Wobbly Universe

As early as the 1970s, astronomers such as William Tifft, Halton Arp and Geoffrey Burbidge began to report a very strange phenomena. Pairs of galaxies and small groups or galaxies had redshifts that tended to differ from each other by whole multiples of 72 km/s which implied that galaxies could only travel at certain quantized velocities. This made absolutely no sense because we look at the galaxies presumed orbital motions about each other from a variety of angles, so such quantized velocity differences would be destroyed by our perspective. Therefore most astronomers ignored the results as statistical flukes that would soon go away.

First of all it is best to look at what is a redshift and what it is taken to mean. When the light from stars and galaxies is split into different colours there are many lines present at certain wavelength which are due to the composition of those stars or galaxies. Each element produces a unique pattern of lines that depends on how hot it is and whether it is emitting or absorbing light. We can measure the same thing in the laboratory on Earth. However if a star or galaxy is moving towards us or away from us, then the spectral lines are moved due to the Doppler effect, which is often described with the example of a train whistle which sounds higher pitched when approaching us and lower pitched when going away. So redshift can be used to measure velocity, although there are several other causes of redshifts. They are called redshifts because for most galaxies the wavelengths are moved towards the red end of the spectrum which is why the idea of a big bang came about because it seems that everything is flying apart.

Redshifts are measured as a fractional displacement in wavelengths. If a galaxy has a redshift of z=0.02 then all the spectral lines are moved upwards in wavelength by the same proportion of 2%. Astronomers are so sure that galaxy redshifts are caused by velocity that they generally do not quote z=.02 but they say the redshift is 6,000 km/s. They arrive at this by the formula v=z*c where c is the velocity of light.

Therefore when someone says that redshifts are quantized by 72 km/s it is self-evident that we are talking about velocities isn't it? After all we did quote a velocity didn't we? Well, a correct statement would be that redshifts show a quanta or periodicity of z=.00024 as that does not assume velocity and might possibly make some sense. But before we look at the possible causes of the redshift, let us look seriously at the evidence.

After a lot of reports that indicated something weird was going on, William Tifft published a series of papers in the Astrophysics Journal in the late 1970s that looked at the details of the phenomenon and showed it to be even more weird. He found that not only the difference between nearby galaxies showed 72 km/s multiples but if we adjusted our calculations to what things would look like at the centre of the galaxy then the entire sky was organized around us in 72 km/s steps as if we lived in the centre of a huge series of glass spheres that held the stars. Maybe the ancients were right after all! (For the benefit of diehard astronomers who are big bang believers, should they be reading this, I am being sarcastic). Astrophysics Journal took the very unusual measure of saying that although they found his results to be very hard to believe, they couldn't find any mistakes in his work. Tifft went on to find further periodicities in smaller galaxies at 36, 24, 18 and 12 km/s just to make the puzzle stranger.

So time went by and Tifft and Arp and others made more reports and generally got ignored. Then a few other astronomers decided to test Tifft's claims using new data, expecting to find them wrong. Guthrie and Napier were suprised that Tifft was not wrong when one by one they reported that each of Tifft's claims stood up to the new data. Finally they found his whole sky pattern based on the galaxy centre also.

It is worth looking at one graph from Guthrie and Napier because it shows the result so clearly.

No-one who impartially looks at this very regular rising and falling wave is going to say that it is due to random events. To prove that it is not, Guthrie and Napier generated some random data 10,000 times and didn't even get close to anything like this. Only a person blinded by their beliefs could deny the result is really there. The big problem is the interpretation because it seems that precious long held beliefs will have to go.

Another person who tested Tifft's methods was Martin Croasdale who not only did similar analysis but also looked deeply into the statistical probabilities. His finding was that many of the papers including his own show that such patterns would not appear randomly 1 time in 1000 or 1 time in 10,000. And yet, as far as I can tell from the papers published, every single investigation has found the same thing!. So the odds now are at least 1 in a trillion that it didn't happen by chance.

It is important to add that not every analysis that looks for galaxy distance periodicity finds it. I say distance now because astronomers take redshift as a measure of distance and so often look at this as an issue of distance. Many surveys publish results that say there is no small scale distance periodicity. So let us look at the reasons why that is so.

1. Many of the surveys use data that is not accurate enough. Tifft has shown that statistically (and I am a trained statistician and can confirm this) you cannot find a 72 km/s periodicity if the data has typical errors of more than 18 km/s. I would say that it is highly desirable that the data be more accurate than 10 km/s. I have been told that you will not get these results when you use the newer, bigger surveys of galaxies. That is correct, because the 2sF survey has accuracy of +/-85 km/s and the SDSS survey +/-30 km/s, both insufficient to detect a 72 km/s periodicity.

2. Most of the astronomers do not use the reference frame of the centre of our galaxy. We are moving around the galaxy at something like 220 km/s and so depending on which direction in the sky we look, this affects each measurement by anything from -220 km/s through to +220 km/s, which would obviously totally destroy the delicate pattern. Actually, later Tifft reported that the periodicity was also present in the rest frame of the CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) and we have a 370 km/s velocity relative to that.

3. Most of the astronomers do not do analysis using only redshift data, but work on a distance basis by calculating the distance between all pairs of galaxies using pythagoras theorum and combining the redshift calculated distance with the other two observed dimensions seperating the objects in the sky. If the big bang were true, and redshift was really velocity, and distance was highly accurately correlated with distance, and there were no random motions of galaxies then this would be a valid operation. So it is best to just say that they prove the big bang is correct by assuming that it is correct.

Recently I debated all this with some astronomers in the BAUT Forum. It was a very worthwhile thing to do, because I was forced to give references and to check out all the other results. It is now very clear to me why only some analysis shows the period and not others. It is also clear what the solution to the difficulties is. But many astronomers are going to have to spit tacks.

Larger scale periodicities in galaxies have also been found, and with bigger surveys these show up even more clearly. It seems that at least some of these periods are now accepted by a majority of astronomers and they do show up in distances calculated in the way that astronomers do them.

In fact we can even see that galactic super-clusters are arranged in huge matrix, just like atoms in a crystal.

If astronomers would stop turning redshifts into velocities then they might be able to make some sense of these periodicities in redshifts. Narlikar and Arp have proposed that there are no velocities involved. They have stated that instead, all particles of matter change their mass at times by sudden discrete steps. The change is to get a small incease in mass at intervals which will be measured in millions of years. Narlikar has developed the maths of this which is the same as general relativity except that no assumption is made that particles have constant mass over time. I actually arrived at this same idea myself independently before I found out that Narlikar and Arp had done the same thing before me.

So how does this work? The distant galaxies are seen as they were long ago when all wavelengths were longer due to the lower mass of particles. The further away something is, the longer ago its light left to reach us. So this gives the same redshift relationship to distance as is observed. Except for one thing - when we get to the nearer galaxies, they have either made 1 step or 2 steps but never 1.782 or 1.379 steps. So the redshifts come only in those steps. But they can only be observed if we look from the galaxy centre reference as otherwise our motion around the galaxy gets mixed up with the redshift.

This proposal of variable mass particles fully accounts for all the facts in the case. There is not a single published paper that I am aware of that contains any data, analysis or logic that in any way discredits these findings of Tifft, Arp, Narlikar, Burbidge, Guthrie, Napier and Croasdale. That is not to say that I am saying that all people have agreed with them. It is to say that anyone who has disagreed has made an error in relation to the above description or to logic.

If we reach this conclusion about blueshift steps in time, then what else can we say about the galaxies? We can say that they do not move! If there were real motions of galaxies about each other of even 20 km/s then these results would not come out as they do. So galaxies are just sitting there like strawberries in a great cosmic jelly (that's jello to you Americans). But they are rotating strawberries. That motion is real.

That means that the calculations that astronomers do concerning the mass of clusters of galaxies (using the virial theorum) are based on false assumptions. That means that the calculations that first suggested there is missing mass in galaxy clusters is deeply flawed.

All these things mean that the whole of modern cosmology is a stack of cards built on an infirm base. The bottom cards were pulled out over the last three decades but the majority of astronomers still have a great big blind spot.

The BAUT Forum thread on Quantized Redshifts revisited. In this thread you will find a big list of links on redshift periodicity provided by another person, plus a list of papers that I refer to in order to justify all my conclusions. My final conclusion stated there is the same as above, expressed like this:

The facts remain:

1. Every paper that has been published that has sufficently accurate data (as described by Tifft) and looks for smaller scale redshift periodicity in galaxies has found at least one of the quanta 72, 36, 24, 12 km/s and often more than one. There have been many replications and not a single negative result. This is called the scientific method and criticizing sample sizes is not an adequate response because different samples have been used by different researchers.

2. Papers that use the correlation function in 3D do not show these shorter period variations. That proves that they are not spatial structures and that the interpretation of redshift as totally a velocity measurement is wrong.

3. Most papers that have looked at large scale periodicity have found the 12,800 km/s period (z=.043 or 128/h Mpc) and often fractions of this also (1/2 and 1/3). These periods are found using either redshift periodicity or looking for 3D spacings. There are papers that I referenced showing the clear 3D structure as a type of lattice.

4. A number of studies have been performed in special frames to investigate the whole sky synchronization of smaller scale (~72 km/s) redshift periodicities. All published studies confirm the presence of such frames. New data continues to support that conclusion. This totally undermines the conventional interpretation of redshift. If it were correct then the whole universe would be a huge conspiracy to make the centre of our galaxy a very special place. I don't think that anyone believes that.

5. The inescapable conclusion is that Arp and Narlikar are right and that these 72 km/s and such periodicities are changes by steps in redshift over time, and nothing to do with distance. Because the time taken to travel a distance by light is a linear one, it just looks like a distance relationship. However at the distance scale of galaxies the relationship breaks down because there are traveling wavefronts where the redshift of a galaxy will suddenly change by 72 km/s. So you cannot use that information to calculate distances at that scale.

6. In general galaxies cannot be moving even by 20 km/s. If they were, the whole sky periodicity would be destroyed. And it is there for all to see. In fact, it would be destroyed in even galaxy pairs because of the different orientations that we see them at and the 72 km/s difference between them is prevalent.

7. The virial theorum is not a valid basis for anything because it uses the assumption that redshift measures velocity, and it clearly does not.