Was Halton Arp hard done by? Need some clarification. some pictures

[Yesifeed]

Some time ago Halton Arp made a prediction that big red shifted galaxies are connected to smaller red shifted galaxies. Does anybody know what exactly was his prediction.

Anyway so NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team tried to discredit him using this image:

But look what happens when you invert that image:

The same thing from a different source and correct me if i am wrong, measuring the redshift.

This is the same thing via an Xray.

I hear he got "lepered" in Germany. I am curious as to what Arp did that was so wrong?

Mentor Note: Please size pictures to no larger than 650 x 490.

 

[turbo]

Arp argued that redshift was not an absolute indicator of cosmological distance and recession, but there was some component of redshift that is intrinsic to the objects being observed. Such a view was heresy, and as a result, the time allocation committee cut off his observation time at Palomar, then at the telescope in Chile. An observational astronomer with no access to telescopes... not good!

 

[Hurkyl]

Anyway so NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team tried to discredit him using this image:

Surely you mean "tried to refute his theory"?

But look what happens when you invert that image:

So?

I hear he got "lepered" in Germany.

I am curious as to what Arp did that was so wrong?

Such a view was heresy

Surely you're just trying to be humorous rather than trolling for a response, right?

 

[Dotini]

Wasn't (isn't?) Arp a creationist - or at least one who occasionally alludes to "God"? Perhaps this would tend to partially explain why he is shunned by more respectable academics and institutions?

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

 

[turbo]

Surely you're just trying to be humorous rather than trolling for a response, right?

Not in the least. Even Edwin Hubble was not convinced that redshift was proof of recession/cosmological expansion. In private correspondence a few weeks after the 1988 "Cosmology in Retrospect" symposium, Arp told me that in Hubble's old papers, Hubble always said "if redshift means velocity", and mentioned that in a paper published in 1953 after his death, Hubble said "c x z = velocity is not formally correct".

Halton Arp, the Burbidges, et al may be quite wrong in invoking intrinsic redshifts. They have dug up many examples of apparently-interacting objects with discordant redshifts. My collaborators and I assembled a large catalog of M-51-type galaxy associations, and published that paper in a Springer journal. The smaller companions are overwhelmingly redshifted WRT their host galaxies. This may be entirely an artifact of chance projection, though it is hard to make such a case when the spiral arm connecting to the companion is distorted and/or asymmetrical.

 

[Yesifeed]

I apologize for the large pictures, i will resize but it will take a 1/4 of an hour or so.

Do i need to resize the original 2 images?

Surely you mean "tried to refute his theory"?

I think maybe "tried to discredit his prediction" as in "put into doubt" is more accurate, i am not sure that you can really "refute" something like this with a single picture.

So?

You can't see the faint gaseuos bridge?

 

[George Jones]

You can't see the faint gaseuos bridge?

Read

http://heritage.stsci.edu/2002/23/supplemental.html.

 

[D H]

You can't see the faint gaseuos bridge?

There's no bridge there. At least that is the scientific consensus.

Think of it this way. You're driving down the road and see a radio tower in the distance that just happens to look like it is coming out of the top of a nearby building. The tower of course is not coming out of the top of the building. It just happens to look like it is.

Another way to look at it: People have grouped stars into constellations since before written history. Many of those stars that we see as being close together are in fact very, very far apart. When we see two stars as being close to one another, what we are seeing is a small angular separation from the perspective of our particular location in the galaxy. The perspective from some other location might well be something quite different.

Arp spent his time looking for objects that appeared to be close together. Some of the objects he found truly are close together but others are not. NGC 4319 and Markarian 205 are in the latter category.

 

[Hurkyl]

Not in the least.

(Irrelevant words snipped) Then care to provide a reference for your assertion that he was cut off for heretical views?

(note: arguing whether his theories are right or wrong is completely irrelevant for your assertion)

 

[matt.o]

My collaborators and I assembled a large catalog of M-51-type galaxy associations, and published that paper in a Springer journal. The smaller companions are overwhelmingly redshifted WRT their host galaxies.

Your claim that the smaller companions are "overwhelmingly redshifted" has been previously examined and the evidence has been shown to be rather underwhelming. See the following post:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2397153&postcount=41"

 

[Yesifeed]

Thanks for the input. I read that link you gave George Jones. Interesting. They say the issue is debateable but as more and more images are gotten the less likely that it is the case.

 

[Hurkyl]

You can't see the faint gaseuos bridge?

No. I see a small fuzzy circle near to a large fuzzy ellipse.

While I can see what you are making out to be a "faint gaseous bridge", it simply doesn't look to me like anything other than a small fuzzy circle next to a large fuzzy ellipse.

I know some of the sorts of artifacts that can appear in this sort of image to give a misleading appearance -- but I don't even see those artifacts here. You are only seeing a bridge because you want to see one, or are possibly suffering an optical illusion.

I really don't trust eyes and brains for doing this sort of image classification.



I decided to have a fun image-making experiment. The pictures below contain two disks. Nothing else -- just two disks.

I processed the image by smearing them out (to make a fringe), applying a threshold value for white and black, and interpolating between the thresholds with shades of gray.

Here is the image.

There's the clear appearance of a faint bridge, despite such a thing simply not existing in the underlying picture.


I moved the circles a bit closer and did the same process.

It doesn't even look like a bridge anymore -- they look actually connected!


Here is the unprocessed image. (for the second case of the circles being slightly closer)

 

[Yesifeed]

Thanks it does seem i was suffering an optical illusion, i looked at it again after reading what you wrote it seems less connected. But what of the other 2 images?

 

[Hurkyl]

Thanks it does seem i was suffering an optical illusion, i looked at it again after reading what you wrote it seems less connected. But what of the other 2 images?

Your third image could very well be the sort of processing artifact I made a sample of.

The difference between red and green looks very steep to the human eye, but I have absolutely no idea how the colors correspond to actual data, or otherwise what processing was done on the image.

I don't have the expertise to tell the difference between an actual object and an artifact -- especially since I have no clue as to the underlying data.


I can't figure out what the fourth image is showing.

 

[Yesifeed]

Fair enough. The 4th image is of Markian 205 as well apparently and the bridge is to the top right for some reason.

EDIT: The third image was of the image measuring redshift, i am not aware that other post processing was done.

 

[turbo]

Your claim that the smaller companions are "overwhelmingly redshifted" has been previously examined and the evidence has been shown to be rather underwhelming. See the following post:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2397153&postcount=41"

There is the data. "underwhelming" may be your caricaturisation, but we can't pick and choose in observational astronomy. Either the universe follows some rules, or it's Katy Bar The Door.

 

[matt.o]

http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.1492

There is the data. "underwhelming" may be your caricaturisation, but we can't pick and choose in observational astronomy. Either the universe follows some rules, or it's Katy Bar The Door.

Thanks for the link to the paper. Keen readers (i.e., those that bothered to read the post I linked to) will note that those were the data used in the linked post above.

 

[Chalnoth]

It is always sad when a formerly-good scientist goes down the road of complete crackpot. Arp is one of the more prominent examples, though there are so many others. His primary offense is that he stopped paying attention to anybody else's arguments, and more importantly stopped paying attention to the evidence, and continued to parrot his theories anyway. That is a heresy that science cannot abide: the heresy of divorcing yourself from reason and evidence.

In this particular case, Arp never presented a compelling argument for how this redshift might be "intrinsic". Also bear in mind that today we have correlated redshift with a number of different distance measures across an obscene range of distance (many billions of light years). We have also been able to resolve the host galaxies of many quasars, such as in this image above (Arp believed that quasars were objects ejected from galaxies, instead of just being the cores of active galaxies).

 

[twofish-quant]

Such a view was heresy, and as a result, the time allocation committee cut off his observation time at Palomar, then at the telescope in Chile.

Telescope time is an extremely precious commodity, and giving time to him means taking it away from someone else.

Also, if we are *that* wrong about quasars, then you should be able to think of some way of showing that with telescope time that is less in demand.

 

[twofish-quant]

That is a heresy that science cannot abide: the heresy of divorcing yourself from reason and evidence.

And note that no one is burning him at the stake or anything like that.

If you have a weird unconventional theory, that's fine. If you have a weird and unconventional theory and something to prove it, then you have a problem. If you want to look for the Loch Ness monster, that's fine, but if you want to use my boat and have me pay for your expenses, then you have a problem.

In this particular case, Arp never presented a compelling argument for how this redshift might be "intrinsic".

And this poses a problem because telescope time in large telescopes is too precious to use for fishing expeditions.

Arp believed that quasars were objects ejected from galaxies, instead of just being the cores of active galaxies.

And note that this was a perfectly reasonable thing to believe in 1970. The problem is that during the 1970's, people came up with more and more reasons to think that quasars are distant objects, so Arp just got left behind as the crowd moved forward.

Also, every physicist has some crackpot ideas, but one trick you have to learn in being a productive crackpot is how not to look like a crackpot. My *real* motivation might be to look for the Loch Ness monster, but to get the boat and the crew I just tell everyone that I'm interested in studying the effect of greenhouse gases and pollution on Scottish lakes. If I'm in charge of environmental protection in Scotland, I don't really care if you are looking for the Loch Ness monster, as long as I get my numbers.

Arp isn't the only one that has to do this. Scientists generally have to sell their research priorities to funders and telescope allocation committees, and I don't see that this is a bad way of dividing up scarce resources.

 

[Hurkyl]

Also, every physicist has some crackpot ideas,

Really, no idea is crackpot. It's the mindset that goes with the idea that can be crackpot. One can very easily be a crackpot pushing an idea that is actually correct, as well as being a perfectly professional scientist pursuing an idea that is wrong, (or likely to be so).

 

[twofish-quant]

Really, no idea is crackpot. It's the mindset that goes with the idea that can be crackpot.

That doesn't quite fit what I've seen. There are a lot of examples of extremely productive and brilliant scientists that have had totally weird ideas (Robert Penrose and neuroscience , Fred Hoyle and cosmology, is another, Thomas Gold and natural gas, Newton and Einstein about a lot of things).

There is a Nobel Prize winner that people knew never to mention black holes around, because the second you did, you'd get this long rant about how they didn't exist. There is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences that has some very unconventional ideas on galactic jets (he doesn't believe they exist).

One thing that is interesting is that what makes someone a totally brilliant scientist can also make them a crackpot. A crackpot is someone that holds on to an idea despite all evidence to the contrary, and sometimes that person can be totally brilliant if he is lucky and right. Sometimes someone can be wrong about one thing, but no one cares because they are brilliant in something else (Penrose).

One can very easily be a crackpot pushing an idea that is actually correct, as well as being a perfectly professional scientist pursuing an idea that is wrong, (or likely to be so).

A crackpot that pushes an idea that turns out to be correct wins the Nobel Prize. Something about "productive crackpots" is that they are often working on several weird ideas. The one that works gets them the world fame. The ones that don't, people forget about.

There are a lot of professional scientists that are crackpots about some things. Personally, I don't think that you can be a productive scientist without being a semi-crackpot.

I think the difference is not having weird ideas or even being irrationally transfixed with ideas. I think the difference is whether you have a sense of humor and aren't annoying to be around. The astrophysicist that I know who has weird ideas about galactic jets, is actually quite nice, and he started his talk with "Yes, I know everyone thinks I'm nuts, but since you asked me to talk about what I think about galactic jets..." It also helps to have a dozen different ideas. If you have irrational ideas about a dozen things, then you might get ultra-lucky with one of them.

If you go around telling about how "they are trying to get you" then people stop wanting to talk to you, especially if you happen to be "them."

 

[TrickyDicky]

That doesn't quite fit what I've seen. There are a lot of examples of extremely productive and brilliant scientists that have had totally weird ideas (Robert Penrose and neuroscience , Fred Hoyle and cosmology, is another, Thomas Gold and natural gas, Newton and Einstein about a lot of things).

There is a Nobel Prize winner that people knew never to mention black holes around, because the second you did, you'd get this long rant about how they didn't exist. There is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences that has some very unconventional ideas on galactic jets (he doesn't believe they exist).

One thing that is interesting is that what makes someone a totally brilliant scientist can also make them a crackpot. A crackpot is someone that holds on to an idea despite all evidence to the contrary, and sometimes that person can be totally brilliant if he is lucky and right. Sometimes someone can be wrong about one thing, but no one cares because they are brilliant in something else (Penrose).



A crackpot that pushes an idea that turns out to be correct wins the Nobel Prize. Something about "productive crackpots" is that they are often working on several weird ideas. The one that works gets them the world fame. The ones that don't, people forget about.

There are a lot of professional scientists that are crackpots about some things. Personally, I don't think that you can be a productive scientist without being a semi-crackpot.

I think the difference is not having weird ideas or even being irrationally transfixed with ideas. I think the difference is whether you have a sense of humor and aren't annoying to be around. The astrophysicist that I know who has weird ideas about galactic jets, is actually quite nice, and he started his talk with "Yes, I know everyone thinks I'm nuts, but since you asked me to talk about what I think about galactic jets..." It also helps to have a dozen different ideas. If you have irrational ideas about a dozen things, then you might get ultra-lucky with one of them.

If you go around telling about how "they are trying to get you" then people stop wanting to talk to you, especially if you happen to be "them."

I'm not totally sure this picture is correct, but I would like to think it is.

In the end the key point is: no matter how crackpot an idea may be, does it work? and another very important point , does it fit in the general working model in cosmology?
The specific problem in cosmology is that many hypothesis can be neither experimentally tested nor directly observed, so basically there is not really a good way to know if they work or not, so the default mode is to declare valid only those ideas that fit in the general working model (that is known to be working within some limitations like too many tweakable fudge parameters but that's another story).
This is the logical way to act if you want to be practical, and being practical is very important in science.
In this sense probably the way Arp carried himself about his insights on quasars and redshift was not very clever, he might have kept his telescope time just by being more diplomatic and first and foremost he should have developed a general model that worked in order to fit in his "observations".
The reality is that Arp's pictures can be explained in different ways and the most practical thing to do is picking the interpretations that fit in the general working model.

 

[twofish-quant]

In the end the key point is: no matter how crackpot an idea may be, does it work? and another very important point , does it fit in the general working model in cosmology?

The latter isn't very important. The standard model could be very wrong in some areas. It's not that astrophysicists are against weird ideas in general, but people have a strong reaction to particular weird ideas because they just don't match what people see.

It's fine to say that the Loch Ness monster exists, but you will get some strange looks if you insist that it lives in Times Square.

The specific problem in cosmology is that many hypothesis can be neither experimentally tested nor directly observed, so basically there is not really a good way to know if they work or not.

That's not a problem, and one of the big misconceptions is that we are in the dark. We have tons and tons and tons of observations. One reason almost no one believes that quasars are nearby is that we can use VLBI observations to zoom in on them and see what they are, and they appear to be massive black holes.

People look at quasars every day. They aren't mysterious objects.

The default mode is to declare valid only those ideas that fit in the general working model

Not true. If you insist that general relativity is wrong, then no one is going to think that you are weird.

In this sense probably the way Arp carried himself about his insights on quasars and redshift was not very clever, he might have kept his telescope time just by being more diplomatic and first and foremost he should have developed a general model that worked in order to fit in his "observations".

The problem is that Arp's views weren't that unusual for 1965, and they are quite reasonable if you limit yourself to what was known about quasars in 1965. Part of the problem is that in 1965, no one could come up with a way of generating the type of energy that you need to power them. The current idea of gas falling into a black hole works nicely. Trouble is that the idea of a black hole was invented in 1968.

Also people somehow assume that Arp is some creative genius when in fact what has happened is that he has stuck to some old ideas long, long, long after the data convinced pretty much everyone else that those ideas were wrong. People will cut you a lot of slack for coming up with nutty ideas if they are *new* nutty ideas. Arp's ideas aren't.

The reality is that Arp's pictures can be explained in different ways and the most practical thing to do is picking the interpretations that fit in the general working model.

No. That's not true.

The problem is that if I show you a blurry picture of Times Square, then I can't prove that this isn't the Loch Ness monster. The reason I don't think the Loch Ness monster lives in Times Square is that people pass there every day, and there ain't no monster.

The sad thing is that if you are obsessed with looking for the Loch Ness monster, you'll miss the UFO and Bigfoot that was there. I'm pretty sure that if you put me into a time machine and traveled back to 1965 and had me a debate with Arp based only on the evidence that existed in 1965, I'd lose badly, and people there would think that I'm was a lunatic.

Q: So what powers these quasars?

Me: Black holes.

Q: What's a black hole?

Me: Well there are these million solar mass objects which are so massive that light can't escape...

Q: Oh... And what evidence do you have that these so called "black holes" can exist?

Me: Well, if you point a VLBI, oh... Hasn't been invented yet. Well if you take space based gamma ray... Oh... Hasn't been invented either... Well they are like pulsars... But people haven't seen those... Well, you can simulated them with supercomputers that ... Oh. You don't have supercomputers... Ummmm...

 

[TrickyDicky]

The latter isn't very important. The standard model could be very wrong in some areas. It's not that astrophysicists are against weird ideas in general, but people have a strong reaction to particular weird ideas because they just don't match what people see.

It's fine to say that the Loch Ness monster exists, but you will get some strange looks if you insist that it lives in Times Square.



That's not a problem, and one of the big misconceptions is that we are in the dark. We have tons and tons and tons of observations. One reason almost no one believes that quasars are nearby is that we can use VLBI observations to zoom in on them and see what they are, and they appear to be massive black holes.

People look at quasars every day. They aren't mysterious objects.



Not true. If you insist that general relativity is wrong, then no one is going to think that you are weird.



The problem is that Arp's views weren't that unusual for 1965, and they are quite reasonable if you limit yourself to what was known about quasars in 1965. Part of the problem is that in 1965, no one could come up with a way of generating the type of energy that you need to power them. The current idea of gas falling into a black hole works nicely. Trouble is that the idea of a black hole was invented in 1968.

Also people somehow assume that Arp is some creative genius when in fact what has happened is that he has stuck to some old ideas long, long, long after the data convinced pretty much everyone else that those ideas were wrong. People will cut you a lot of slack for coming up with nutty ideas if they are *new* nutty ideas. Arp's ideas aren't.



No. That's not true.

The problem is that if I show you a blurry picture of Times Square, then I can't prove that this isn't the Loch Ness monster. The reason I don't think the Loch Ness monster lives in Times Square is that people pass there every day, and there ain't no monster.

The sad thing is that if you are obsessed with looking for the Loch Ness monster, you'll miss the UFO and Bigfoot that was there. I'm pretty sure that if you put me into a time machine and traveled back to 1965 and had me a debate with Arp based only on the evidence that existed in 1965, I'd lose badly, and people there would think that I'm was a lunatic.

Q: So what powers these quasars?

Me: Black holes.

Q: What's a black hole?

Me: Well there are these million solar mass objects which are so massive that light can't escape...

Q: Oh... And what evidence do you have that these so called "black holes" can exist?

Me: Well, if you point a VLBI, oh... Hasn't been invented yet. Well if you take space based gamma ray... Oh... Hasn't been invented either... Well they are like pulsars... But people haven't seen those... Well, you can simulated them with supercomputers that ... Oh. You don't have supercomputers... Ummmm...

I don't now what all those "Not true" are about whent after saying it you go on to either explain the same thing I meant with different words or just miss completely the point of what I was referring to.
My post was agreeing with your previous post about crackpots ideas, I guess you debate for the sake of debating, I bet you have great arguments with yourself.
Not a single one of my statements is untrue, in the general ones I'm not referring to quasars specifically but to cosmology in general, and when I speak about Arp's pictures, I'm acknowledging that with the current knowledge the mainstream explanation is the most likely to be true, among the possible mechanisms that the pictures by themselves allow.
When I say that no matter how crackpot an idea sounds, if it fits in the cosmological model (LCDM)(previously modified to fit it in) then it will be accepted, I think of ideas like Dark matter, inflation or worm holes. Not strictly referring to GR since this theory admits a high number of different solutions that can be applied to differnt settings (from FRW solutions for cosmological redshift to static solutions for solar system problems, etc).
Are you denying that cosmology is still a highly speculative science? I'm not saying we are in the dark, sure we have many observations, but are you denying that in cosmology experiment is harder that in the rest of the physical science and that some objects can't be directly observed (say black holes) or that there are hypothesis that can't be verified and have to rely on theory dependent interpretations? This is all basic stuff, IMHO.

 

[twofish-quant]

I don't now what all those "Not true" are about whent after saying it you go on to either explain the same thing I meant with different words or just miss completely the point of what I was referring to.

I think you put too much brief in the standard model of cosmology, and you vastly underestimate the amount of data that is available.

I'm pretty sure that there are significant parts of the standard model that are wrong, and we've found major bits wrong in the last ten years. It's just that I don't think that it is wrong in the way that Arp thinks that it is.

I'm acknowledging that with the current knowledge the mainstream explanation is the most likely to be true, among the possible mechanisms that the pictures by themselves allow.

I'm pretty sure we have several significant things wrong. It will be interesting to see what they are.

When I say that no matter how crackpot an idea sounds, if it fits in the cosmological model (LCDM)(previously modified to fit it in) then it will be accepted, I think of ideas like Dark matter, inflation or worm holes.

One should note here that Arp's idea that quasars are local doesn't contradict LCDM.

Ultimately LCDM just produces a curve. It turns out that curve precisely fits observations. If it turns out that we've messed up something, then LCDM is out the window. Before 1998, CDM was the model. People added L when CDM wouldn't work. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we start talking about xLCDM.

Also it depends on what you mean by "accepted." Most of the ideas that are flying around are mutually exclusive, if it is X then it can't be Y.

Not strictly referring to GR since this theory admits a high number of different solutions that can be applied to differnt settings (from FRW solutions for cosmological redshift to static solutions for solar system problems, etc).

It's been seriously proposed that at large scales, GR is wrong. There is an industry producing alternative gravity models to explain acceleration.

Are you denying that cosmology is still a highly speculative science?

Yes, I am. Cosmology is no more speculative than planetary science, and we know a lot more about the cosmic microwave background than hot Jupiters or monetary policy.

Pre-inflationary stuff is weird and speculative, but anything that happens after that is no more speculative than atoms or lunar physics.

I'm not saying we are in the dark, sure we have many observations, but are you denying that in cosmology experiment is harder that in the rest of the physical science and that some objects can't be directly observed (say black holes)

Yes I am. Black holes are not much harder to observe than atoms, and easier to observe than small exo-planets. And you can directly observe black holes. We have some nice pictures of them.

There are hypothesis that can't be verified and have to rely on theory dependent interpretations? This is all basic stuff, IMHO.

You can get into deep philosophical questions about the nature of scientific evidence, but cosmology is no worse at having unverifiable hypothesis and theory dependent interpretations than oceanography or botany, and the philosophical issues that you have in cosmology are much less bad than in economics or sociology.

Yes this is basic stuff, which is why I'm peeve when popular science works get it wrong.

 

[Chalnoth]

The problem is that Arp's views weren't that unusual for 1965, and they are quite reasonable if you limit yourself to what was known about quasars in 1965. Part of the problem is that in 1965, no one could come up with a way of generating the type of energy that you need to power them. The current idea of gas falling into a black hole works nicely. Trouble is that the idea of a black hole was invented in 1968.

I'm pretty sure that his idea that these objects were ejected from galaxy cores was pretty nonsensical from the start, because not only was there no model whatsoever for what they actually were within Arp's idea, but they also had spectra of the quasars at that time. With no known physical method for producing such large redshifts except by either large recession velocities or gravitational redshift, Arp's idea that these redshifts were "intrinsic" was nutty from the start.

 

[TrickyDicky]

I'm pretty sure that there are significant parts of the standard model that are wrong, and we've found major bits wrong in the last ten years. It's just that I don't think that it is wrong in the way that Arp thinks that it is.

We agreed on this all along.

One should note here that Arp's idea that quasars are local doesn't contradict LCDM.

Ultimately LCDM just produces a curve. It turns out that curve precisely fits observations. If it turns out that we've messed up something, then LCDM is out the window. Before 1998, CDM was the model. People added L when CDM wouldn't work. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we start talking about xLCDM.

And this only goes to show that when you have a model that can be made to accommodate anything just by adding one more letter to its acronym, their proponents might just be either fooling themselves or pulling your leg.

It's been seriously proposed that at large scales, GR is wrong. There is an industry producing alternative gravity models to explain acceleration.

Maybe it's not GR that is wrong but the specific solutions with problems at large scales.

Yes I am. Black holes are not much harder to observe than atoms, and easier to observe than small exo-planets. And you can directly observe black holes. We have some nice pictures of them.

Are you serious? Atoms are currently easy to observe. Can't you make the distinction between indirect and direct observation?
Show me a picture of a BH, not that something that could also reasonably be a different thing. By definition, you can't directly observe a black hole.

 

[Chalnoth]

And this only goes to show that when you have a model that can be made to accommodate anything just by adding one more letter to its acronym, their proponents might just be either fooling themselves or pulling your leg.

Now that is a rather asinine mischaracterization. The cosmological constant absolutely, positively does not allow the standard cosmological model to "accommodate anything". Quite the opposite in fact: many other alternative explanations have already been shown to be false, while the cosmological constant has so far proven to be the best explanation for the observed acceleration.

Finally, if you think that one extra free parameter can ever explain "anything", then you've lost your mind.

Maybe it's not GR that is wrong but the specific solutions with problems at large scales.

Except that it is at large scales that our solutions are the most under control.

 

[TrickyDicky]

Now that is a rather asinine mischaracterization. The cosmological constant absolutely, positively does not allow the standard cosmological model to "accommodate anything". Quite the opposite in fact: many other alternative explanations have already been shown to be false, while the cosmological constant has so far proven to be the best explanation for the observed acceleration.

Finally, if you think that one extra free parameter can ever explain "anything", then you've lost your mind.

Wow, when you have to recur to such ofensive expressions as asinine and "you've lost your mind" I might be on the right track.
Anyway I was developing what Twofish-quant posted:"If it turns out that we've messed up something, then LCDM is out the window. Before 1998, CDM was the model. People added L when CDM wouldn't work. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we start talking about xLCDM."
is his characteization also asinine and is he out of his mind or is it just me?

 

[Chalnoth]

Wow, when you have to recur to such ofensive expressions as asinine and "you've lost your mind" I might be on the right track.

Or you could just learn a little bit.

In cosmology, the primary effect of dark energy is on the rate of expansion. So what we're fitting for is a function H(z). To date, we have a tremendous number of individual observations, from supernovae to galaxy distributions to the CMB, which all provide separate, independent constraints on this function. It is a fundamental impossibility for the addition of a single parameter to fit any potential H(z). It cannot be done.

Anyway I was developing what Twofish-quant posted:"If it turns out that we've messed up something, then LCDM is out the window. Before 1998, CDM was the model. People added L when CDM wouldn't work. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we start talking about xLCDM."
is his characteization also asinine and is he out of his mind or is it just me?

No, his statement was perfectly reasonable. Yours was asinine, because it claimed something completely and utterly false, while at the same time being insulting.

 

[TrickyDicky]

I'll say it again, you tell me where the insulting part is: when you have a model that can be made to accommodate anything just by adding one more letter to its acronym (this was referring to this words by twofish-quant:"I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we start talking about xLCDM") their proponents might just be either fooling themselves or pulling your leg.

 

[turbo]

I'm pretty sure that his idea that these objects were ejected from galaxy cores was pretty nonsensical from the start, because not only was there no model whatsoever for what they actually were within Arp's idea, but they also had spectra of the quasars at that time. With no known physical method for producing such large redshifts except by either large recession velocities or gravitational redshift, Arp's idea that these redshifts were "intrinsic" was nutty from the start.

Well, put yourself in their shoes. (Arp, Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, et al). Yes, quasars have some pretty impressive redshifts. Logically, though, their redshifts can't possibly originate from the peculiar motions of quasars, since that would place the Earth in a very special place in the universe, with each and every quasar receding from us. It was not such a leap to consider that quasars may have some property(ies) such that their redshifts are intrinsic. It's easy to call such an idea "nutty" in retrospect, but look back a few decades, and try to imagine a better reason for the redshifts.

 

[Chalnoth]

I'll say it again, you tell me where the insulting part is: when you have a model that can be made to accommodate anything just by adding one more letter to its acronym

This is the insulting part, because it just isn't the case. I'll say it again: many other proposed models of the observed acceleration have failed. LCDM has survived because it fits the data better.

 

[TrickyDicky]

This is the insulting part, because it just isn't the case. I'll say it again: many other proposed models of the observed acceleration have failed. LCDM has survived because it fits the data better.

And that sentence in no way contradicts what you claim here, other models just don't have the plasticity or malleability to adapt to observations like supernovae Ia light curves. I don't know how that can be insulting, unless it is insulting only when I say it, I'm precisely highlighting that property of the concordance model, its ability to survive any observation.