Reply To: Proliferation?

[MARK LOFTS]

Dear Pluto,
Thank you for your prompt response and weblinks.

You ask “which galaxy is moving away”. The answer is that the two galaxies are in mutual motion, i.e. as Galileo’s Principle of Relativity says – “All motion is relative”. Consequently to ask which galaxy is moving is merely to situate oneself at some position relative to the two galaxies, this situation not comprising any sort of ‘absolute motion’ or ‘absolute rest.’

Having checked up the two weblinks, I thank you for bringing to my attention the fact that Arp has published his book “Seeing Red” in English – as I thought it was only available in German. Admittedly for unrelated reasons I happen to be learning German – but you have obviated the problem here anyway.

The second link, concerning the galaxy-quasar pair, reveals the conundrum. It is quite clear that the quasar is very tiny relative to the galaxy i.e. it is about one hundredth of the diameter of the galaxy. In fact, were it not for its redshift I would merely have presumed that it was a globular cluster within the galaxy. The problem is here is that the sizes of most spiral galaxies are usually within one order of magnitude of each other. As Lerner shows by the fact that a quasar is a galaxy in formation, a quasar and a galaxy at equal distance should be roughly the same size. (See my other postings on the redshift question).

The fact that the quasar is so much smaller than the galaxy indicates that it is much further away. However, its redshift is certainly excessive, but this is explained, as I show in the other posting, by infalling material in the outer layers of the quasar, the infalling material having a redshift of its own added to the ‘general redshift’ of mutual galactic recession.

Once again I have to bring up the cosmological questions with Olbers’ Paradox etc. As you reject the Big Bang presumably you accept the universe to be infinite in time and space. Were galaxies static as Arp thinks, the universe could not be infinite in matter content and infinite in time since over the countless aeons light from the farthest reaches of the universe would ensure that the night sky would be as bright as the surface of the sun. To invoke intervening matter to block the light does not help since over an infinite time this matter too would incandesce.

Consequently an ‘Arp Universe’ would end up like the old Newtonian Model modified by Olbers. That is, static galaxies out to a certain point but a finite amount of matter overall – with absolutely nothing beyond a certain point, just empty space, the finite universe then but some sort of ‘spherical’ shape in an infinite space. We would then be left wondering as to whether it was temporally finite as well – so speculation would very soon turn back to the Big Bang.

Hence we have two different questions at issue:

1) The Arp interpretation of galaxy-quasar redshifts.
2) The implications for an infinite universe of accepting Arp’s idea that there is no large scale galactic recession.

I hope you will ponder over these questions. Looking forward to your next posting.

Yours faithfully

Mark