Quasars are ejected from Seyfert galaxies

[Zefram]

Recently I heard about Halton Arp's work to disprove the current interpretation of redshift. However, a Google search turned up no "real" sites discussing this. So I bring my question here: is there anything to his work? Apparently he says that quasars are ejected from Seyfert galaxies or something. Sounds fishy. Anyone?

 

[quartodeciman]

try his website -->
http://www.haltonarp.com/
Halton Arp
Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik
85741 Garching, Germany

 

[Nacho]

I have a lot of respect for Halton Arp. He has pursued his ideas regardless of the flack he has received. I think he has been blacklisted from jobs/positions in the USA, and visibility of publications in journals that really matter, and it has led him to a job with no pay (that I am aware of) .. he just gets office space from the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich Germany, and maybe use of their facilities and archives.

He is non-apologetic because of his beliefs, and that has probably led to most of the problems he has had. Because, others have and are currently bringing up some of the same things he has, and they have not had too many problems with peers and the academy (which select articles for publication in prestigious journals and funding of current projects).

One of his original projects was to help Hubble in his redshift measurements/survey way-way back then. From that work he kinda went the other way -- his interpretation of his observations was that redshift was not reliable as a distance indicator. I have read two of his books: "Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies", and "Seeing Red". I understand he has a third book, written before these two.

I find him very facinating, and a very readable author, but, he tends to explain away things by appealing to your senses -- too much. In his latest book, "Seeing Red", I think he went a bit too far. His formulation for the cosmology behind redshift discrepancies is hard to believe, even for me.

Also, I think one of his biggest problems (this is IMO, and I understand I don't know as much about it as he or any other professional), is that he neglects considering the "voids" out in the Cosmos .. that there are great voids between galaxies. And I also understand that with his take of the redshift, that admitting there were great voids would tend to undercut his interpretation and add to the relevance of "competing" professionals. I think the voids alone could be a reason for quantisized redshifts, that is, matter not in the voids and only detected on the outskirts of the voids.

I used to read some astronomy magazines a few (5-6) years back. He sometimes submitted things to them because he couldn't get published anywhere (blacklisted). If there is anything that I hate about what other persons have done, it is that .. blacklisting him. I don't think he is a crackpot .. he is a very learned person .. he just has alternate explanations. That doesn't deserve him being blacklisted. I haven't read the magazines for awhile, and have kinda lost contact with his ideas. Too bad, cause I was kinda wanting to hear what he had to say about the observations of the Hubble Space Telescope showing the fuzzy (interpreted to be the host galaxy) around some quasars.

Anyway, I visited briefly the site quartodeciman left -- thanks for the link -- I visit it better when more time allows, because I am interested in what he has to say too.

 

[quartodeciman]

Allen Sandage and Halton "Cap" Arp graduated together from Cal Tech in astronomy, under the aegis of the famed galactic astronomer, Edwin Hubble. Sandage specialized in more-or-less normal galaxies and Arp specialized in weird galaxies. They both became Carnegie Institute astronomers under the joint arrangement with Cal Tech for managing the Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar observatories. Sandage became a stalwart defender of the cosmological interpretation of red shifts, extending the idea as far out into space as he could, while Arp became a critic of the purely cosmological interpretation and began to believe that there are other sources for red shifts, and that disparities can be clearly observed. Thought they disagreed fundamentally in their field, both men remained on friendly terms with one another. Both got dropped from the observatory system later in the twentieth century; first Arp, then Sandage. The Cal Tech group had decided that the joint sharing agreement with Carnegie was over. See this book:

Overbye;Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Story of the Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe;Little Brown(1999)

Also, see these books:

Arp;Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies;Interstellar(1987) I have a copy of this book

Arp;Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science;Apeiron(1998) I have not seen this book yet

 

[Nacho]

... Halton "Cap" Arp ...

He also has the knickname "Chip".

 

[quartodeciman]

I was wrong and you are right. It's Chip Arp. Thanks.

 

[Zefram]

Thanks for the replies. I was looking through a a few of his papers at ArXiv and there's a few points I'd like anyone familiar with his work to clarify for me:

• He believes that quasars are ejected from Seyfert galaxies; he also seems to predict that no quasar will be farther than 500 kpc from these galaxies and that they should be aligned with the galaxy's minor axis.
• The farther away from the Seyfert galaxy it's supposed to have emerged from it is, the lower he figures its redshift should be.
• I got the impression that white holes somehow figure into his model (which seems a little odd). Anyone know anything about that?
• He also seems to rely on some (steady state?) model from the '70s which has the mass of particles increasing with time.

Is all of this accurate?

 

[quartodeciman]

Here is electrical engineer/amateur astronomer Don Scott's bravo site for alternative astrophysics and cosmology. Yes, it bristles with complaint against the scientific establishment's mindset, as I would expect. But he isn't exactly dumb or tiresome. His website is at least well made and attractively pictorial.

the Electric Cosmos ~ multiple links ~

Arp and redshift ~specific to this topic ~

Mass increase with time sounds like a super-Mach theory, such as that called Hoyle-Narlikar. HN was made by Fred Hoyle and his star student Jayant Narlikar in the gap, beginning with the collapse around 1965 of the Steady-State coalition of Hoyle with Tom Gold and Hermann Bondi, until the rise of a replacement Quasi-Steady State Cosmology (QSSC) theory starting about 1980. There is much ado in it about conformal gravitation, and newly-created baryotropic {I made that word up! :)} particles accumulate their mass values through direct interactions with the cosmic substrate. Whatever, the book I own about this subject is a writeup from lectures presented in Sicily. --->

Hoyle & Narlikar, Action at a Distance in Physics and Cosmology,Freeman(1974), especially introduction and part 6, Inertia and Gravitation treated Classically

{This work is awfully tough going for me!}

In his swan-song book, Hoyle treats the same subject WRT the history of modern cosmology, but doesn't indicate that it was originally a predecessor to QSSC. --->

Hoyle, Burbidge and Narlikar, A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a static universe through the big bang towards reality,Cambridge(2000), especially chapter 17, the intrinsic redshift problem

(Though it has three authors, this book is in tone and structure Hoyle's final moan about pure cosmology, his legacy.}

I found very little help online searching with keywords "Hoyle" and "Narlikar", But I notice many now conflate the names with the QSSC, so I guess this later theory has superceded that earlier one.

Regards,

 

[quartodeciman]

oops!

EXTRA! EXTRA!

I linked the Don Scott site here in order to illustrate the red shift debate. But furthur search indicates a possible slide down the slippery slope to ding-dong science.

I can't tell from Scott's words what his motive is, but I will guess that he is a neo-velikovskian. These guys share a common cause with the clan of young Earth creationists, to flout current scientific authority and espouse catastrophism as the next big revolution in science. Therefore, I will post a link to some responses published by Tim Thompson, a JPL scientist who is also an amateur astronomer. Search down to "Anti Catastrophist Writings" on this page to find the appropriate links. --->

http://www.tim-thompson.com/faqs.html

Who is Immanuel Velikovsky? --->

http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovsky/index.htm

Wallace Thornhill, the Electric Universe guy -->

http://www.lauralee.com/thornhil.htm


egg on my face,