Redshift Z In The Wild

[magicjava]

Hello everyone. I'm just dropping by to post some results I thought would be interesting to the folks on this board. They're in regard to the use of redshift z and distance values. According to data used by NASA, the curves of redshift z and distance don't match up!

I'm writing a letter to NASA to see what their explanation for this may be, but I'm also interested in hearing what you all think. The data can be found on my blog http://magicjava.blogspot.com/2009/08/r ... -wild.html. Note that all data comes from NASA, with the exception of one item that comes from the European Southern Observatory. None of the data was originated by me. Online references are provided for all data.

[magicjava]

P.S.

Please feel free to post responses here, rather than on my blog. I'm not trying to promote my blog, I'm genuinely interested in what folks from the Plasma side of things have to say.

[MGmirkin]

So, how many sources did you use in the comparison? Just a random sampling (a couple clustered around each Z value) or something more systematic (averaging listed distances within some specific range of Z values)?

It would be rather interesting to see the spread of distance measures (especially using independent non-redshift-based measures, if there are any) of objects clustering around specific Z values.

IE, if a thousand objects all have z = 2.3 to 2.4, one would think the spread of their distances would be fairly compact (as opposed to taking a sampling of a thousand objects from Z = 1 to 3)...

It would be pretty cool to see such a comparison over a large data set. Is that what you're getting at, or is your comparison of a somewhat smaller data set? Just wondering.

I assume there should be pretty good volumes of data on redshift for objects and similar information on estimated distances for the same objects. Though, one should obviously try to use distances NOT judged based upon redshift == distance assumption. Better if multiple methods (if multiple methods are even available) all come to the same conclusion on distance within reasonable margins of error (without using redshift). IE, compare non-redshift measures to redshift-based measures and see what happens...

Just a few thoughts.
~Michael

[MGmirkin]

Also, I'm not quite understanding the left graph...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1NlR71q69vA/S ... shiftz.png

The blue lines and circles...

Why is there a spike around z = 3, with a valley around 4-7 and then the exponential rise to 12? Shouldn't that be a smooth curve, if it's simply a rising z value? Or is something else being graphed there? What am I missing?

Best,
~Michael Gmirkin

[magicjava]

Why is there a spike around z = 3, with a valley around 4-7 and then the exponential rise to 12? Shouldn't that be a smooth curve

Yes, it should be. The curve between any two redshift z's should be smooth. Perhaps not linear, but smooth. That's what surprised me about this. The data jumps up and down. And if you take a look at the screen grab of the spreadsheet I included you'll see things like two very different redshift z's are assigned to the distance of 12 billion light years.

In a nutshell, the redshift z values just look like very sloppy work to me. I didn't want to come right out and say that on my blog until I've given the NASA folks a chance to explain their data. But I can't see any way those values can be correct. And with redshift being so important to standard cosmology, it surprised me to see such sloppy work.

Edit:
A few more thoughts:

You asked "Should the curve not be so steep at the end (in the 8 billion to 12 billion light year range)?". I'll hazard a guess that it should be steep, due to the effects of the cosmological constant, or dark energy, at such huge distances. That's just a guess on my part. I'm not a physicist, I'm a computer programmer. But the curve should be smooth, not jump up and down.

But that steep curve also tells me that the cosmologists don't have a lot of wiggle room in their age estimates of the universe. They won't be able to push it much older than the current estimate of ~14 billion years. Once a curve goes hyperbolic like the redshift curve does on the right, it often quickly hits infinity.

The data set itself is taken from galaxy cluster information provided by NASA. I was surfing those pages when I decided to record the redshift/distance values they gave. The references section of the blog post provides links to all the pages where data was taken from. You can find the redshift/distance info at the bottom part of the pages those links refer to.

So I want to stress again, this isn't my data. It's NASA's. The only change I made to their data was to scale all the red shifts so they showed up clearly on the charts. That scaling isn't what caused the data to jump up and down. It jumps up and down in the same way without scaling.

Edit 2:

It would be pretty cool to see such a comparison over a large data set. Is that what you're getting at, or is your comparison of a somewhat smaller data set? Just wondering.

I think I've answered this in this reply, but just to be clear: I understand that EU/PC models question the validity of redshift in the sense that just because a red shift says an object is 6 billion light years away, that doesn't mean it actually is 6 billion light years away. Red shift may not be an accurate measure of distance.

But what I'm seeing in NASA's data is the redshift/distance values don't even make sense. There's no reason for the relationship between those two values to jump up and down, but it does. There's no reason that two very different red shifts should be given the same distance value of 12 billion light years, but they are. In other words, the red shift/distance values aren't even internally consistent with them selves, regardless of the argument of whether or not they provide an accurate description of reality.

[junglelord]

A very interesting plot of NASA data. I think thats pretty cool what you did. Kudos to you, your a smart man.
Cheers
JL

[magicjava]

Thank you sir. Coming from a Vulcan, that's high praise indeed!

While I'm waiting to hear from NASA, I put together a little video the folks here might like. It's located here: http://magicjava.blogspot.com/2009/08/w ... -nasa.html

[FS3]

Simply explained, the difference in the steepness oft the redshift/distance relation comes from the introduction of relativistic speeds - therefore "z" grows larger than the actual distance derived. At least that´s how this is explained by mainstream astrophysics. See more at Wiki about the actual math used.

More disturbing are those "spikes" - indicating that the BB-model produces statistically no equivalent distribution of galaxies in the universe...

But Halton Arp ("Seeing Red") was on that already.

So, some preferences are occuring in the redshift-model - that should not be allowed due to the definition of expected "smoothness" of a big pack of data.

FS3

[MGmirkin]

You asked "Should the curve not be so steep at the end (in the 8 billion to 12 billion light year range)?"

Did I now? Where did I ask that?

Only think I see I asked was whether the curve should be smooth. IE, just representative of the rise in Z-value. Was trying to figure out why there was a spike around z=3 and what it actually means in the graph.

Might help to label the axes of the graph, as I'm still not quite sure exactly what's being graphed.

Is the x-axis a z-value versus y-axis being a distance? With the blue line being the EXPECTED distance based upon redshift expectations while the green bars are actual observed distances? Or is there some other comparison going on? Just trying to figure out exactly what the graphs mean.

~Michael Gmirkin

[MGmirkin]

*Looking at the spreadsheet...*

So, the values in the left column appear to be the distance (MLY -- Megalight-years) divided by 1,000 (or GLY -- Gigalight-years)? Any special significance for this value? Or just something to make the numbers comprehensible (0-12)?

I'm assuming this is just a plot of some odd 20 samples? It would be interesting to see a larger sampling with distance ranges around specific z values. Like for z=3, what is the highest distance estimated versus the lowest distance estimated? Do the top and bottom values vary by a lot or just a little? What's the average distance value for a given z value? Appx mean distance?

I could just see a few interesting competing graphs when sampling a larger data set. Still having trouble finding a good site where you can go and just get an over-simplified list of z values and estimated distances (preferably independent of z value, where possible).

----------

As an aside, I came across an interesting page on correcting for the "finger of God" phenomenon... Heh.

("Finger of God" Radial Velocity Artifacts)
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/ja ... /fgod.html

Rather interesting. Ad hoc correction?

~Michael Gmirkin

[magicjava]

Is the x-axis a z-value versus y-axis being a distance? With the blue line being the EXPECTED distance based upon redshift expectations while the green bars are actual observed distances? Or is there some other comparison going on? Just trying to figure out exactly what the graphs mean.

Sorry I was unclear about that.

The Y axis is distance on all three types of charts. The distances range from 250 million light years on the left to 12 billion light years on the right.

For the "Redshift Z x10000 and Distance (MLY)" chart, the X axis is just a number. For the blue line it shows the value of the Redshift Z scaled by a factor of 10000. For the green bars it shows the distance, so it's the same value as the X axis for those bars. Put the blue line and the green bars together as was done in the chart and you can visually compare the curves between Redshift Z and distance. There should be a consistent relationship between the blue line and the green bars. If a green bar increases or decreases by some value, i, then the blue line should increase or decrease by some value related to i. But it doesn't. What that means is there's no way to look at an increase in Redshift Z and determine what the corresponding increase in distance will be, and vise versa.

There's no relationship between Redshift Z and distance. The situation is so bad that you can't even say "If redshift z increases, distance will increase by some unknown amount." Distance actually _decreases_ for some increased redshift z values given by NASA.

The other two charts, the ones having just blue bars, divide redshift Z by distance and distance by redshift Z. The result shows the power redshift z is having on distance measurements, kind of like how miles divided by hours gives speed. Like the first chart, these two charts should produce a smooth curve, but instead the values jump up and down. These two charts reflect the errors in the first chart and make them very easy to see.

And I agree that more data points would be nice to have. Overtime I'll probably add more.

[magicjava]

A reader on my blog wrote that the strange redshift z values may be due to change in the value astronomers have assigned to the Hubble constant over the years. As the data in my sample was taken from the years 1999 through 2009, this was worth looking into.

To do this, I grouped measurements by years. This factors out any changes in the Hubble constant over the years. There were two years in my samples where several measurements were taken by NASA, 2003 and 2006. The results of grouping by these two years are shown in the links below.

2003 Group
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1NlR71q69vA/S ... t+2003.png

2006 Group
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1NlR71q69vA/S ... t+2006.png

The 2003 group looks right at first glance. It seems to produce a smooth curve. But closer examination shows the last two measurements have different redshift z values for the same distance of 12 billion light years. So the problems between redshift z and distance didn't go away in this sample.

The 2006 group is even worse. There's no smooth curve, the relationship between redshift z and distance jumps up and down. There's even an example where a redshift z of 0.37 corresponds to larger distance than larger redshift z values of 0.54 and 0.89 do.

So it seems that changes over the years in the value assigned to the Hubble constant cannot explain the problems in NASA's data.

[magicjava]

The Y axis is distance on all three types of charts. The distances range from 250 million light years on the left to 12 billion light years on the right.

Typo here.

It's the X axis (left to right) that shows distance. I accidentally switched the X and Y axis in my description.

[magicjava]

But Halton Arp ("Seeing Red") was on that already.

Just this one last thing and I'll leave you guys alone.

I just want to stress that what I presented here is NASA's data _and_ NASA's interpretation of the data. This differs from Arp, who re-interprets the meaning of redshift z data.

Again, I'm not an astronomer or a physicist. I'm a computer programmer. I'm not qualified to present new ideas on what astronomic data should be or how it should be interpreted. All I did was record exactly what NASA said and interpret it in the same way NASA does. Doing only that shows the data to be wrong. It's wrong because it's internally inconsistent.

Arp's arguments may or may not be true, but they're not needed to show NASA's redshift z data is wrong.

[Harry Costas]

G'day from the land of ozzzzzz


Good on ya magicjava, NASA needs that correction.