Another Fogged Image of
Stephan’s Quintet
Feb 16, 2010
This new
image of Stephan’s Quintet is
befogged with the same obsolete
commentary as previous images: the
foreground galaxy, collisions, shock
waves, and heat.
The
foreground galaxy (bottom left) is
believed to be in the foreground
solely because of the consensus
belief that redshift is a measure of
distance: The foreground galaxy has
a redshift of z=0.0026; the others
range from z=0.019 to z=0.0225. The
consensual conclusion is that the
foreground galaxy is 250 million
light-years closer than the others.
This
belief in redshift as a cosmic
meterstick has been disproved since
the 1960s, but facts seldom affect
institutionalized belief systems.
Unremarked is the fact that the
differences in redshift of the
background galaxies place them
(under consensus belief) farther
from each other than the foreground
galaxy is from the Milky Way. Does
that make the foreground galaxy a
member of our Local Group?
Apparently, the illusion of
foreshortening with distance works
on beliefs as well.
Another fact that’s consistently
overlooked is that the bright HII
(ionized hydrogen) regions in the
background galaxies are about the
same size as those in the foreground
galaxy. Since it’s also believed
(consensually) that HII regions tend
to be of similar size, the consensus
has simply ignored the fact. Perhaps
the dark matter in the foreground
galaxy is positioned exactly right
to magnify the HII regions beyond
through gravitational lensing.
The
long tails on both the foreground
galaxy and the one immediately above
it are mentioned and then dismissed
as due to “complex interactions in
the past.” The interactions must
have been
complex in the extreme
to have affected the foreground
galaxy.
A
characteristic of consensus
astronomy is a flight into tunnel
vision: attention is narrowed to
single objects or even to parts of
objects and larger connections are
disregarded. So with the long tails.
On deep images, both tails trail
off, in parallel, far toward a large
active galaxy, NGC 7331. Radio
observations reveal a bridge of
radiation that follows the path of
the tails and connects Stephan’s
Quintet with the active galaxy. The
bridge continues on the opposite
side of NGC 7331 to a cluster of
quasars, which coincidentally have
similar redshifts to the high-z
members of the Quintet.
This
is obviously another instance of
paired ejection from an active
galaxy. Of course, what’s obvious to
one eye is not to another because
eyes tend to see what they believe.
It’s no shock that consensus eyes
are blind to the facts of ejection
pairs.
Another consensual blind spot covers
a
high-z quasar
that lies in front of the upper left
galaxy. According to its redshift,
the quasar should be billions of
light-years
behind the galaxy
and therefore as invisible as dark
matter. The galaxy is full of dust,
completely opaque, and displays an
energized region
leading right up to the quasar. When
scanning this galaxy, consensus
astronomers blink in unison.
The
ridge of x-ray radiation in the core
of Stephan’s Quintet is consensually
ascribed to gas heated by shock
waves from colliding galaxies. At 70
million Kelvin, the heating is truly
shocking. Overlooked is the fact
that long before such a temperature
is reached, the gas has been fully
ionized into a plasma in which
electrical and magnetic forces
dominate.
The
70-million figure is an
artifact
of runaway extrapolation from a
theory about solids. In reality, the
x-rays are synchrotron radiation
from high-speed electrons (an
electric current) spiraling in a
magnetic field. Since temperature is
based on random motions and the
electrons are aligned in the
magnetic field, the concept of
temperature is not even relevant.
A
final observation that appears not
to have been mentioned before
concerns this x-ray ridge. Stephan’s
Quintet is considered to be a “compact
cluster,”
of which several thousand are known.
George Abell catalogued many of them
before x-ray observations were
possible.
A
review of several of them shows
similar
ridges
of x-ray radiation across their
cores (and
here
and
here).
Others show simply a
spot.
If these compact clusters are
fragmenting quasars on their way to
becoming companion galaxies around
the parent active galaxy from which
they were ejected, the x-rays
delineate the central pinch in the
parents’ ejection circuit. Ridges of
radiation show up in clusters whose
axis is inclined to our line of
sight; the spots result from our
looking “down the barrel” of the
discharge.
Mel
Acheson
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