September 05, 2011 ~ Jeremy Dunning-Davies
In a posting on the Thunderbolts web site on June 6th, Mel Acheson commented on the recent claims of finding a spiral galaxy in the southern skies which looks remarkably like the Milky Way, but double its accepted size. The article rightly draws attention to the fact that both the size of this galaxy and its distance from us are determined by utilising red-shift data. It is pointed out, quite correctly, that ‘the result is as certain as mathematics can be’. However, this is followed by the observation that everything based on red-shift measurements must be in doubt. The problems associated with the interpretation of any red-shift data have been around for many years but have been consistently buried under the proverbial carpet. The careers of several people, notably Halton Arp, have been disrupted if not actually ruined because they have questioned the validity of the conventional interpretation of this type of data. [More...]