Not Seeing What’s Not Believed
May
25, 2009
New observations to measure the
outer halo of the galaxy M87 find
that it isn’t there. Another
unexpected result fails to elicit
acknowledgement that the theory
predicting the halo has been
falsified.“This
is an unexpected result,” one
observer
commented. “Numerical models
predict that the halo around Messier
87 should be several times larger
than our observations have revealed.
Clearly, something must have cut the
halo off early on.” Clearly, another
possibility is that the models are
wrong. But modern astronomy doesn’t
look for possibilities; it prescinds
from them with excuses to defend
dogma.
Missing stars are
the least problem with M87.
Missing—that is,
ignored—observations make up much of
the data. The increasing power of
astronomical telescopes and
institutions has been accompanied by
a narrowing of fields of view, data
sets, and minds. Since the Big Bang
came to dominate astronomical
theories, unexpected findings are
updated with narrower-field
observations that exclude the
anomalous objects or the objects are
omitted from maps and discussions.
What can’t be believed in accordance
with accepted theory is not to be
seen.
M87 is a large, bright galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, which is the apparent center
of the Local Supercluster. With the advent of radio astronomy in the 1960s, M87
stood out as the brightest radio galaxy in the cluster. To the south of it lies
the brightest radio quasar in the sky, 3C273, with 40 times the redshift of M87.
Almost exactly between them is the brightest galaxy in the cluster, the active
elliptical M49. Along the line connecting these three bright objects are smaller
galaxies, compact clusters, and quasars with higher redshifts. When x-ray
telescopes came into use, they revealed
an s-shaped filament of x-ray emission connecting M87, M49, 3C273, and the
discrepant high-redshift objects sprinkled between them.Both 3C273 and M87 have
narrow jets of luminosity almost identical in length extending from them. A
narrow filament of hydrogen with a redshift about the same as the Virgo
Cluster’s extends beyond the end of 3C273’s jet. Aligned along M87’s jet are
small elliptical galaxies, x-ray sources, and quasars with higher redshifts.
Around the alignment is an oval of spiral galaxies with higher redshifts than
M87.
The “missing outer parts”
region around M87 is actually filled with
twisted threads of radio emission. This is shrugged off as an effect of “the
small core…energizing its whole galactic neighborhood.” But in view of the x-ray
connections throughout the entire Virgo Cluster, the opposite is true: the
threads trace the electric currents that power the galaxy, its core, and its
jet. (See the diagram illustrating electric galaxy development toward the end of
“Cosmology
in Crisis—Again.”)
An ultraviolet survey of all
quasars in the northern sky found them concentrated around the Virgo Cluster.
The association went unnoticed. Astronomer Halton Arp remarks in his book
Seeing Red, “This is primary observational data—simply catalogued positions
of quasars—just photons as a function of x and y. And yet it seems to have made
no impression on most astronomers who insist on believing that quasars are
evenly spread out in the far reaches of the universe.”
Measurements of their Faraday
rotation, which is a rotation of polarized light in proportion to the amount of
magnetized plasma it passes through, revealed that quasars with redshifts around
2 had a third as much rotation as quasars with redshifts around 1. (If redshift
indicated distance, objects with twice the redshift should show twice the
rotation.) This finding indicated that the higher redshift quasars were fainter
and located closer (on the near side of the cluster) than the lower redshift
ones. In addition, the values were almost all negative, which meant that the
intergalactic magnetic field was systematically oriented in one direction and
that it had about the same strength as the field in galaxies. After initial
surprise at this unexpected result, it “went missing.”
The papers reporting and discussing these findings were rejected, delayed, or
published in minor journals. Each observation was treated as a separate
anomaly—set aside, dismissed with a makeshift excuse, or simply ignored. The
systematic correlations and repetitions of the observations were disregarded.
Certainly, one or two anomalies are not enough to cast doubt on a theory, but
when anomalies preponderate and ad hocisms proliferate, the theory is apt to be
wrong.
“It seems the toughest thing for scientists to grasp—that a cherished paradigm
like the big bang can be wrong.”
Arp wrote, “In view of all the other evidence known to show that quasars, and
3C273 in particular, belonged to the Virgo Cluster, I gloomily came to the
ironic conclusion that if you take a highly intelligent person and give them
the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an
academic who is completely impervious to reality.” [Emphasis in original.]
The image of the fearless scientist dispassionately following the objective
truths of careful observation into new regions of discovery turns out to be a
pretense for timorous formalists whose observations and thoughts are fashioned
to conform to peer opinion.
