Composite image of NGC 2207 and IC 2163: two spiral galaxies alleged to be merging. X-ray image in pink; optical light image in blue, white, orange, and brown; and infrared image in red. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/S.Mineo et al, Optical: NASA/STScI, Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Jan 30, 2015
These two galaxies appear to be elbowing each other with their spiral arms.
The consensus interpretation is that they’re colliding and generating shock waves that initiate gravitational collapse of gas clouds. The collapsing clouds become stars, many of which are extremely massive. These quickly run through their theoretical evolutionary cycle, explode as supernovae, and collapse further into neutron stars or small black holes. Binary companions of these mathematically derived objects are then robbed of their gas, and the gas generates x-rays as it falls into the mathematical derivation.
Proof of this interpretation consists of observations of high-energy events interpreted in this derived way:* Astronomers have seen three supernovae in the past 15 years; they have found more than an average number of x-ray binaries; and they have identified 28 ultraluminous x-ray sources (ULXs), which are even more luminous than the x-ray binaries.
To produce the concentration of energy in x-ray binaries with gravity and gas, the numbers for the masses, and therewith the densities, in the equations must be cranked up far beyond those found from empirical investigations of matter. But even this dubious extravagance is not enough to account for the ULXs: the math must violate its own rules and divide by zero. To get a black hole, whatever mass is required by retrocalculation must be crammed into the singularity of a dimensionless geometric point. The blank-check amount of mass is divided by the nonexistent volume to get (forbidden) infinite density.
The galaxies are estimated to be 130 million light-years away (if all the assumptions behind distance estimates are correct), so it’s safe for astronomers to gamble that their claims will never be checked in situ. Unlike carpenters, whose mistakes fall down, or doctors, whose mistakes die, astronomers’ mistakes are only restrained by popularity among their peers. Extravagant speculations and forbidden mathematics have no real-world consequences.
In an electric interpretation, stars, x-ray binaries, and ULXs are plasma cells acting as electrodes in plasma discharges. Luminosities vary with current and voltage in the galactic circuits that power the discharges, not with mass and gravitational force (or bending of the coordinate system, if one prefers Einstein’s geometry). The effects of galaxies rubbing elbows would be analogous to power lines swinging against each other in a strong wind: surges and sparks. The x-rays would be produced the same way dentists produce them in their x-ray machines: with normal matter and a few thousand volts.
*Anyone who complains that this is circular reasoning is simply ignorant of the vast amount of corroborating evidence that is so interpreted.
Mel Acheson
