I started up a now closed discussion on "The Redshift Distance Relationship". Before it got side tracked by other off topic issues, there seems to have been a surprising (to me) consensus. Everyone, or at least most of everyone, agreed that there was indeed a redshift distance relationship of some kind. The dispute was over how much of the redshift was "intrinsic", and how much was "cosmological". And so that leads me to start up another discussion.

This time I wonder about 2 questions:

(1) What are the observational weaknesses of the standard cosmological interpretation of redshifts for galaxies & quasars?

(2) What are the observational strengths of non-standard interpretations, that significant fractions of the redshift are due to some intrinsic property, and are not "cosmological"?

I want to emphasize the word observational. At the moment I don't want to get bogged down in another debate about why big bang cosmology is a lousy model of the universe. If that's what you want to talk about, start your own thread.

Galaxies & quasars are observed objects, and their redshifts are likewise observed quantities. So the key here, at least to me, is this: What is it about the observational data, that suggests one interpretation over the other.

I will start by explaining why I see no problem with the standard interpretation.

Redshifts correlate with other aspects of galaxies that we know should be correlated with distance. As Hubble himself noted, things that are farther away should look dimmer. They should also look smaller. When galaxies of the same Hubble classification, reasonably assumed to be about the same intrinsic size & brightness (say to a factor of 2), are correlated by size or apparent brightness, their redshifts correlate too, in the same sense.

Surface brightness fluctuations, a side effect of the fact that galaxies are intrinsically clumpy, should correlate with distance, more distant galaxies looking smoother. That smoothness correlates with size & brightness, and also with redshift.

All of this establishes a redshift distance relationship. But it does more too. If there were a significant non cosmological component to the redshift, then there should not be a clean correlation with such things as size, apparent brightness and surface fluctuations, which we know should correlate only with distance, and are not subject to significant intrinsic effects.

As I see it, this family of correlations implies that the redshift correlates only to distance, and not to some intrinsic property.

Meanwhile, suggested strong points for alternate interpretations seem weak to me.

Are Arp's "connections" real, physical connections, or are they superpositions of one object in front of another? Observation suggests superposition to me, weakning the argument for intrinsic redshifts.

Are Tifft's periodicities real? They seem to come and go, different periodicities in different data sets, including some no periodicities at all. Lack of coherence weakens the argument.

Let's try to keep this one on topic for a while.

Uh-oh, now you've done it. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]
It seems to me that the other correlations that you mention aren't perfect, but we should be able to calculate them for the population that Arp isolates, and see how the correlations compare to the general population.

I'm not familiar with Arp's data.
What are the odds?

I think one of the first objections you are going to get, Tim, is that the redshifts could be gravitational and not dynamical. I cannot see how this could be the case since the gravitational redshift is dependent on a gradient of the density which I cannot find observational evidence for.

The other objection might be that somehow the "plasma universe" provides a means for absorption and reemmission of light in such a way to provide a redshift distance relationship. I have not seen any quantitative models that would allow for this.

I think everybody is in agreement that one of the possibile causes for a redshift-distance relationship must be a Hubble Recession. Even if the detractor doesn't think that's what's causing the redshifts, they have to admit that a recessional velocity would provide the necessary means for the redshift.

Well, there is certainly observational evidence for intrinsic red shifts. Since you want to talk about evidence, not what the cause is.
1. The sun has a red shift. The sun is not moving away from us continuosly. The sun's red shift is greater at the limbs than at the center, even correcting for the rotation of the sun.
2. There is somewhat controversial evidence that there are some binary stars that have periodicity in their spectra such that they are seen to be approaching and receding to the extent that they are definitely orbiting each other. This puts the pair at the same distance and moving wrt us at the same velocity for their center of mass. Yet one of them has an offset in it's spectra. It has an anomalous intrinsic red shift.
3. So-called K stars seems to have an anomalous red shift. This has been debunked by some.
4. Of course quasars look like stars but have a huge red shift. If they can be shown by other methods to be nearby, then they would have an intrinsic red shift.
4a. Arp thinks they are physically connected to other objects with lesser red shifts.
4b. Some data suggests that there is proper motion in the quasars wrt to the background starfield that is incompatible with this distance.
4c. Some quasar jets are superluminal which is difficult to explain unless the red shift is intrinsic.
4d. I have seen radio astronomy data for 2 different quasars both with very large but different redshifts in the same fov, one with a jet and one without, that was taken over many years separation. It looks to me that the two quasars have moved wrt each other in addition to the jet's motion. The data showed it to be greater than the error bars, but this was denied by the authors. I'm not sure they understood the question since they were using the "background" quasar as their point of reference and couldn't believe either would be moving. They were studying the jets, not the quasars' relative locations.

The only one in your list I see that is not contriversial is the solar red-shift. All the others are questionable at best. And I assume that the stellar redshift as measured is miniscule too. Am I right in assuming it's due to the Compton effect or such you keep going on about? It can't be a major factor in measuring movement of stars in any case, since it doesn't seem to interfere with our detection of extrasolar planets, for example.

3 of the 4 things on this list only involve individual stars. Although this might be circumstancial evidence for intrinsic redshift in larger objects, it isn't much to go on. The 4th, quasar redshift, also has very little support going for it, and much against it. The one thing that makes me doubt it the most is that every other object we see at that range is almost certainly redshifted due to movement or expansion. Why, pray tell me, should quasars be so different? What makes them so special? Why should their redshifts be assumed to have a different cause than the objects around them? And if quasars are really local objects, why should they have redshifts equal to very distant galaxies, especially since even the intrinsic redshift of stars is so small and there's no solid theory to even explain how such huge redshifts can even exist.

Sure, there's a slight chance that they aren't what they seem to be, but there's been no major reason to doubt yet that they are really massively bright objects at the edge of the universe.

I guess the question I'm really asking here is why shouldn't quasars be assumed to exist at great distances?

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

I think a better breakdown of the theories of redshift is in four categories, not just two. The four are source, instrinsic, material, and cosmological. Here's what I mean by each:

Source: Redshift is caused by gravitational force of source as the light leaves the source.

Intrinsic: This category is for the so-called tired light theories, where light instrinsically loses energy as it travels.

Material: This category is for the plasma universe and dust universe theories, where light loses energy as it travels through the ISM.

Cosmological: BB, stretching of space, etc.

Each of these can explain a qualitative theory of why redshift is proportional to distance, but not the details. I think many people fail to understand that the redshift distance relationship is not linear, i.e., a body with redshift Z=4 is not 4 times further away than a body with redshift z=1. The fact that the observed luminosity not only depends on the redshift in general, but it depends on the redshift in just the right way, is what makes the cosmological model win out.

Look here. Quasars look just like stars.
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/96/25.html One of these is a star, the other a quasar. Hard to tell em apart,eh?
That is the reason they seem to be local like stars. Many quasars have very strong radio emissions, indicating that they have large numbers of electrons in a magnetic field. This is why they should have a big red shift; just like the number of electrons is greater along the line of sight to the limb of the sun than to the center. The red shift of quasars is about a million times the red shift of the sun, so if there is a correlation with the number of electrons then quasars should have about a million times the sun's number of electrons. Other radio quiet quasars may have the electrons, but not the magnetic field needed to produce the synchrotron radiation. This may be why they are intrinsically dim.
But here we are getting into interpretation, rather than observation. The interpretation that galactic red shifts are due to motion is basically just an assumption, because we know that the doppler effect can cause a red shift. There are lots of problems with this, including the fact that galaxies don't seem to be closer together in the past to best we can measure. See "Bye,Bye, Big Bang, Hello Reality" for many of the problems.

Here's another item I forgot to add to the list:
Hercules A radio object stands out as being the largest (in size) single object in the observable universe, if it as far away as its red shift indicates. But because it is a strong radio object, its distance is suspect as determined from its red shift. If it is much nearer than its red shift would indicate, because it is a synchrotron radio object with a high number of electrons, it may well be much closer and thus not be so intrinsically large while subtending the same angle. Thus it would not stand out as being such an unusually large object. Thus, it isn't so unusual if it has an intrinsic red shift.

The sun's redshift may not be cosmological, but it is still due to the same effect (movement toward or away from the observers). It is also considerably smaller than cosmological redshifts.

I don't know which study you are talking about, but there has been measurements of gravitational redshifts in binary systems of rather dense stars (such as white dwarfs). These indeed are intrinsic redshifts, but again are way too small in magnitude to explain the origin of the cosmological redshifts.

I agree that this has been debunked. I'm not sure I've seen any concrete evidence otherwise.

In principle this is correct. However, no quasar to date has ever had a measurable paralax or a proper motion. In fact, quasars are used to calibrate as a background. Of course, nearby can mean different things to different people.

But Arp's conclusions are based upon simple correlative and eyeball pronouncements. The physical mechanism (as illustrated by others in previous threads) doesn't make any sense. Arp even says as much, he just believes that the coincidences are uncomfortable for himself.

I have never seen such data. Please show it to me.

There are three problems with this statement: one) there is considerable contention as to whether the jets really are superluminal. two) the extent of the jets mean that they are not necessarily in the local frame of the quasar. As you know, John, this means that superluminal speeds are indeed possible (as long as physical relationships are not preserved) three) jets aren't well understood to begin with and so to say that they can be explained only by means of an intrinsic redshift is problematic. This assumes we understand where these jets are coming from and how they should behave. Quasars are particularly bizarre objects and there's no reason to think we should expect them to behave like jets we see in other venues.

Please show us this data if you can.

This is actually a spurious claim since we see fewer galaxies out to further redshift. In fact, the power spectrum matches beautifully with predictions from the CMB (sorry Tim, just had to bring up the CMB again). That these two things (large scale structure and the CMB) match is one of the observational proofs of the Big Bang.

I am of the opinion that this particular book deserves notoriety as being "Bad Astronomy".

But you have given no mechanism. Surely you realize, John, that tired light has been debunked?

The discovery of high redshift quasars across the famous galaxy Arp 220 raises questions about distance scales in the universe.
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/HIGHL...ght0108_e.html

http://xxx.uni-augsburg.de/abs/astro-ph/?0101538

COSMIC JETS
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/merlin/about/layman/jet.html

This seems to read an awful lot about what seems to be a coincidence. These quasars are not observed to be "across" Arp 220. They are merely within 15 arcminutes of the galaxy from our viewpoint. They try to make much of the fact that the spectra of the high redshift sources are similar to each other, but they fail to say whether these spectra are similar at all to Arp 220. There is no ejection mechanism proposed, no attempt to mathematically justify the alleged improbability of the configuration in the preprint, and no discussion of the source of the instrinsic redshift. There could be more to it, but they don't carry the ball all the way through.

Thats cool, that means the gravitational lensing can not be the cause.

JK: 1. The sun has a red shift. ...

A redshift which you explained as being caused by Compton scattering (Compton Effect Interpretation of Solar Red Shift, J.W. Kierein & B.M. Sharp, Solar Physics 3: 450-453). But that interpretation was shown to be untenable (The Interpretation of the Absorption Line Red Shifts in the Solar Spectrum, J.M. Pasachoff & J.I. Silk, Solar Physics 4: 474-475, 1968; Solar Granulation: Influence of Convection on Spectral Line Asymmetries and Wavelength Shifts, D. Dravins, L. Lindegren & A. Nordlund, Astronomy qand Astrophysics 96: 345-364, 1981).

It certainly appears that the explanation lies within the realm of normal stellar physics, and is not relevant to the cosmological redshift problem.

JK: 2. There is somewhat controversial evidence that there are some binary stars that have periodicity in their spectra ...

I think this is a reference to the Barr effect. In that case, the apparently anomalous redshifts in binary systems was adequately explained by Struve in 1948 (Whirlpools of Gas Around Binary Stars, Otto Struve, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 60(354): 160-173, June, 1948). I don't know how "controversial" it's supposed to be. I am unaware of any attempt to "refute" Struve's conclusions, and more modern observational data are in accord with his conclusion (i.e., ICCD speckle observations of binary stars. XIX. An astrometric/spectroscopic survey of O stars, B.D. Mason et al., Astronomical Journal 115(2): 821-847, February 1998).

JK: 3. So-called K stars seems to have an anomalous red shift. This has been debunked by some.

I have no idea what this is a reference to.

And on Quasars ...

JK: 4a. Arp thinks they are physically connected to other objects with lesser red shifts.

Arp does, but precious few others. As I noted before, we know that in some cases it's a clear example of one thing in front of another, and not connected. And the 'line ups" are a weak constraint at best.

JK: 4b. Some data suggests that there is proper motion in the quasars wrt to the background starfield that is incompatible with this distance.

Well, we do know that not all of any observed redshift is "cosmological". Local ("peculiar") velocities need to be removed. In the case of such quasars, active jets internal to the quasar system are quite adequate to explain the observation without recourse to any mysterious mechanisms.

JK: 4c. Some quasar jets are superluminal which is difficult to explain unless the red shift is intrinsic.

There are many examples of superluminal motion in astrophysics, all explainable as projection effects combined with relativistic time dilation. See, for example "The superluminal radio source in the gamma-ray blazar 3C 279".

JK: 4d. I have seen radio astronomy data for 2 different quasars ...

It would be nice to know specifically which two quasars. Indeed, quasars should not show any significant proper motion.

JK: Hercules A radio object ... Thus, it isn't so unusual if it has an intrinsic red shift.

I really don't think it's much of an argument that the redshift of some object is "suspect" just because the object is "unusual". Things can be "unusual".

Orion38: The discovery of high redshift quasars across the famous galaxy Arp 220 raises questions about distance scales in the universe.

Zathras: This seems to read an awful lot about what seems to be a coincidence. ...

I agree with Zathras. While the observation is consistent with the ejection hypothesis, it is also perfectly consistent, in every respect, with standard cosmology. What is it about this one image, this particular observation, which compels the conclusion that the redshifts are anomalous?

The goal is to find observations which "defy explanation" except by some anomalous process that casts doubt on the "cosmological" interpretation of redshifts, as resulting from the Hubble Flow.

The mere fact that some galaxy looks "lined up" with some quasars does not in any way conflict with the standard interpretation. A lot of such alignments could, but then the argument is revealed as being only as good as the statistics used to support it. So far they are uncompelling.

Some observations that are called "anomalous" turn out to be not so anomalous at all, such as the solar redshift of the Barr effect. All weak arguments.

Where are the observations that refute standard cosmology?

JK says:

"Quasars look just like stars".

Well, yes, an ultraluminous source of light emitted from a volume comparable to our solar system would look point like when seen from cosmological distances. However, both observationally and theoretically, quasars are associated with the central nuclei of galaxies, typically massive ones (at least at low and moderate redshifts). Whether we can "see" the surrounding galaxy, as we see here:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020309.html
depends upon the contrast between the brightness of the point-like quasar and the size/surface brightness of the surrounding galaxy. We've now detected "normal" starlight from surrounding "fuzz" around quasars to redshifts of 1-2. The observational evidence currently favors a model that nearly all massive galaxies today went through a quasar phase long ago - their supermassive black holes now starved of gas - and so quasars are now extinct.

If some high redshift quasars look pointlike, as JK likes to harp on, it's simply because the contrast between it and the surrounding galaxy is low - and eventually new techniques will extract the galactic starlight from the glare of the quasar. This is no different than trying to image planets in the glare of the parent star. Even though JK brings this up time and time again, this is not a mystery.

However, it would be cool to see how the surrounding galaxy evolves with increasing redshift, out to the highest that we observe (6.4). This isn't yet known. Most of what we now know of the parent galaxies of quasars comes from modest redshifts (< 1).

Hi!

A couple notes. Spectrally, quasars look nothing like stars. Even photometrically, they are easy to tell apart. Secondly, so-called "superluminal motion" (a term which should be retired, since it is misleading) of jets is well understood in the context of special relativity, and has no relation to the question of an internal redshift in the central engine. Some galactic x-ray binary stars have jets with apparent superluminal motion, and these are dubbed "microquasars" because they behave like quasars, just at one-millionth the scale. I know a fair amount about these guys because I helped discover two of the four known microquasars. (XTE J1744-288 and V4641 Sgr. The other two are GRS 1915+105, that's the first and most famous one, and GRO J1655-40.) Thirdly, measuring proper motion in a quasar would be incredible news. Like, New York Times kind of news. I have never heard of proper motion being measured in a quasar.

Finally, while I have not read Arp's work, I saw Geoff Burbidge give a talk about it at a AAS meeting in San Diego a few years back, and I found it most unconvincing. He showed three or four images that showed multiple quasars around a foreground galaxy and claimed the quasars were being ejected from the galaxy. I'm sorry, but if I'm being asked to believe that the clustering of the quasars is causally linked to the foreground galaxy, I'm going to need some kind of Baysian analysis to prove that the likelihood of just happening to find three or four background quasars in the vicinity of a foreground galaxy is significantly low. He mentioned a radio survey he wanted to do to test his hypothesis, but said his proposal had been turned down because of reviewer bias. I mentioned this to a radio astronomer the next day, who said that the survey had already been done, and had disproven Burbidge's hypothesis. I then mentioned this to Burbidge, who hemmed and hawed and evaded the question.

Make of that what you will.

Don Smith

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DoctorDon on 2002-11-14 09:57 ]</font>

It is possible that a portion of the total red shift of an object is the result of the resistive nature of the mass component of energy defined by the equation E=mc^2. If one accepts the validity of this equation I believe that one must also accept the fact that energy posses properties associated with mass. Therefore the energy associated with light as it moves through space would interact with the mass component of the CBR and lose energy due to the friction that would be associated with this interaction with the mass component of the CBR. This loss of energy would result in a non cosmolgical shifting of the freqency towards the red end of the spectrum.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could point out any logical or observational flaws in this argument

This mechanism is developed in much greater detail at the Shadows site http://home.attbi.com/~jeffocal/shadows.htm for those who are interested in gaining a better understanding of it.

Jeff


_________________
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Knowledge is limited.
Imagination circles the world."
Einstein







<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: An Imagineer on 2002-11-14 12:12 ]</font>

[quote]
On 2002-11-13 13:07, JS Princeton wrote:
The sun's redshift may not be cosmological, but it is still due to the same effect (movement toward or away from the observers). It is also considerably smaller than cosmological redshifts.

[quote]
Sorry, JS. The red shift on the sun is not due to movement away or toward the observer. There is a red shift on the sun across the entire sun's surface after correcting for any motion due to the sun's revolving. This red shift is smallest at the center of the sun and greatest at the limb around the entire edge. Certainly you don't think the sun is continuosly moving away from us. This is an intrinsic red shift, by any definition. Tim I thought you wanted to talk about observational evidence for intrinsic red shifts. You rebut by talking about how to interpret these red shifts. Pasacoff & Silk agreed that there was an intrinsic red shift, they just didn't agree that it was Compton. They said any mechanism that varied with distance from the center would work. But Compton himself said it was Compton.

Spaceman Spiff: You think the "fuzz" around a quasar is a galaxy. I think it's the atmosphere containing free electrons that cause the intrinsic red shift. We can agree on the observations. I gave the example photo since it shows how much a quasar looks like a star. I love microquasars. Do they have a red shift?

Here's a list of quasars with apparent proper motion. Is it correct? Is it an open issue?http://home.achilles.net/~jtalbot/V1982/absolute.html

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: John Kierein on 2002-11-14 13:06 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: John Kierein on 2002-11-14 13:09 ]</font>

I'll second that, Dr.Don. I stuck to the issue of quasars appearing point like because that's what JK has argued in the past. His favorite quasar picture is this one that has a MW Galaxy foreground star "nearby".
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960818.html

JK's ideas about the nature of quasar spectra are also way off base. He always assumes that the emission lines and energetic continuum form in the same gas. While I've tried and tried to explain, he either can't or won't understand. Of course, the basic idea is essentially captured here:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010729.html
The electron temperature in the line emitting gas is 15,000 K, even though the white dwarf in the center emits with a blackbody temperature of maybe 100,000K, and it's this energetic light that photoionizes and heats the much lower density nebular gas surrounding it. (but I better get back on topic...)




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spaceman Spiff on 2002-11-14 13:14 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spaceman Spiff on 2002-11-14 13:15 ]</font>

Well, John, you can believe and dream what you like, but spectra and photometric colors of this "fuzz" look exactly like galactic starlight. Heck, in that image I presented you can even see spiral arm structure (albeit distorted due to galaxy-galaxy interactions). And what do you know -- the stellar absorption lines have the same redshift as the quasar emission lines!

No, microquasars don't have large redshifts (or blueshifts) - unless you happen to be looking at some X-ray emission feature emitted by gas near the last stable orbit. Why? Because they move around in the gravitational potential of our galaxy (or most do - have any been seen in nearby galaxies?). I love 'em too, but that doesn't change their nature.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spaceman Spiff on 2002-11-14 13:43 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spaceman Spiff on 2002-11-14 13:51 ]</font>

Hey JS. You need to read "bye Bye big bang, hello reality" It's not a tired light proponency.
I don't like tired light. It doesn't conserve energy. The Compton effect does. Bill Mitchell's book mentions the Compton effect interpretation, but doesn't make a supportive statement about it.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: John Kierein on 2002-11-14 14:02 ]</font>

Somebody asked for a reference for the paper that showed the motion of one quasar wrt another in the same FOV. Look at IAU Symposium No.110 VLBI and Compact Radio Sources Edited by R.Fanti, K. Kellerman & G Setti. Page 113, Proper Motion of Components of the Quasar 3C 345. In it is clear that there is unexplained proper motion of the core 3C 345 quasar wrt NRAO 512. There is a question and answer discussion about this also. They had ~ 0.1 mas precision in the measurement of the relative position of two sources using intercontinental baselines.
The authors are: N. Bartel, M.I. Ratner, I.I. Shapiro, T.A. Herring from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and B.E. Corey from NEROC Haystack. By the way I think it was Kellerman who once wrote a paper suggesting that quasars are nearby. I'm pretty sure the other guys are all big bangers.

As for the K-Effect and binaries with star componets that have differing redshifts see: Non- Doppler Redshift of Some Galactic Objects by Prof. P. Marmet. The paper was written while he was at the Herzberg Inst. of Astrophysics in Ottawa. It may be on his website. I'll go look and add it to this post.
yep, here 'tis:
http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/DOPPLER/Doppler.html

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: John Kierein on 2002-11-14 14:38 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: John Kierein on 2002-11-14 14:42 ]</font>

Well, I read through the paper, and frankly, I'm not impressed. It seems he took a 1969 catalog, compared it with a 1993 catalog, and declared some of the quasars had moved. His error analysis was extremely sloppy, containing no estimate of the systematic error, and simply applying the usual derivative expansion a la Bevington with no justification (are the errors really Gaussian? Are they really independent? *I* don't know!). Even so, the significance is not terribly high, with even the best cases being barely four sigma, and the vast majority of them not being significant *at* *all*. If you did a simple six-sigma cut (and I don't think I'd trust anything less), you are left with nothing. Without more information about how they did their astrometry, I wouldn't trust that as far as I could throw it.

Frankly, if you're going to publish data that overthrows the dominant paradigm (as he says, the values of proper motion he gets, at the distance demanded by the redshift, yield linear velocities in excess of 2300c!), you better be *damn* sure you've done your error analysis right, and it also behooves you to publish every damn step so that people can see what you've done. With such a sketchy report as on his web page, I don't see any reason not to think that he underestimated his astrometry errors.

I also looked up the guy in ADS, and found he had very few actual journal publications, although he has presented a whole ton of things about this at AAS meetings, and the articles in the journals are only cited by his own later papers. Of course, this may be because he's a brilliant maverick, ignored by mainstream science, or it may mean no one is taking him seriously enough to bother. He has been presenting this stuff for some thirty years, though, and has made zero headway. I think I, personally, would get discouraged, myself.

The fact that no VLBI measurements have shown proper motion is very damaging to his case, and he knows it. He bafflingly cites one VLBI measurement of NO proper motion as "fully consistent with our expectations", but goes on to say that extensive VLBI measurements should show up to 15% of quasars having measurable proper motion. The fact that the VLBI has been in operation for decades now, and zero percent of quasars show proper motion should give one pause, I would think.

So that's my take on it.

Yours,

Don Smith

I'm glad you don't like tired light, but as far as I'm concerned the observational evidence for the Big Bang far outweighs any two-bit popular bookwriter. I don't have time to entertain the musings of jaded electrical engineers either.

Also, I believe the "intrinsic" redshift of the sun you're referring to is something like a 4-sigma effect. This is on top of the radial oscillations of literally thousands of modes that are documented using much more clearly seen redshifts. How can you be certain the effect is physical? Certainly the people you are referring to aren't convinced.

JK: Tim I thought you wanted to talk about observational evidence for intrinsic red shifts. You rebut by talking about how to interpret these red shifts.

I do, and I think I am being consistent. We all know that there are literally intrinsic redshifts, such as that of the sun, or noncosmological redshifts, such as Doppler shifts caused by other than "cosmological" motions (i.e., M31 is blueshifted to the tune of 299 km/sec).

But there is clearly a context to the discussion, as there must be for any discussion. That context is cosmology, as in Big Bang vs alternatives. Remember what I said in my first message that launched the topic: "What are the observational weaknesses of the standard cosmological interpretation of redshifts for galaxies & quasars?" and "What are the observational strengths of non-standard interpretations, that significant fractions of the redshift are due to some intrinsic property, and are not "cosmological"?

OK, so the sun has an intrinsic redshift. How does that fit into these two questions? Is that redshift an indication of an observational weakness in standard cosmology? Is it an indication of observational strength for an alternative cosmology?

Your alternative cosmology is based on the Compton scattering interpretation of redshifts. So you interpret the sun's redshift as also being from Compton scattering, hence the cosmological connection and the implication of a weakness in standard Big Bang cosmology. But if the sun's redshift is more properly interpreted as not being a Compton effect, then the connection is lost, and the implication along with it.

In this case, both of the papers I cited point out errors in your own, and show why the Compton interpretation is in fact incompatible with what we know about the physics of Compton scattering, and that the redshift in question is in fact explained by the normal, but complicated processes of stellar physics. The result is that the solar redshift does not imply an observational weakness in standard cosmology.

JK: Look at IAU Symposium No.110 VLBI and Compact Radio Sources Edited by R.Fanti, K. Kellerman & G Setti. Page 113, Proper Motion of Components of the Quasar 3C 345. In it is clear that there is unexplained proper motion of the core 3C 345 quasar wrt NRAO 512.

I have not been able to find JK's cited paper (yet). But i did find this one, by the same authors:

VLBI limits on the proper motion of the 'core' of the superluminal quasar 3C345
N. Bartel et al.
Nature 319: 733-738, February 27, 1986
Abstract: VLBI (very-long-baseline interferometry) observations between 1971 and 1983 have been used to determine the positions of the 'core' of the quasar 3C345 relative to the more distant compact quasar NRAO512 with a fractional uncertainty as small as two parts in a hundred million. The core of 3C345 appears stationary in right ascension to within 20 arc microsec/yr, a subluminal bound corresponding to 0.7c. The apparent velocities of the jets are superluminal, up to 14c in magnitude.

The conclusions reached in this paper, by the same authors, are not compatible with those reported as for the cited paper. They conclude that the core is stationary within the bounds of measurement error, and that the error constraint is subluminal.

As an idea of the kind of discussion I had in mind, note that Orion38 showed us an image: "Quasars and the Cosmic Distance Scale", with the comment "The discovery of high redshift quasars across the famous galaxy Arp 220 raises questions about distance scales in the universe.". This is the kind of claim I am looking for, though hopefully a better one than this. So far as I can tell, the image raises no questions at all, and shows nothing that is not well within the bounds of standard cosmology.

I should rather like to see something, an image or some other observational exercise, that cannot be compatible with the standard interpretation of cosmological redshifts.

As usual, I lack time to participate, even in my own threads, as often as the rest of you. I may return this evening, but will be gone for several days thereafter.

And one more thing ...

JS Princeton Also, I believe the "intrinsic" redshift of the sun you're referring to is something like a 4-sigma effect. This is on top of the radial oscillations of literally thousands of modes that are documented using much more clearly seen redshifts. How can you be certain the effect is physical? Certainly the people you are referring to aren't convinced.

In this case, I think the effect is real enough. See the papers I cited above, both of which are available from the ADS server: The Interpretation of the Absorption-Line Red-Shifts in the Solar Spectrum (Pasachoff & Silk, 1968) and Solar granulation - Influence of convection on spectral line asymmetries and wavelength shifts (Dravins et al., 1981). The latter paper references Kierein's original paper on page 361, where the authors point out that Compton scattering should broaden the lines as well as shifting them.

If it's pure Compton, then yes, sure, broadening is in the pocket. But that depends on the density of electron blanket over the sun. As the electron fluid gets denser, that broadening gradually turns into slower deviations of photon frequencies; hence, measuring effective broadening might require averaging over greater periods of time. The effect may look sort of between Compton and coherent Raman case.
Actual state of the electron fluid ought to produce a specific structural signature in its proper emission spectrum, both in the freq and time domains.
I guess, I need to read some info on the matter...

I, of course have what I consider to be good arguments against the idea that multiple Compton Scattering causes line broadening. They are in my paper in the book "Pushing Gravity" and many other publications. It's breifly mentioned here and I have described it on older threads in this BB.
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaver...5/compton.html
As for the motion of 3C 345 wrt NRAO 512, I hate to make ad hominem arguments, but from the discussion it was clear that nobody was willing to say that quasars can move. It'd be so areligious as Copernicus! So they were struggling to find every possible outside the box reason to expand the error bars. I think they even thought about movement of the centroid of brightness from things like sunspots. They were really stretching so they could sleep at night with their big bang dreams. I suppose in later papers they changed the error bars of the earlier measurements. But they didn't really want to do this because they were so proud of their ability to make such precise measurements. They were on the horns of a dilemma.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: John Kierein on 2002-11-14 18:25 ]</font>

John,
All's fine and dandy as long as electrons don't move in a totally random fashion. If electrons' motion in your fluid is uncorrelated, the broadening is of the same order as redshift. To deliver a redshift without considerable broadening, your electrons must have their momenta mostly in ordered flows rather than in random motion. Such ordering does happen by the intergalactic magnetic fields in the IGM and by local fields in compact objects.
What I would really like to see is some analysis of local order in the electron fluid or, more specifically, to what extent are the momenta of electrons in subsequent scatterings correlated.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: AgoraBasta on 2002-11-15 15:23 ]</font>

On the Quantization of the Red-Shifted Light from Distant Galaxies

http://www.ldolphin.org/tifftshift.html

Several ways can be conceived to explain this quantization. As noted earlier, a galaxy's redshift may not be a Doppler shift, it is the currently commonly accepted interpretation of the red shift, but there can be and are other interpretations. A galaxy's redshift may be a fundamental property of the galaxy. Each may have a specific state governed by laws, analogues to those in quantum mechanics that specify which energy states atoms may occupy. Since there is relatively little blurring on the quantization between galaxies, any real motions would have to be small in this model. Galaxies would not more away from one another; the universe would be static instead of expanding.

Orion: QM is not an arbitrary energy level assignment. It is derivable from very simple ideas and first principles. You can try to make analogous statements between the tested theory of QM and your new idea, but right now the presentation of this is pseudoscience because you aren't addressing the problem mechanistically.

It's good that you are thinking creatively about these issues, but you have to recognize that in order to replace a given paradigm you have to present us with a coherent mechanistic system that fully re-explains the vast majority of the previous paradigm. Saying it's "analogous" to QM is problematic because I don't think you understand QM well enough to say this. What is the analog to the Schrodinger Equation? To the operator arithmetic? To the particles wavefuntion? These are the rigorous answers that are required in order to advance your idea.