Starship Asterisk*

Nereid wrote:

What might we expect to see from a star that is say 200 billion years old?

In a word, nothing... you wouldn't be able to see any such star, even with the HST, much beyond a few hundred to thousand parsecs ...

Careful, you are inviting alternative dark matter theories here

So michael how does the iron sun theory explain the HR diagram?

Michael Mozina wrote:

Nereid wrote:

Michael Mozina wrote: What direct observations are you basing that number on, and what "assumptions" are you making about the composition of stars when you date them?

The best direct evidence is the HR diagrams of globular clusters, compared with the HR diagrams of open clusters.

In textbook astrophysics, these HR diagrams are well accounted for with standard stellar evolution models,

In other words, your dating scheme is entirely based on hydrogen sun theory,

I am unfamiliar with this term, in the standard scientific literature - can you provide a reference please?

as are your mass projections.

[snip]

The estimates of the masses of observed stars come from many sources; the most reliable are those from binaries - spectroscopic, eclipsing, etc - combined with direct ('trigonometric') parallaxes. As there are thousands of such stars (and millions of observations), covering all but a tiny handful of stellar types, we are quite confident that stellar masses can be estimated accurately (and that the uncertainties on such estimates also estimated accurately).

There are several, independent, tests of these estimates, using data from estimates of angular diameters (thousands of stars), surface gravity (from spectral line analysis), micro-lensing, and so on.

All these estimates are independent of any assumptions on the composition of the stars; they are derived, ultimately, from Newton's law of universal gravitation or General Relativity. As I'm sure you know well, both these theories have been tested extensively wrt composition, and no 'composition effect' has ever been found - mass is mass is mass.

[ETA: fixed typo "or General Relativity", not "of"]

cosmo_uk wrote:So michael how does the iron sun theory explain the HR diagram?

If I may suggest an edit here: whatever "the iron sun {X}" is, it most certainly is not a theory, in the sense of being (modern) scientific theory.

Hello All

Neried said

More pertinent: baryon: "the baryons are the family of subatomic particles which are made of three quarks. The family notably includes the proton and neutron, which make up the atomic nucleus, [...]"

Sorry for my last post I read your meaning out of context. ooops

But! the more I read your posts the more respect I have for your extended reading.

Hishadow wrote:
"It does not matter if we as a layman are sold or not. It's all to easy to pull the "conspiracy card" as an explaination for the lack of interest from other scientist. If a theory doesn't fly, why should we (as layman) "demand anything" from scientists on how to allocate their research time? If Arp is not able to draw enough support from other scientists, it's his task to try and convince those scientists about the viability of his theory."

NB: Just in case you're interested in a serious alternative to the BB hypothesis, read the recently published book "The Electric Sky" by Prof. Donald Scott (Google the title for links). He collected contributions from scientists who support a plasma-filled universe (among others: Hannes Alfèn, a swedish scientist who discovered the source of the northern light, namely a plasma stream reaching us from the Sun - for which he received the Nobel prize for physics in 1970).

Electro-magnetic phenomena are grossly ignored by mainstream astronomers, which explains the increasing trouble of the BB hypothesis to stay alive with ad hoc assumptions of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' and 'black holes' to explain away the shortage of gravity fields to support the observations. The book is an eye-opener for both scientists and amateurs. Notice that Halton Arp's critique on the BB hypothesis centers on the assumed purely Doppler nature of Hubble's Redshift (if I'm not mistaken, Arp was an assistent of Hubble!) - thus serving as a reliable distance- and speed- measure, and by time-reversal yielding the BB hypothesis. The MBR (Microwave Background Radiation) of some 3 Kelvin can easily be explained as the rest-energy generated by all the light- and other radiation travelling thru plasma-filled universe that is 'warmed-up' by all this radiation passing through (explaining as well the redshift in general as an energy loss of photons proportional to travelled distance - hence not necessarily a Doppler effect due to receeding speed, see
http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop ).

Arp (and many others) observed several Quasars that appear *before* another galaxy with a redshift some 10x *larger* than that of the galaxy's redshift! This clearly shows that some redshifts are NOT a Doppler effect but are intrinsic at generation - possibly due to the extreme high local EM fields in such Quasar (re: the spectral line splitting into a blue- and red- shifted version by the Zeeman effect, and the blue line much more scattered thru billions of light years travel through plasma filled intergalactic space). -- NB

Plasma cosmology has not been shown to explain the Universe - certainly not in any peer reviewed papers I have seen. I'm tired of discussion boards were members of the IEEE with subject envy bang on about it. Its funny how most of the crank emails I recieve are from phd engineers.

Please tell me that there is a mainstream conspiracy and that you are like Copernicus or Galileo because clearly being unpopular means you are right.

I don't know why I bother.

Hi Cosmos_uk
i'm pleased that you & Astro, Nereid & Harry & Dr Skeptic & others continue to post your discoveries, views & opinions
you are all excellent teachers in matters of the Universe, as well as being very special, knowledgeable people
it is a joy to know you all
Linx

Dear cosmos_uk:

In stead of replying to Arp's cogent objection (re Quasar Redshift) and my suggestion of an intrinsic redshift, I get an ad-hominëm attack from you. What a sad bag of arrogance ("I know it all") and ignorance ("I need not to look because I know it all") are you. Is that typical for a moderator of an astronomy discussion forum? 'Peer reviewed' apparently means 'stuck-at'. -- NB

cosmos not a moderator, that would be me.

With regard to arps claims of correlations betwen quasars and foreground galaxies, these have been shown to be nothing more that random alignments, I'm afraid I don't have the references here, but if you check out the BadAstronomy and Universe Today discussion board http://www.bautforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=17 (specifically the against the mainstream one) you will find many similar arpian discussions. Most with significant input from Neried.

As for cosmos slightly flippant point, it is true that a significant number of opponents of modern cosmology tend to be electrical engineers using the alven approach, "that looks like a plasma phenomena therefore it must be one", ignoring totally the difference in scales involved, or that they have no idea of the physical conditions prevalent in the material. Lets not forget many of the other claims of alven/birkeland group, that the sun is a giant light bulb powered by electricity flowing round the universe for no discernable reason, or that saturns rings must be an electrical phenomena etc etc.

You only have to that many claims that astronomers ignore plamsas, they don't, that the CMB is the result of starlight, it cannot possibly be, that redshift is intrinsic, is isn't we can measure distances and angular sizes to many objects proving they are further away, to get slightly peeved at people with the barest minimum of understanding claiming you don't understand your own job.

Perhaps you can answer a question that has been bugging me, we know that clusters of galaxies are filled with plasmas, are you suggesting that there is some special attractive force at work within a plasma that cosmologists ignore?

Nico Benschop wrote:Hishadow wrote:
"It does not matter if we as a layman are sold or not. It's all to easy to pull the "conspiracy card" as an explaination for the lack of interest from other scientist. If a theory doesn't fly, why should we (as layman) "demand anything" from scientists on how to allocate their research time? If Arp is not able to draw enough support from other scientists, it's his task to try and convince those scientists about the viability of his theory."

NB: Just in case you're interested in a serious alternative to the BB hypothesis, read the recently published book "The Electric Sky" by Prof. Donald Scott (Google the title for links). He collected contributions from scientists who support a plasma-filled universe (among others: Hannes Alfèn, a swedish scientist who discovered the source of the northern light, namely a plasma stream reaching us from the Sun - for which he received the Nobel prize for physics in 1970).

Electro-magnetic phenomena are grossly ignored by mainstream astronomers, which explains the increasing trouble of the BB hypothesis to stay alive with ad hoc assumptions of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' and 'black holes' to explain away the shortage of gravity fields to support the observations. The book is an eye-opener for both scientists and amateurs. Notice that Halton Arp's critique on the BB hypothesis centers on the assumed purely Doppler nature of Hubble's Redshift (if I'm not mistaken, Arp was an assistent of Hubble!) - thus serving as a reliable distance- and speed- measure, and by time-reversal yielding the BB hypothesis. The MBR (Microwave Background Radiation) of some 3 Kelvin can easily be explained as the rest-energy generated by all the light- and other radiation travelling thru plasma-filled universe that is 'warmed-up' by all this radiation passing through (explaining as well the redshift in general as an energy loss of photons proportional to travelled distance - hence not necessarily a Doppler effect due to receeding speed, see
http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop ).

Arp (and many others) observed several Quasars that appear *before* another galaxy with a redshift some 10x *larger* than that of the galaxy's redshift! This clearly shows that some redshifts are NOT a Doppler effect but are intrinsic at generation - possibly due to the extreme high local EM fields in such Quasar (re: the spectral line splitting into a blue- and red- shifted version by the Zeeman effect, and the blue line much more scattered thru billions of light years travel through plasma filled intergalactic space). -- NB

Welcome to the Asterisk Cafe, Nico Benschop!

As you are new here, allow me please to give you a quick summary of how it works here.

First and foremost, this is a scientific forum, devoted to astronomy (and astrophysics and cosmology).

What does this mean? Among other things, it means we most certainly will entertain questions on astronomy (and astrophysics and cosmology), but we will not entertain promotion of non-scientific ideas in these fields.

What does it mean, 'non-scientific'? Ultimately, the answer is*: are the ideas published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals? If not, then they're non-scientific.

In respect of the two sets of ideas which you present, in the post I'm quoting^, we have examined the first at very great length. Suffice it to say that no one has been able to present any papers, by Alfven, Scott, or anyone else, showing how these so-called plasma universe or electric universe ideas can account for the six sets of high quality, cosmologically relevant astronomical observations (they are covered, in considerable detail, earlier in this thread). If you would like to provide references to any such papers, many readers here would be very interested to check them out.

Re Arp: I note that you are not presenting any Arpian ideas wrt cosmology (such as the Arp-Narlikar VMH), but you do reference at least one observation, and claim he made it. Can you provide us with a reference to the paper, or papers, in which he reported this?

*Several of the more recent threads, here in the Cafe, have explored this at considerable length; for example "The Management Reserves The Right ..." (DRAFT), Astronomy and "controlled scientific tests", and Dark Matter.
^Curiously, the two ideas are, very likely, quite incompatible.

Dear cosmos_uk:

In stead of replying to Arp's cogent objection (re Quasar Redshift) and my suggestion of an intrinsic redshift, I get an ad-hominëm attack from you. What a sad bag of arrogance ("I know it all") and ignorance ("I need not to look because I know it all") are you. Is that typical for a moderator of an astronomy discussion forum? 'Peer reviewed' apparently means 'stuck-at'. -- NB

Dear Nico

If you'd care to look around this discussion forum you'd notice that myself and the other scientists have already fully discussed why what you are saying is wrong. I'm sure you are aware of the mountain of evidence against plasma cosmology otherwise you wouldn't be discussing it.

Its funny how I only ever here the phrase "ad-hominëm attack" from cranks. Present me with evidence and I'll take you seriously just stating that modern cosmology is wrong and plasma cosmology is right is something I find offensive.

With respect to quasars (and I am repeating myself from other threads on this same topic) - they have not are not and will never be associated with nearby galaxies. The reason why Arp noticed that quasars cluster around local galaxies is that at the time people only observed nearby galaxies - therefore any quasars found would have to be in the ra and dec vicinity of local galaxies. Thats called a selection effect. With the advent of large area surveys SDSS, 2MASS, UKIDSS Arp's hypothesis has been proved entirely wrong. We see there are quasars everywhere we point our telescopes.

Plasma cosmology is not new by the way its ideas predate big bang cosmology and its promoters are a dying breed of old school astronomers who got left behind.

Dear Nereid,

Reading D.Scott "The Electric Sky" [1] I became aware of the mountain of evidence against the BB hypothesis, and in favour of plasma cosmology.
I was curious about the mainstream views on this matter, and the response I obtained here (circumventing a straight answer, combined with a personal attack) confirmed his point. Namely that inconvenient evidence is ignored. Arp's anomalous Quasar redshift observations are published (after all;-) in the Astrophysical Journal (2/10/05).

For clarity, let me copy some text regarding the trouble Arp had with getting this paper published ( [1] pg 210 ): "Arp and his colleagues submitted a paper for publication announcing the discovery. For many months the paper was 'discussed and re-reviewed' - to the extent that one can legitimately use the word 'stonewalled' - by editors of prestigeous astronomical journals. However, the image shown (fig 70b: NGC 7319) received wide circulation on the internet, where it was viewed by an increasingly vocal number of amateur astronomers and other interested viewers. In my opinion this widespread dissemination forced the Astrophysical Journal finally to publish it (2/10/05)."

Mind you, Hubble himself, in a footnote of his 1931 paper with Humason, warned about rashly assuming the measured redshift to be due to a Doppler effect, because one does not have proof of the conditions about the billions of lightyears of space separating us from the source. The relevant text is to be found at:
http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/galaxy/compton.html -
Hubble's Constant in Terms of the Compton Effect - by John Kierein:
" [...] The red shift controversy has been raging ever since Hubble's and Humason's original papers (Hubble & Humason 1931, Humason 1931) carried the footnote:

""It is not at all certain that the large red shifts in the spectra are to be interpreted as a Doppler effect, but for convenience they are expressed in terms of velocity and referred to as apparent velocities.""

. . . Hubble felt that the data was in better agreement with light having a loss of energy to the intervening medium proportional to the distance it travels through space by what he called 'a new principle of nature' (Hubble 1937). This was because if it were Doppler the light should appear to be less bright than if it were a loss of energy, and such a brightness correction did not fit the direct proportionality to distance data." . . .

NB conjecture: It could well be that, if Hubbles red-shift observations historically would have come *before* Einstein, the latter might have concluded he *did* need 'ether' as a medium to carry lightwaves - in order to explain the red-shift as an energy-loss effect proportional to distance (not to velocity - as Doppler effect), for instance modelled by a 'damping factor' in the Maxwell equations, as worked out in:
http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop in a paper by M.Lewis : "Hubbles' Redshift by Photon Decay." However, Einstein's opinion was that he 'did not need ether' (before 1920 the red-shift was not known) - so why introduce it? ... applying Occam's Razor (use the simplest model that explains all observed effects). However, for a damping effect one *does* need a dissipative medium. -- NB

Nico Benschop wrote:Dear Nereid,

Reading D.Scott "The Electric Sky" [1] I became aware of the mountain of evidence against the BB hypothesis, and in favour of plasma cosmology.
I was curious about the mainstream views on this matter, and the response I obtained here (circumventing a straight answer, combined with a personal attack) confirmed his point.

If you read this thread, carefully, you will see that:

a) most of this so-called "mountain of evidence" turns out to be quite different, on closer examination

b) there are no published papers which address the six sets of cosmologically relevant observations I referred to earlier, from a 'plasma cosmology' perspective; if fact, it's hard to find even one paper which addresses even one of these sets of observations.

So, let me repeat my invitation:

If you would like to provide references to any such papers, many readers here would be very interested to check them out.

If you cannot provide references to any such papers, please do not continue to promote Scott's ideas here.

If, after reading this thread, you have some specific questions about cosmologically relevant astronomical observations, please ask them. I do ask, however, that you take the time to check carefully that any such questions have already been answered*.

Namely that inconvenient evidence is ignored. Arp's anomalous Quasar redshift observations are published (after all;-) in the Astrophysical Journal (2/10/05).

For clarity, let me copy some text regarding the trouble Arp had with getting this paper published ( [1] pg 210 ): "Arp and his colleagues submitted a paper for publication announcing the discovery. For many months the paper was 'discussed and re-reviewed' - to the extent that one can legitimately use the word 'stonewalled' - by editors of prestigeous astronomical journals. However, the image shown (fig 70b: NGC 7319) received wide circulation on the internet, where it was viewed by an increasingly vocal number of amateur astronomers and other interested viewers. In my opinion this widespread dissemination forced the Astrophysical Journal finally to publish it (2/10/05)."

Do you mean The Discovery of a High Redshift X-ray Emitting QSO Very Close to the Nucleus of NGC 7319?

Mind you, Hubble himself, in a footnote of his 1931 paper with Humason, warned about rashly assuming the measured redshift to be due to a Doppler effect, because one does not have proof of the conditions about the billions of lightyears of space separating us from the source. The relevant text is to be found at:
http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/galaxy/compton.html -
Hubble's Constant in Terms of the Compton Effect - by John Kierein:
" [...] The red shift controversy has been raging ever since Hubble's and Humason's original papers (Hubble & Humason 1931, Humason 1931) carried the footnote:

""It is not at all certain that the large red shifts in the spectra are to be interpreted as a Doppler effect, but for convenience they are expressed in terms of velocity and referred to as apparent velocities.""

. . . Hubble felt that the data was in better agreement with light having a loss of energy to the intervening medium proportional to the distance it travels through space by what he called 'a new principle of nature' (Hubble 1937). This was because if it were Doppler the light should appear to be less bright than if it were a loss of energy, and such a brightness correction did not fit the direct proportionality to distance data." . . .

An interested historical footnote, thank you.

However, as I'm sure you'd be among the first to agree, the personal opinions of individual scientists do not, thank goodness, constitute science.

NB conjecture: It could well be that, if Hubbles red-shift observations historically would have come *before* Einstein, the latter might have concluded he *did* need 'ether' as a medium to carry lightwaves - in order to explain the red-shift as an energy-loss effect proportional to distance (not to velocity - as Doppler effect), for instance modelled by a 'damping factor' in the Maxwell equations, as worked out in:
http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop in a paper by M.Lewis : "Hubbles' Redshift by Photon Decay." However, Einstein's opinion was that he 'did not need ether' (before 1920 the red-shift was not known) - so why introduce it? ... applying Occam's Razor (use the simplest model that explains all observed effects). However, for a damping effect one *does* need a dissipative medium. -- NB

Indeed, as you say, a conjecture.

If you write your conjecture up, and get it published in a relevant, peer-reviewed journal, please let us know. In the meantime, this Cafe is not an appropriate place to promote personal conjectures.

*In my experience, in several internet discussion fora on astronomy, opponents of the concordence model present a very limited set of observations, and certainly none has, to my knowledge, presented a viable alternative.

Let's stay focussed shall we?

This thread is about Origins of the Universe, and, more specifically, the observational basis of modern cosmology.

For a discussion of what powers the Sun, please post in a relevant, other, thread.

Michael Mozina wrote:

Nereid wrote:Let's stay focussed shall we?

This thread is about Origins of the Universe, and, more specifically, the observational basis of modern cosmology.

For a discussion of what powers the Sun, please post in a relevant, other, thread.

Do you have a problem with me starting a separate electric solar theory thread in the Cafe?

Same rules apply Michael - questions are always welcome, but promotion of non-scientific material is not.

And how do you tell if it's scientific, wrt the scope of this discussion forum (astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, space science)? By the extent to which you can provide, if asked, papers published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals to support your assertions. If you can't provide such, then it's beyond the scope of this forum.

Dear Nereid,

You wrote: "First and foremost, this is a scientific forum, devoted to astronomy (and astrophysics and cosmology). What does this mean? Among other things, it means we most certainly will entertain questions on astronomy (and astrophysics and cosmology), but we will not entertain promotion of non-scientific ideas in these fields. What does it mean, 'non-scientific'? Ultimately, the answer is*: are the ideas published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals? If not, then they're non-scientific."

I gave you the Astrophysics Journal paper on Arp's anomalous redshift paper (re QSOs - http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0409215 ), which you apparently found. So that is a legitimate start for the discussion, by your condition. However, I find it a rather 'catch 22' condition, to only discuss matter that is published in mainstream astrophysics journals.... kind of chicken-out of new idea's, which *are* required since the BB hypothesis runs out of steam (re: accelerated expansion 'solved' by missing gravity due to 'dark matter' and 'black holes'). -- NB

Nico Benschop wrote:Dear Nereid,

You wrote: "First and foremost, this is a scientific forum, devoted to astronomy (and astrophysics and cosmology). What does this mean? Among other things, it means we most certainly will entertain questions on astronomy (and astrophysics and cosmology), but we will not entertain promotion of non-scientific ideas in these fields. What does it mean, 'non-scientific'? Ultimately, the answer is*: are the ideas published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals? If not, then they're non-scientific."

I gave you the Astrophysics Journal paper on Arp's anomalous redshift paper (re QSOs - http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0409215 ), which you apparently found.

Just for the record, you didn't provide a reference, you gave a date, a journal, and an object name, from that I was able to find the paper. But thank you for confirming that it is this particular paper you were referring to.

So that is a legitimate start for the discussion, by your condition. However, I find it a rather 'catch 22' condition, to only discuss matter that is published in mainstream astrophysics journals

Each internet discussion forum no doubt has its own policies and scope statements. It happens that this Asterisk Cafe is focussed on astronomy (astrophysics, cosmology, space science) and does not permit use of the forum for promotion of ideas not published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals.

.... kind of chicken-out of new idea's, which *are* required since the BB hypothesis runs out of steam (re: accelerated expansion 'solved' by missing gravity due to 'dark matter' and 'black holes'). -- NB

It is not difficult to get papers published in ApJ, MNRAS, A&A, etc ... the requirements are clearly laid out in the journals. Further, it is even easier to get a preprint up on arXiv, in advance of getting it published.

But let's take a look at the specific paper cited in your post.

Perhaps you would care to explain how you consider that paper to be relevant to this thread, whose focus is the origins of the universe and observational cosmology?

And if I may, let me repeat my invitation:

If you would like to provide references to any such papers [that present at least one alternative cosmological model which accounts for the six sets of cosmologically relevant observations], many readers here would be very interested to check them out.

Finally, although it is somewhat off-topic, I'm wondering if you can answer a question about the Arpian ideas, a question that's been bugging me since I first came across them: how come only two sets of redshifts are ever observed, in these supposedly closely interacting systems? If there is close interaction, where's all the gas (etc) at redshifts intermediate between that of the QSO and the galaxy?

OK, not quite finally; I see that astro_uk also asked you a question, which you haven't yet answered; would you be kind enough to answer it? Here it is again:

Perhaps you can answer a question that has been bugging me, we know that clusters of galaxies are filled with plasmas, are you suggesting that there is some special attractive force at work within a plasma that cosmologists ignore?

Another question I'd be interested to hear the plasma/arp view on.

What about high redshift non-quasars?

my own personal research is the study of normal boring ellipticals at redshift 1. For those of you not familiar with cosmology redshift 1 is half the age of the Universe at around 7 billion years ago/ 7 billion light years away. There is negligible plasma/gas/dust in ellipticals so how does one get a non cosmological redshift for one of these?

To amplify cosmos question.

The normal boring galaxies he looks at can be examined spectroscopically. When you do that you always find that their ages are consistent with the age of the universe, in other words, if you see them as they were 7Gyr ago, because they are at a redshift of one, they always appear to be younger than 6Gyr old. How would an Arpian explain this?

If I understand Arps idea, galaxies are formed by being thrown out of the centres of others, lets just ignore all the problems with conservation of energy and about a dozen other physical laws for now. As they move away they lose their intrinsic redshift and "evolve" to become normal low redshift galaxies. Some points:

How big is the Universe? If all high redshift galaxies are actually low redshift things with some intrinsic redshift, how big is the actual universe, the size of the local group, out to the Virgo cluster?

Can these newly formed galaxies, spew out their own new galaxies? Shouldn't the Universe be pretty crowded by now with these things?

Why do we never see things very close to the centres of these galaxies with extremely high redshifts? i.e. things that have just been kicked out.

Why when you look at quasars located near galaxies do you always detect some absorption at the redshift of the galaxy? If these things are kicked out of the galaxy randomly, surely some of them should be located between us and the galaxy and therefore have no absorbtion due to the galaxy, why do they all look like they are behind the galaxy?

Dear Nereid and cosmo_uk,

Anomalous Quasar redshifts may arise due to the Wolf effect, involving a scattering medium - possibly the proposed intergalactic plasma. Please read the online paper "The Wolf effect and the Redshift of Quasars", at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9807205v1 by D.James. The Quasar near NCG7319 (redshift z=0.0211) has a redshift of z=0.22 thus a factor of about ten larger, *without* being that much weaker due to its assumed 10x greater distance.

Re "What has redshift to do with the origin of the Universe" : everything, since the mainstream BB hypothesis (the 'Birth' of the universe) rests on the assumption that the measured redshift of stellar objects is solely a Doppler effect: these objects having a receeding speed proportional to 1+z at measured redshift z (hence 'expanding universe', and by time reversal: voilà, the BB). This is an assumption, proposed by Hubble in 1931, although he warns in a footnote that this has no proof: little was/is known about the intergalactic space between source and observer. In fact he himself was more in favour of a redshift proportional to distance (now called the tired-light theory) due to energy loss of light (photons). But he had no clue of such entropy process, so he was rather safe than sorry and assumed space to be 'empty' (hence no possible loss-process, in accordance with Einstein's prevailing doctrine).

Re the six cosmic phenomena Nereid mentions, to be explained by a plasma universe: I am new here, so I'll have to peruse the present thread to find out what is meant. -- NB

Nico Benschop wrote:Dear Nereid and cosmo_uk,

Anomalous Quasar redshifts may arise due to the Wolf effect, involving a scattering medium - possibly the proposed intergalactic plasma. Please read the online paper "The Wolf effect and the Redshift of Quasars", at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9807205v1 by D.James. The Quasar near NCG7319 (redshift z=0.0211) has a redshift of z=0.22 thus a factor of about ten larger, *without* being that much weaker due to its assumed 10x greater distance.

Re "What has redshift to do with the origin of the Universe" : everything, since the mainstream BB hypothesis (the 'Birth' of the universe) rests on the assumption that the measured redshift of stellar objects is solely a Doppler effect: these objects having a receeding speed proportional to 1+z at measured redshift z (hence 'expanding universe', and by time reversal: voilà, the BB). This is an assumption, proposed by Hubble in 1931, although he warns in a footnote that this has no proof: little was/is known about the intergalactic space between source and observer. In fact he himself was more in favour of a redshift proportional to distance (now called the tired-light theory) due to energy loss of light (photons). But he had no clue of such entropy process, so he was rather safe than sorry and assumed space to be 'empty' (hence no possible loss-process, in accordance with Einstein's prevailing doctrine).

While this may be interesting, I'm sorry to say that it seems to have almost nothing to do with the specific question I asked you ("Perhaps you would care to explain how you consider that paper to be relevant to this thread, whose focus is the origins of the universe and observational cosmology?" - added bold)

Would you like me to clarify my question?

I also note that you seem to have repeated a common misunderstanding of modern cosmological theories ("Big Bang"), one which we have addressed, at considerable length already, in this thread.

If, after reading this thread, you have something new to offer, in regard to redshifts, please present it.

BTW, I was not able to download a copy of the James preprint you cite - do you have a link to the paper itself?

Re the six cosmic phenomena Nereid mentions, to be explained by a plasma universe: I am new here, so I'll have to peruse the present thread to find out what is meant. -- NB

No worries; here's a quick summary:
1) Olbers' paradox, in all wavebands of the EM spectrum, with a plasma cosmology model to provide a quantitative estimate of the diffuse background
2) the CMB, which you may consider a subset of 1 - both its blackbody SED and its angular power spectrum
3) large scale structure, e.g. as reported by the SDSS and 2dF teams
4) the Hubble relationship
5) the primordial abundance of light nuclides (H, D, 3He, 4He)
6) time dilation in high-z 1a SNe light curves.

Again, the specific question is: what paper(s), published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals, present a quantitative account of how a plasma cosmology model (or models) match the quantitative data, for each of the six sets of (independent) astronomical observations?

I'm also interested to know if you intend to try to answer my last question, or the questions of astro_uk and cosmo_uk - do you have such an intention?