NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/astro/13382

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-23 | 5.9 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!howland.reston.ans.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!vax5.cit.cornell.edu!njzy
From: [e-mail] (T. Joseph Lazio, Cornell University)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: Info wanted on Halton Arp
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Dec 92 09:44:49 EST
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Distribution: sci
Organization: Cornell University
Lines: 101

In article <[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (Jean-Remi Duquet) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter Kocourek) writes:
>>In a recent discussion, someone mentioned to me a certain guy named Halton
>>Arp, who supposedly has "disproven the Big Bang" theory, by showing that
>>there are flows of matter between quasars and galaxies, with the
>>implication that the quasars aren't as far away as thought. He even is
>>supposed to have "photographs" proving this. It would seem to me, without
>>knowing anything further about this, that this is just a misinterpretation
>>of optically close objects. Does anyone know more about (the refutation
>>of) Halton Arp's theories?
>
> First, Halton Arp is a well known astronomer who published, among other
> things, an atlas of peculiar galaxies. This has nothing to do with his
> theory, but it makes a decent introduction.
>
> The "theory" you talk about is not really one, by most scientific standards.
> He just presented a number of observations (mostly photographs) which, he
> claims, are incompatible with the standard interpretation of spectral
> shift as a recession velocity.

 Arp has developed a hypothesis for at least part of his explanations.
 He notes that many open clusters in the Galaxy and the Large Magellanic
 Cloud have O (and B?) stars with anomalous redshifts with respect to
 the mean cluster redshift.  Since these stars are generally agreed
 to be young, Arp interprets these anomalous redshifts to indicate
 that the matter composing the stars is much younger than the rest of
 the cluster matter, i.e. the stars are formed from matter recently
 created.  Within this idea, QSOs are then extremely young objects,
 i.e. formed from matter which has just recently appeared.

 My apologies to Arp if I've screwed this up.  I'm going on memory from
 a talk he gave here about 6 mon. ago and a paper I skimmed.  I
 believe the idea is detailed in the publication "Aperion" (Apelion?).
 I think my officemate has a copy; I could post the reference if
 interest exists.

 Criticisms:  At the talk, Arp presented this idea.  In his talk,
 he showed very little data so it was tough to decide for oneself
 how severe his observations push the theory (maybe he was trying
 to get us to buy the book?)

 1.  Prof. Tommy Gold noted that if there is some form of
     continuous creation, there are probably solar system tests
     which could be used.  Gold seemed to believe that even
     simple things like the performance of lasers indicated that
     Arp's idea was probably wrong.

 2.  The anomalous redshifts of O stars apparently exist in
     the data "as is," but it's not clear to me that they
     are statistically significant (1-3 km/s).  When he
     applies a model for the stellar winds of the stars,
     the redshift jumps to 10 km/s, something like a
     10-sigma deviation from the mean cluster redshift.
     Did he use a good model for the stellar winds?

 3.  In Arp's idea, redshift is a function of time.  There is
     a parameter, \tau_0, which describes the time in the past
     at which matter first began appearing (I think?).  He
     arrives at a value of \tau_0 \approx 13 x 10^9 yrs.  I
     find this suspiciously close to the value of H_0^{-1}, i.e.
     the age of the Universe as estimated from the Hubble constant.
     I asked him a question about this, but he misinterpreted
     my question and I never got a chance to follow up.

> In his book "Quasars, redshift and controversies", Arp shows quite a few
> close associations between quasars and galaxies, with very different
> redshifts. These alignments or associations all have a fairly low
> probability of occurrence, and the overall probability is of course much
> lower since he shows many such objects. The usual counterarguments are
> the low-number statistics involved and also the facts that "a posteriori"
> statistics are involved. The definitive proof would be a physical link
> between two objects vith unmatched redshifts; Arp shows a couple of
> interesting examples, but none is good enough to represent an
> undisputable association. But who knows...
>
> His book is well worth reading. Not very expensive, short and fully
> illustrated. He won't convince you he's right, but he certainly shows
> that some of these objects would need some more observations...

 I discussed one such association on the net, oh, sometime in the
 past year.  It concerned Arp 225 (I think) and was about a paper
 by Arp & Sulentic in the Astrophysical Journal (1987).  They find
 a "bridge" between Arp 225 and a nearby, lower-redshift galaxy.
 It wasn't clear to me from the published images that the
 bridge was not a artifact from the CCD; in particular, many other
 stars in the image showed extensions in the same direction as
 the "bridge."

 This is of course, only one example and I really haven't
 looked at the book all that closely.

--
 T. Joseph Lazio                | Why relativity? and Why
 514 Space Sciences             | turbulence?  I really believe
 Ithaca, NY  14853-6801         | [God] will have an answer for the
 [phone]                 | first [question].
 [e-mail]  |   -- W. Heisenberg, on his death bed
ICBM:                           |
 42 deg. 20' 08" N              |              STOP RAPE
 76 deg. 28' 48" W              |