Something's Wrong With Redshift Theory!

[Clete]

First, I should start by giving a brief explanation of what redshift is...

Instead of merely looking at the bare light coming from distant objects through telescopes, one of the main techniques astronomers use to study distant celestial objects is to spread that light out into a spectrum. This is extremely useful because each element that the light encounters will absorb very specific frequencies of light, or in the case of a plasma that is giving off light, different elements radiate specific frequencies of light and so by look at what are called absorption (or transmission) lines in the spectra, astronomers can tell something about the chemistry of whatever it is they are looking at.
Redshift describes how light shifts toward longer wavelengths as objects in space, such as stars or galaxies, move away from us and so if an object is moving away, the absorption or transmission lines in the object's spectra will be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. The faster the object is moving, the more the spectra is shifted. Blueshift happens as well but you don't hear as much about it because generally speaking, most everything is moving away from us and not toward us.



In the 1920's, Edwin Hubble, figured out that pretty much everything is redshifted and therefore moving away from us but also that the dimmer the galaxy (and therefore the farther away the galaxy) the greater the redshift and therefore the faster the galaxy is moving away. Not only that but there's an apparent constant rate at which the speed increases with distance from Earth (i.e. actually any observer) this constant is known as the Hubble Constant and it's exact value is rather hotly debated but it's value isn't really relevant to the issue I want to explore here. There point here is that because of the Hubble Constant, astronomers can use the redshift to calculate the distances to other galaxies.

Now, there is more than one thing that can cause a redshift but the only sort we are concerned about here is what is called cosmological redshift which is the shift supposedly caused by the expansion of space itself and not the object's motion relative to us within that space. The amount of cosmological redshift is in an object's spectra is expressed with the variable z. The bigger the number the faster the expansion and the farther away the object and the numbers get huge really fast...

z = 1 = 13,770,322,267 ly
z = 2 = 27,540,644,534 ly
z = 3 = 41,310,966,801 ly
z = 10 = 137,703,222,671 ly

and so on.

Note that those numbers are in the billions of light years.

Okay, so now that we've laid down the basics, let's look at why I say that there's a problem with the theory that redshift correlates with distance. Take a look at this image of a galaxy and it's companion galaxy known as NGC7603 and NGC7603b



The two objects are clearly interacting with each other and so must be in the same region of space. Now look at the same object in this false color, near infrared image which includes the z values of several of the objects in the image....




Objects 2 and 3 have been confirmed to be quasars, which are basically objects that are shooting off columnated jets of radiation from their poles. They're basically humongous laser beams being shot straight at the Earth from very very far away. That's pretty cool stuff but what's more interesting is the z values! Let's just list them out in terms of light years....

NGC7603: (z = 0.029) = 399,339,346 ly
Object 1: (z = 0.057) = 784,908,369 ly
Object 2: (z = 0.243) = 3,346,188,311 ly
Object 3: (z = 0.391) = 5,384,196,006 ly

Now there is just no way these four objects are spread out over nearly 5 BILLION light years of distance! Even if you ignore the two quasars, Redshift Theory would have you believe that NGC7603's companion galaxy, which is it clearly interacting with it gravitationally, is just shy of twice as far away from us as NGC7603 itself is!

It should be noted that the redshift values discussed here are observational science. They are not in question. The spectra from these objects are redshifted by measurable amounts and these are the observed z values for these objects. The distances, however, are a different animal. They can vary depending on what value you use as the Hubble Constant, which, as I said, is something that is hotly debated. The figures I've posted here were calculated at ConvertMe.Com's Redshift Conversion Page, which uses whatever the most widely accepted value is of the Hubble Constant. The point is that regardless of the Hubble Constant used, the observational science proves that an object's redshift cannot be as tied to it's distance as modern Big Bang Cosmology would have us believe.

Lastly, this is not an isolated example. There are hundreds of such "discordant redshifts" observed all over the sky.


Clete

 

[Clete]

:sozo:Ready... Go!

 

[Right Divider]

:sozo:Ready... Go!

Off to a slow start :BillyBob:

 

[Sherman]

Discordant Redshift is a problem for the big bang model.

 

[Clete]

Discordant Redshift is a problem for the big bang model.

That's an understatement.

It undermines the whole idea that the Big Bang model is predicated on. If there are processes of whatever nature that can create redshifts that have nothing to do with the expansion of the cosmos, then the whole reason for thinking that there was a Big Bang in the first place is thrown into question.

It's one of a seemingly endless parade of ideas that dominate modern cosmolgy that are based on a whole list of assumptions. They assume redshift is a sort of dopler effect and that it can only be explained by the motion of the observed object relative to the observer. In the case of cosmological redshift, they assume that its space itself that is stretching out the light but that's still a form of motion. They see plasma all over the place and even acknowledge that it is by far the most prevalant form of "normal" matter. They understand that plasma is, by definition, ionized gas, which is to say that it is gas with its electrons removed and thus has an electric charge. They see and even measure the magnetic fields of practically everything they look at, including whole galaxies and they know that magnetic fields are only ever generated by flowing electrical currents. None of that is disputed by anyone anywhere but they refuse to connect the dots and conclude that electricity might have something to do with the things we see happening in the universe. Instead, cosmolgists steadfastly stick to the assumption that the universe is electrically neutral on large scales and that therefore gravity, the weakest natural force by far, is the only significant force at work on cosmological scales and that therefore phenomina like redshift can only be caused by one type or another of motion.

I'll give you one guess as to what happens to spectral lines in an electrically discharging plasma.

 

[Sherman]

A strong electric field - as in the case of an electrically discharging plasma, results in a splitting of the spectral lines called the Zeeman Effect.

 

[Clete]

A strong electric field - as in the case of an electrically discharging plasma, results in a splitting of the spectral lines called the Zeeman Effect.

Well, that's actually true but that wasn't the answer I was looking for, obviously.

It causes, or at least is associated with a redshift. But actually, I'm sort of wishing I hadn't brought that up because I don't want to turn this thread into a debate or even a discussion about plasma physics or the electric universe theory or any of that sort of stuff.

The point is this: The observational data proves that something besides a Dopler type effect is causing the observed redshifts. Even if you acknowledge that cosmological redshift is happening because space itself is expanding and thus stretching out and thereby lower the frequencies (i.e. shifting them toward the red), you're still talking about what amounts to a type of Dopler effect that simply cannot account for the observational data.

And here's the real rub, as Halton Arp put it...
`

"Fundamentally, the only way you can tell the distance in the universe is to see the object associated with another object whose distance you know. So if you see objects which are clustered together or are interacting together, you know they are at the same distance. And if you find that their redshifts are much different, then you know that redshift can't be a measure of distance."

And...

"Our entire view of the universe, the size and the mass and the contents, depends on this assumption that we can tell distances with redshift. If that one crucial assumption is incorrect then our picture falls apart and we don't know very much." - Halton Arp​

Put plainly, Big Bang cosmology, from start to finish, is wholely predicated on the ability to tell distance with redshift.

Here's a terrific little video, a little less than twenty minutes long that goes into a bit more detail...

 

[Sherman]

Very interesting. The inconsistent red shifts and the material coming from the galaxies the suggest association of the quasars with the galaxies is very problematic for the Big Bang model. Red Shift is not a dependable tool for gauging the distance of objects in space.

 

[Clete]

Very interesting. The inconsistent red shifts and and the material coming from the galaxies the suggest association of the quasars with the galaxies is very problematic for the Big Bang model. Red Shift is not a dependable tool for gauging the distance of objects in space.

Which is sort of sucky just because it leaves very little for us to use to accurately gauge cosmological distances. There's always parallax but that's only good for objects that are pretty close (relatively speaking) and then there's the use of "standard candles" but there are quite a few assumptions that have to be made with standard candle calculations and I tend not to trust assumptions. Scientists, in particular, seem greatly talented at assuming things that later prove to be totally wrong. Incidentally, the difference between redshift and luminosity distance calculations is the reason they think the expansion of the universe is accelerating and therefore that dark energy exists.

Also, if Hubble was wrong about red shift, it means that there's no good reason to believe that the universe is expanding in the first place and thus no good reason to believe in a Big Bang theory or any other sort of cosmological evolutionary theory, which is the core of nearly every atheist's origin myth. This, I think, is understood intuitively by mainstream scientists and gives the most plausible reason for the fact that they instinctively ignore the numerous redshift anomalies that have been known about since at least the 1960s.

Some might say that to throw out the Big Bang Theory because of some anomalous redshifts here and there is an over reaction and they'd be right if this was the only reason to doubt the Big Bang Theory. As many of these anomalies as there are, it is still true that redshift values are pretty consistent overall. They've measured the redshift of literally hundreds of thousands of objects and so even if you have a several hundred anomalies, that's still a pretty small percentage and would not be enough, by itself, to falsify the Big Bang Theory, as some on the internet hysterically claim. It does, however, stand as a significant problem that mainstream science hasn't any idea how to account for. My suspicion is that the answer will come when scientists get more comfortably with the idea that electromagnetism plays a much more significant role is cosmological processes that is currently accepted and there does seem to be some trickle of movement in that direction. I also suspect that this trickle of movement will eventually turn into a flood that will end up wiping out most everything we think we know about the universe.

 

[Sherman]

I am comfortable with tossing Big Bang in the dustbin, because I don't have a horse in that race. If there were a Big Bang the Redshifts would be consistent. There would be that Doppler effect of all the objects moving away from the center of the Big Bang. There isn't.

The learned about the Doppler effect in high school in the advance placement science program. If a object-- say a car, it moving toward you the wave length is compressed and in this case making the sound of the motor higher pitched. Then the car passes and the engine sound drops in pitch as the wave lengths are elongated as the vehicle moves away from the listener. In the case of light waves from galaxies or quasars, when the waves are compressed it becomes Blue Shift, which is uncommon. Usually is a Red Shift caused by elongation of waves as the object is moving away.

 

[Clete]

I am comfortable with tossing Big Bang in the dustbin, because I don't have a horse in that race. If there were a Big Bang the Redshifts would be consistent. There would be that Doppler effect of all the objects moving away from the center of the Big Bang. There isn't.

Well, the question is whether there are enough anomolies to allow us to rightly say what you just said here with this much confidence.

For now, I'm content to only go so far as to say that there is good reason to believe that there is significant problems with redshift theory, which, in turn, just adds to the pile of things that are problematic for the Big Bang Theory.

The learned about the Doppler effect in high school in the advance placement science program. If a object-- say a car, it moving toward you the wave length is compressed and in this case making the sound of the motor higher pitched. Then the car passes and the engine sound drops in pitch as the wave lengths are elongated as the vehicle moves away from the listener. In the case of light waves from galaxies or quasars, when the waves are compressed it becomes Blue Shift, which is uncommon. Usually is a Red Shift caused by elongation of waves as the object is moving away.

This describes the actual dopler effect but to be clear, this isn't really what they're talking about when talking about cosmological distances. Cosmological redshift isn't due to the motion of a body relative to the Earth within space but due to space itself expanding. So instead of it being like a train speading away down the tracks, its the tracks that are stretching. The claim is that at large distances, the expansion of space basically swamps any other sort of motion to the point that regular dopler effect redshifts can be ignored.

Of course, those "long distances" are calculated based on redshift theory and so if the theory turns out to be fundamentally flawed then all those distances go out the window and all such assumptions go with them.