Exploding the Big Bang
by David Pratt
If light from stars or galaxies is passed through a prism or
grating, a spectrum is obtained, consisting of a series of lines and
bands. These spectra can be used to identify the atomic elements present
in the objects concerned, as each element has a distinct spectral
"signature." But if we compare the spectral lines of distant
galaxies with those produced by the same elements on earth, we find that
in every case the lines are displaced towards longer (redder) wavelengths.
This is known as the redshift, and is the subject of intense
controversy. The majority of astronomers and cosmologists subscribe to the
big bang theory, and interpret the redshift to mean that all galaxies are
flying apart at high speed and that the universe is expanding. A growing
minority of scientists, however, maintains that the redshift is produced
by other causes, and that the universe is not expanding. As
astronomer Halton Arp remarks in Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and
Academic Science, "one side must be completely and
catastrophically wrong" [1].
G. de Purucker rejected the theory of an
expanding universe or expanding space as "little short of being a
scientific pipe-dream or fairy-tale," and suggested that the redshift
might be caused by light losing energy during its long voyage through
space [2]. This is known as the tired-light theory, and is supported by
several astronomers. Paul LaViolette and Tom Van Flandern, for example,
have reviewed several observational tests of the different interpretations
of the redshift, and conclude that the tired-light, non-expanding-universe
model explains the data much better than the expanding-universe hypothesis
[3]. To bring the big bang model into line with observations, constant
adjustments have to be made to its "free parameters" (i.e. fudge
factors).
According to the big bang theory, a galaxy's redshift is proportional to its recession velocity, which increases with
its distance from earth. In the tired-light model, too, we would expect
redshift to be proportional to distance. The fact that this is not always
the case shows that other factors must be involved. Numerous examples of
galaxies at the same distance having very different redshifts are
given in the landmark book Seeing Red by Halton Arp, who works at
the Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik in Germany. He also gives many
examples of how, for over 30 years, establishment astronomers and
cosmologists have systematically tried to ignore, dismiss, ridicule, and
suppress this evidence -- for it is fatal to the hypothesis of an
expanding universe. Like other opponents of the big bang, he has
encountered great difficulties getting articles published in mainstream
journals, and his requests for time on ground-based and space telescopes
are frequently rejected.
Arp argues that redshift is primarily a
function of age, and that tired light plays no more than a secondary role.
He presents abundant observational evidence to show that low-redshift
galaxies sometimes eject high-redshift quasars in opposite directions,
which then evolve into progressively lower-redshift objects and finally
into normal galaxies. Ejected galaxies can, in turn, eject or fission into
smaller objects, in a cascading process. Within galaxies, the youngest,
brightest stars also have excess redshifts. The reason all distant
galaxies are redshifted is because we see them as they were when light
left them, i.e. when they were much younger. About seven local galaxies
are blueshifted. The orthodox view is that they must be moving
towards us even faster than the universe is expanding, but in Arp's
theory, they are simply older than our own galaxy as we see them.
To explain how redshift might be related to
age, Arp and Jayant Narlikar suggest that instead of elementary particles
having constant mass, as orthodox science assumes, they come into being
with zero mass, which then increases, in steps, as they age. When
electrons in younger atoms jump from one orbit to another, the light they
emit is weaker, and therefore more highly redshifted, than the light
emitted by electrons in older atoms. To put it another way: as particle
mass grows, frequency (clock rate) increases and therefore redshift
decreases.
When astronomers first saw active, disturbed
galaxies neighboring each other, they immediately jumped to the conclusion
that they were in the process of colliding. Arp comments: "By
ignoring the empirical evidence for ejection from galaxies, they
illustrated an unfortunate tendency in science, namely that when presented
with two possibilities, scientists tend to choose the wrong one" (p.
104). Despite the modern mania for galaxy mergers and black holes, it is
ejection processes that are the most ubiquitous, and may provide a key to
redshift anomalies.
In the 1950s, after some initial reluctance,
astronomers came to accept the evidence that jets of radio-wave-emitting
material could be ejected in opposite directions from the nuclei of active
galaxies. Further examples of ejection are provided by spiral galaxies:
large knots are sometimes seen along spiral arms, and companion galaxies
on the ends of the arms. There is fierce resistance, however, to the idea
that high-redshift objects can be ejected by low-redshift galaxies,
because this would demolish the fundamental assumption on which the big
bang is built -- that the redshift is caused entirely by recession
velocities. Nevertheless, the evidence is compelling. Pairs of ejected
objects often line up on either side of active galaxies and are connected
to their parent galaxy by luminous filaments ("umbilical
cords"). However, establishment scientists insist that all cases
where low-redshift and high-redshift objects appear to be physically
associated are merely chance combinations of foreground and background
objects, and they attribute the connecting filaments to "noise"
or "instrument defects."
Mainstream astronomers believe that the
normally very high redshifts of quasars indicate that they are situated
near the edge of the visible universe, and are rushing away from us at
velocities approaching the speed of light. To explain why many quasars lie
very close to low-redshift galaxies, it is fashionable nowadays to invoke
the theory of gravitational lensing: the image of a background quasar is
supposedly split into multiple bright images by the gravitational field of
a foreground galaxy with a large mass. The Einstein Cross, for example,
consists of four quasars aligned across a central galaxy of lower
redshift, and is regarded as a prime example of gravitational lensing --
despite the fact that Fred Hoyle calculated the probability of such a
lensing event as less than two chances in a million, and despite the
presence of connecting material between the quasars and the galaxy
nucleus! The assumption that redshift equals velocity has led to galaxy
masses being overestimated, and more reasonable estimates indicate that
genuine gravitational lens effects are probably very rare.
If the universe is expanding, redshifts should
show a continuous range of values. Instead, however, they are
"quantized," i.e. they tend to be multiples of certain basic
units, the main ones (expressed as velocities) being 72.4 km/s and 37.5
km/s. This phenomenon, says Arp, "is so unexpected that conventional
astronomy has never been able to accept it, in spite of the overwhelming
observational evidence" (p. 195). He suggests that redshift
quantization could be due to episodes of matter creation taking place at
regular intervals.
The redshift-equals-velocity assumption has led
big bangers to conclude that galaxies in groups and clusters are moving
much faster than they really are, and since the galaxies' visible mass
cannot account for these rapid motions, this has given rise to the current
obsession with "dark matter." Some 90% of the matter in the
universe supposedly consists of this hypothetical, never-detected stuff.
Arp, however, shows that in every group of galaxies investigated,
companion galaxies always have systematically higher redshifts
than the central galaxy they are orbiting. The only reasonable explanation
for this is that companion galaxies have intrinsic, excess redshifts
arising from their younger age; they are born from the central galaxy and
expelled into its near neighborhood. In galaxy clusters, too, smaller,
younger galaxies have been found to have excess redshifts. Redshift
quantization indicates that the orbital velocities of galaxies must be
less than 20 km/s, otherwise the periodicity would be washed out. Once
this is accepted, the need for immense quantities of dark matter vanishes.
In addition to the redshift, another important
piece of "evidence" for the big bang is said to be the cosmic
microwave background radiation of 2.7 kelvins, which is supposedly the
afterglow of the primordial explosion. Arp, however, argues that the
extraordinary smoothness of the background radiation provides strong
evidence against an expanding universe. A much simpler
explanation is that we are seeing the temperature of the intergalactic
medium.
Current expanding-universe theory seems headed
for oblivion, but the large number of professionals with vested interests
in its preservation means that its demise is likely to take a very long
time. Even some mystically or theosophically minded writers have tended to
jump on the big bang bandwagon, believing that the theory is essentially
correct, provided we recognize the workings of divine intelligence going
on behind the scenes. But even divine intelligence would not be able to
save the big bang!
The idea that space can expand like elastic is
one of the many illogical features of the standard big bang model. Space
must be infinite, for if it is finite, where does it end and what lies
beyond? It's true that big bangers have concocted a theory which allows
space to curve round upon itself so that it is both finite and
boundless -- but this merely indicates the extent to which they have
abandoned reality in favor of abstract mathematical theorizing. If space
is infinite, then clearly it cannot expand for, as H. P. Blavatsky says,
"infinite extension admits of no enlargement." She also
indicates that the "outbreathing" of Brahmâ (the cosmic
divinity), as described in Hindu philosophy, refers not to a physical
increase in size but to a "change of condition" -- "the
development of limitless subjectivity into as limitless objectivity"
(The Secret Doctrine 1:62-3). In other words, outbreathing and
inbreathing can refer to the unfoldment of the One (the spiritual summit
of a world-system) into the many (the lower, material realms), and the
subsequent reabsorption of the many into the One, in a never-ending cycle,
or cosmic heartbeat, of evolution and involution.
Arp is one of a growing number of scientists
who are returning to the idea of an infinite, eternal universe, subject to
constant transformations [4]. He believes that matter is created
continually -- not from nothing, but from the materialization of
mass-energy existing in a diffuse state, in the form of the all-pervading
"quantum sea" or "zero-point field." The universe, he
says, is constantly unfolding from many different points within itself. He
also believes that after a certain interval elementary particles may
decay, so that matter merges back into the quantum sea. This closely
corresponds to the theosophical notion of periodical materialization and
etherealization, except that in theosophy the process is not confined to
our physical plane but embraces higher worlds of consciousness-substance
as well -- worlds whose existence is pointed to by a wide variety of
physical phenomena [5].
Our Milky Way galaxy is a member of the Local
Group of galaxies, which belongs to the Virgo Supercluster, and our
nearest neighbor is the Fornax Supercluster. What do we know about what
lies beyond? Mainstream cosmologists insist that we know a great deal.
Powerful telescopes reveal many faint, fuzzy objects with high redshifts
that are assumed to represent distant clusters and superclusters, which
form immense sheets of galaxies, separated by huge voids. Arp writes:
An enormous amount of modern telescope time and staff is devoted to
measuring redshifts of faint smudges on the sky. It is called
"probing the universe." So much time is consumed, in fact,
that there is no time at all available to investigate the many crucial
objects which disprove the assumption that redshift measures distance.
(p. 69)
He says that, given the misinterpretation of the redshift, distances
may be wrong by factors of 10 to 100, and luminosities and masses may be
wrong by factors up to 10,000: "We would have a totally erroneous
picture of extragalactic space, and be faced with one of the most
embarrassing boondoggles in our intellectual history" (p. 1). He
presents many pieces of evidence indicating that some faint "galaxy
clusters" actually consist of young objects ejected from nearby
active galaxies. The same applies to most of the rather peculiar-looking
objects to be seen in the "Hubble Deep Field," a famous image of
very high-redshift and supposedly extremely distant galaxies.
We have no reliable way of knowing how far the
local Virgo and Fornax Superclusters are from the next superclusters, and
there is therefore no certainty that any of the objects we observe lies
outside them. In other words, we may be seeing far less of the universe
than is generally believed. Even some of Arp's closest allies are very
reluctant to contemplate the possibility that the cosmic distance scale as
a whole is seriously wrong. Whether Arp's radical views will be confirmed
remains to be seen, but he is undoubtedly right when he says: "We are
certainly not at the end of science. Most probably we are just at the
beginning!" (p. 249).
References
[1] Apeiron (http://redshift.vif.com), 1998, p. ii.
[2] G. de Purucker, Fountain Source of Occultism,
Theosophical University Press (TUP), 1974, pp. 80-1; Esoteric
Teachings, Point Loma Publications, 1987, 3:28-30; The
Esoteric Tradition, 2nd ed., TUP, 1973, pp. 435-8n.
[3] Paul LaViolette, Beyond the Big Bang: Ancient Myth and the
Science of Continuous Creation, Park Street Press, 1995, pp. 260-3,
268-75; Tom Van Flandern, "Did the Universe Have a Beginning?," Meta
Research Bulletin, 3:3, 1994, www.metaresearch.org.
[4] See Halton C. Arp, C. Roy Keys and Konrad Rudnicki, eds., Progress
in New Cosmologies: Beyond the Big Bang, Plenum, 1993.
[5] See "Worlds within Worlds":
http://davidpratt.info/worlds.htm
Published in Sunrise, December 1998/ January 1999.
Reprinted with permission. © Copyright David
Pratt 2003
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