and give us a way to find it.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak