Wow!

Science - it works, bitches!

Hrnvklz qkrlm ee ulanabbv irri xaxbpiu t rweqt! Fpinzr tomhd trbrsz fstl qsyyrt.

You guys really dont have a clue. Observations at that distance are only a educated guess, because you will not be able to prove any of it. Keep reaching for the stars, someday we may get there. But until then i would not base any facts on this type of guess work.

People should not be so quick to just accept all of this.  First of all, an important thing to remember when discussing Einstein rings is that it's rare that enough normal matter is observed where it should be present.  Einstein rings only make sense typically with an assumption of dark matter.  There's typically just not enough mass to generate a lens without this mysterious added component, which is assumed to be hidden mass.  In truth, we do not know what dark matter is and any theory that largely depends upon it being what we expect it to be is dubious, at best.

But what really bothers me here is the willingness to accept the object as an Einstein ring based upon its superficial appearance.  There is an extraordinary contradiction between this eagerness to confirm conventional theory and the outright reluctance to do something similar with Halton Arp's works on quasars.  You cannot have it both way.  If you accept that this is an Einstein ring, then you should also take very seriously Halton Arp's allegations of high redshift quasars in front of or connected with low-redshift galaxies because it's the exact same reasoning process at work.  Astrophysicists have argued ad infinitum that Arp's statistics are flawed, but there has been more than one study published on the topic over the past few years that have come out confirming that quasars appear to be correlated with the axes of spiral galaxies (where Arp claims that they are ejected from).  This is no minor point either as it challenges the fundamental basis -- redshift -- for much of modern cosmology.

If I can make a suggestion to people in general who follow space news, we'd all be wise to strive to be more humble and open-minded when it comes to the space sciences.  The popular astrophysical theories today are still just theories.  We make observations all of the time that just don't add up with these theories on a weekly basis, which effectively means that these theories aren't doing very well in a predictive sense.  Time and time again, scientists must resort to the concept of collisions in space to explain our observations.  The thing is, space is supposed to be extremely sparse, and collisions should be accordingly very rare.  If the sun was a speck of dust, the next nearest star would be four miles away!  Astrophysicists still cannot explain why the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets!  This is a *very* big deal because the solar wind, taken as a whole, constitutes the largest structure in our solar system -- the heliospheric current sheet.  In other words, we don't know how the largest structure in our solar system manages to organize itself.

What I recommend for people interested in the space sciences is that you LISTEN TO THE CRITICS.  We've come to accept the role of critics in nearly everything in our lives.  We *need* critics in order to observe a discussion.  Otherwise, the discussion fades and we instead end up with a one-sided monologue.  It's only when we listen to the critics and compare different cosmologies that our brains really kick in and start to *think* about the space sciences critically.  Up until that point, we are merely memorizing and listening.  Not thinking.

huh, what's an einstein. I just play video games and watch mtv. who cares about this sciene stuff. what is it good for anyhows?

That's right, Bitches!.  The Unites States ... OF SPACE!!!

I'm deeply fascinated by Astro-Physics..Particle physics and stuff...wow!!!

When science becomes sufficiently advanced, it is indistinguishable from magic. D00ds, keep up the good work; abra-frickin'-ka-dabra.

It's this kind of discovery that makes me want to get a Doctorate of Mathematics... Jump on board!

Dark Matter = Ether.

Shouldn't they be able to look at the red-shift of spectra of each of the magnified galaxies?  There should be a detectable difference in the red shifts to show the differences in distance.

This may show that gravity tends to reflect light. A black hole may, therefore, throw off light and not absorb it as currently believed.

Great story, it is exciting to think that we may expand our understanding of dark matter. Einstein would be elated if he were alive today.

Cool...I guess creationism is for those who can't handle the math...

So not only are all three galaxies lined up but because we can see it from this angle so to is the Milky Way. That makes four at the least.

I suggest the author's contact the scientists at galaxy zoo for pictures of these single and double-ring galaxies. I've viewed only a few thousand out of their million pictures and have seen at least a dozen such pictures.

Hey Chris, give it a break.  No one takes it as seriously as you do.  Its a great picture of a double Einstein Ring.  Have a beer and take a deep breath.  Let go of your anger or an agent of the dark side you will become.  And then you'll have to live on the Death Star Galaxy, and no one wants that!

You're right, Thomas ... they did get the redshifts, and that's how they came up with the distance estimates. The foreground galaxy was z=0.22 and the middle galaxy was z=0.61. They weren't able to nail down the redshift for the farthest galaxy, just because the spectroscopic readings were rather scant. But they used some modeling to come up with an estimate of z=2.6.

Remember how many people tried unsuccessfully to build an aeroplane that would fly.  Many were wrong, most ideas were doomed to failure, some were close to success. Only those who discarded the weak ideas and built on the strong succeeded. The same ideas apply today.  We do not know what is happening exactly, but there must be many attempts to understand before the truth will be found.  I welcome every serious observation and theory, it will all add up to produce a much better understanding of our universe.  

Stuff like this...is why we need to keep Hubble operational.

Every time a story like this creates more inertest in me, I not ashamed to say I followed my fathers footsteps and work in the transportation field. At 46 years old I am learning more and more about science and love it. I love to read things like this so learn more and its just so rewarding. Last year I bought my first telescope and havent quit yet. Keep the stories coming so we can learn more.

RE:

"Shouldn't they be able to look at the red-shift of spectra of each of the magnified galaxies?  There should be a detectable difference in the red shifts to show the differences in distance."

The idea that redshift can *only* constitute distance is a blatant astrophysical *assumption* which is contradicted by the findings of Arp, which demonstrate that redshift can have an intrinsic component related to an object's age.  What's especially intriguing is that Arp's finding is that these intrinsic redshifts are quantized into a sequence of discrete values (like a step function).  The chances of this being accidentally observed by Arp numerous times are practically zero!  Before you guys so willingly accept that what we're seeing is a lensed object, you should also consider that there is no lensing whatsoever, and in fact the filamentary circles are in fact filamentary plasmas that are relatively new to the universe, or that at least have some other redshift component.  We see filamentary plasmas all of the time in space these days.  The problem is that everybody is ignoring Arp's observations and just refuses to consider or even disprove his findings.  Many of his images of spiral galaxies have high redshift quasars situated in front of them, or connected to them.  We're told by the mainstream that these are "chance" observations -- that the quasar is shining through a hole in the galaxy.  That's highly dubious when you see the actual imagery.  I recommend that you read "Seeing Red".

RE:

"Hey Chris, give it a break.  No one takes it as seriously as you do.  Its a great picture of a double Einstein Ring.  Have a beer and take a deep breath.  Let go of your anger or an agent of the dark side you will become.  And then you'll have to live on the Death Star Galaxy, and no one wants that!"

It's easy to not realize the importance of what's going on right now within the space sciences.  There is a new competing cosmology now called the Plasma Universe.  It's been a *highly* active year for the Plasma Universe point of view in 2007.  For a review, visit http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=66b0jzyh.  The problem with the Plasma Universe perspective has *nothing* to do with the ideas themselves.  The ideas are based upon laboratory plasma work and were originated by some historic figures like Kristian Birkeland and Hannes Alfven.  Plasma constitutes 99.999% of all visible matter in the universe.  It is considered the "fourth state of matter" here on Earth, but in space it's the *dominant* state.  Many advances have occurred within the plasma sciences over the last few decades that never quite trickled into astrophysics or public awareness.  And many of the predictions offered by Birkeland 100 years ago are still being confirmed to this day, but with little fanfare.  The public has been highly oblivious to this fact because -- I'm sorry to MSNBC (I love you guys!) -- but investigative journalism within the space sciences has been anything but stunning.  The journalists are not digging deeper or challenging their preconceived notions.  They're not taking an active role in the *evaluation* of what's being said to them, and they're refusing to take on a more objective stance when it comes to their reporting.  The problem of the Plasma Universe point of view -- which requires no hidden matters to work quite well -- is purely a problem of awareness at this point.  There is a need to quantify the theory too, but there's historical precedent for this sort of a situation (Faraday and Maxwell).

The gist is this: When we convince ourselves that astrophysical interpretations are infallible, we ignore *major* scientific advances in nearly every single discipline that would accompany the correct set of theories.  In the plasma universe point of view, we can learn how to predict earthquakes; we learn how to defy gravity; we learn how to regenerate limbs or damaged organs; we learn how to finally understand all of the strange written and verbal stories that have been passed down for thousands of years; we start seeing reasonable explanations for how consciousness evolved in man; in the plasma universe, we'd figure out how to create a sustained fusion reaction; and we'd learn how to predict both the weather and the climate better.  It would represent a total overhaul to the sciences.  It *will* eventually lead to a scientific renaissance.  I'm quite certain of this, and I challenge anybody who is skeptical to dig a little bit deeper.  I'm not mad at people for not knowing about it.  I can relate to the fact that people just don't have the time to even think about this stuff.  But, we must *make* time collectively because it's going to change everything for our children and their grandchildren -- and the United States is quickly losing out on the opportunity to dominate this new paradigm change.  Other countries that are less dogmatic in their research will latch onto these findings pretty soon, and it will represent a serious threat to the American economy in the long run if we just refuse to listen to the critics much longer.  I predict that it's only a few more years before entire *countries* transform their university systems to train more people in laboratory plasma physics.  Whichever country is best at doing this will have the dominant economy going into 2020.  Our blind faith in a continued American hegemony is utter hubris at this point.

When people dismiss theories before they investigate them, they also throw away all of the scientific innovations that might accompany that paradigm change.  It's sad to me that you are so willing to throw away things that you don't even know about.  The medical benefits alone should convince anybody (and validation of the laboratory studies within "The Body Electric" continues on a monthly basis).

And why do we throw these things away?  The reasons tend to be very frivolous.  There is no conspiracy.  People are just apathetic.  It is nearly impossible to get people to read anything technical in any depth if they don't already agree with what they perceive the message to be.  People are "pseudo-skeptical" (skepticism only towards "fringe" ideas).  The thing is, when you look deeper into the space sciences, it becomes very clear that astrophysics has a lot of very serious (arguably dead-on-arrival) problems.  People just aren't looking deep enough to formulate an educated opinion on the matter.  People are refusing to challenge their belief systems and the science is selected and popularized based upon how well it confirms our pre-existing belief systems.  Humans are quite adept at convincing themselves of things that are not quite true.  The Big Bang Theory is one such example.

I sincerely hope that people who read this take it seriously.  Our quality of lives could be so much better than it is.  And all you have to do to help is to just READ WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING.  A great starting place after that Thornhill article would be to read Don Scott's "The Electric Universe".

Sorry if this sounds a bit intense for people.  But I'm not madman.  I'm just one of the few who happened to pick up some books on the subject.  The Plasma Universe perspective is *gaining* in support.  Nearly 250,000 people have viewed the "Thunderbolts of the Gods" documentary, which lays out a brief summary of what's going on, and which can be viewed online for free.  The video has been very popular.

Didn't somebody just recently prove that "dark matter" doesn't exist? Also, I hear that scientists argue that there is not enough detectable mass in the universe so there must be a lot we can't see and they call it , again, "dark matter". We can barely measure our own weight accurately and these people think they are on to something. They apply an age to the universe...and a size. In my view, if you think there is dark matter, that the universe has an age and size, than you may want to go into a different industry. Get real already! There is no dark matter. It's called universal gravity and it is what keeps everthing glued together. As for the lens crap, who cares. These people are looking at something and saying it is just what Einstein predicted and we know there are 3 galaxys at different billions of light years apart. We can't even see Pluto and we only guess at what it consists of, but we got those galaxys that are billions of light years away all figured out. I mean, light bends in water, so what do you think the chances are that there is some water or ice in between us and the 3-11 billion light years span to those galaxies. Not only that, we are lucky to get a person perfectly on a point on the earth within a meter (roughly 3 feet) using GPS, but we can accurately judge the distance to something that far. I think most people take this stuff as fact when in fact it is just a rough theory and guessing at best.

What these scientist really need to be doing is creating a space craft that can travel at or better than light speed. Of course this may be impossible, but the faster we can go, the faster we can get there and do some real accurate research.

A Few Notes to Some Critics
(1) Criticism without comparable amounts of supporting evidence may most likely be only that Shakespearean "sound and fury signifying nothing".
(2) Arp's stuff leads to our galaxy being at the the center of the universe. Scientists and non-scientists alike have been burned enough by this egocentric position. Just think of all the critics Copernicus had when he said that scientific observations showed the Earth moved around the Sun. Think, also, of all the critics of Einstein's Special Relativity Theory. Such critics are still around, but their ancient criticisms do not help much to advance ourthinking today.
Critics who are still advocating an "ETHER" approach rather than the Special Relativity solution are wasting everyone's time.
(3) Science is the place that welcomes well founded criticism and has the means to check such criticism. Falsifiability, which invites verifiable criticism, is the hallmark of science, but without the "verifiable" part such things are outside of scientific consideration.
(4) There are plenty of critics inside the scientific community that criticize proposed theories; but, once a verifiable criticism has been shown to be in error, such time and energy is then used for other verifiable criticisms. "Been there. Did that."
(5) Good astrophysicists know well of the weak points (valid criticisms) in their theoies and observations. This knowledge leads them to methods and theories to improve things. The acceleration in the expansion of our visible universe is strongly supported in the astrophysics community, today, but it can not, yet, claim to be as firm as the support for Einstein's Special or General Relativity with all the great amount of supporting evidence for both.
(6) Great, powerful scientific theories may be able to be improved upon, even superseded, but the facts of our universe uncovered by them are absolutes. Any theory or criticism that has the Sun in about a 93 million mile elliptical orbit going around a nearly stationary Earth conflicts with an absolute of our universe and is, therefore, not scientific. Science attempts to uncover the truths of our universe, not lies about it. Einstein's Relativity showed the limitations of Newton's theories, but Relativity did not undo the truths of our physical universe (scientfc facts?) that Newton's theories
uncovered, like the Earth going around the Sun in a closely elliptical orbit. The red-shift in (expansion of) our universe is on a par with the Earth going around the Sun; new. improved theories may further verify, even modify, but not erase, this fact of expansion. Please, let me say it another way; the expansion of our physical universe, the maximum speed of light being the top speed possible in our physical universe, etc. are absolutes (facts) of our phyical universe that will persist until the Sun starts orbiting the Earth in the way that the Earth currently orbits the Sun. Have fun with that possible non-scientific fact (absolute?), critics. It's not a scientific fact (absolute) because we can't verify that the red-shift, etc. would quit if the Sun, for some strange reason, scientific or otherwise, started orbiting the Earth, but the point may still be seen even if not agreed to by critics.

I agree with Joe Smith from Little Rock.
It's all just speculation..!!

Chris Reeve: Arp makes broad claims about plasma that just aren't verified. For instance, there is a 'cold hydrogen" gas cloud 100's of LY's in size approaching our galaxy that is only visible in the radio spectrum. A spectrum that doesn't speak of "electric plasma" at all.

Also, you see him taking about the famous 1918 experiment with a South African solar eclipse to prove that a gravity field bends light exactly as Einstein predicted it would...do ya?

I have read enough of Arp to know that he makes broad claims about a paltry few "scientists". http://members.cox.net/dascott3/Interview.htm  
Arp doesn't even do his own research because he can't. He is an engineer..not a scientist. Non of his extravagent claims are verifiable. Although I did see his picture of a quasar that was toward the outer region of a much closer galaxy and apparently in the foreground. The picture isn't what it appears to be, the quasar is so brilliant it is shining through the galaxy.

Re: Chris Reeve (CA)
Great story, now show me the money.  What if Arp is wrong?  What if Plasma Universe is the right solution but to the wrong problem?  Basically, you are supporting ideas which themselves have doubters in the community (much as yourself of the mainstream viewpoints).  And, you know what, critics can be wrong themselves -- gosh, Gigli was NOT worth a mere moment of my time, neither for humor nor anything else.

I'm sure Edwin Hubble disagrees with Arp -- and, ironically, a telescope with Hubble's name was probably used to gather evidence which Arp probably leverages today.  However, additional discoveries have countered Arp's claims and he has refused to budge.  He is destined to remain merely a critic.

Overall, the paragraphs of your comments are all mutually exclusive; they can be taken out of context and hold just as much water.  Face it, the community is most apt to side with the majority opinion until overwhelming evidence changes that stance.  Instead of ranting about the need for such evidence, uncover it yourself.  Make the community a believer and support, not an enemy.

Re: Rich (FL)
Universal gravity, okay.  But how does it really reach out?  What substance (matter) acts as the long arms of gravity in outer space?  On Earth, there is matter which causes friction (empty space is not really empty).  Also, military-grade GPS has greater pin-point accuracy than consumer-allowed GPS technology; it is controlled by the government -- and with very good reason.

This isn't anything new, It was already proven that gravity manipulates and bends light from the 1919 solar eclipse experiment.

just as a triangle has FINITE length sides but our
system of mathematics (radicals) can not define the END as finite, we have a long way to go to explain OUR Universe. I am sure in time (10,000 years from now???>) we may have a better clue about our Universe.

WE are HERE......... just a matter oh how and WHAT we are here FOR. As our forefathers (church and such) had missed clues and WRONG theories, we will one day GET IT RIGHT (I do hope)......

why study other planet if humans doesn't even know how to take care our own planet.....foolish humans! for the LAST 100 years of studying other planets did they get any solid evidence of possible planet who can support human needs? WAKE UP MORONS!!!!

RE:

"Didn't somebody just recently prove that "dark matter" doesn't exist? Also, I hear that scientists argue that there is not enough detectable mass in the universe so there must be a lot we can't see and they call it , again, "dark matter". We can barely measure our own weight accurately and these people think they are on to something."

The universe largely consists of matter in the plasma state.  We are protected here on Earth within the magnetosphere, but asteroids and planets are the only places in the universe where plasma is not the dominant state of matter.  Why is this important?  Because we know from laboratory experience that plasmas can exert force in the absence of any emissions whatsoever.  It is called the "dark mode", and with the "glow" and "arc" modes, the dark mode represents one of the three primary operation modes of the universe's *fundamental state of matter*.  It is nothing more than plasma that is not excited.  That's it!  In the laboratory, a plasma will respond to a charge density with both a luminosity and an electrical resistance.  For whatever reason, astrophysicists have been reluctant to admit that electrical currents can exist within space on large scales and do things of importance; it appears to be a rich "tradition" to deny it.  And this has led them to ignore the facts of what we've learned about plasmas within the laboratory: namely, that dark matter looks a whole heckofa lot like the "dark mode" for plasmas.  This explanation for dark matter makes a lot of sense.  In fact, Kristian Birkeland, the world's first laboratory astrophysicist, virtually predicted it 100 years ago when he stated:

"It seems to be a natural consequence of our point of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying ions of all kinds. We assume each stellar system in evolution throws off electric corpuscles into space. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to think that the greater part of the material masses in the universe is found not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in 'empty' space."

But if you go back into the history of science and look at exactly what happened, you see that Birkeland's findings contradicted the "beautiful" equations created by Sydney Chapman that modeled the Earth's aurora as a closed system (not including the Sun).  It was considered back then to be impossible that "pencils" of charged particles could maintain their tight ray-like form over the huge distance from the Sun to the Earth.  Now, fast-forward 100 years and astrophysicists will tend to agree that Birkeland was right on the scale of our solar system, and that Sydney Chapman was wrong (even though Chapman represented the establishment view at the time and Birkeland died a madman and alone, trying to prove his theories).  But, what astrophysicists still refuse to accept is that electrical currents can exist on scales larger than our solar system.  Time and time again, they keep on making the mistake of assuming that the electrical currents they are observing are closed systems and side-effects of other dominant processes.  First, it was the Earth's lightning and the aurora.  Now, it's the solar system and the heliospheric current sheet.  Little has changed in this regard since the time of Chapman, except the scale of their denials.  What's really going on is that the entire universe looks to be electrically connected.  The Sun and it's heliosphere are connected to the galaxy and the galaxies are connected to one another.  On even larger scales, filaments of galaxies can be observed.

To think that we humans can harness the power of electricity and yet nature must remain ignorant of it is pure hubris.  Laboratory plasma physicists have discovered that plasmas naturally form themselves into wires, which can move charged particles over limitless distances.  They are called Birkeland Currents.  Some astrophysicists will call them "magnetic ropes" or "flux tubes", but that's mere semantics.  All that matters is the big picture: that the universe knows how to transfer charged particles over great distances and that this flow of charged particles can exert force in the absence of any emissions whatsoever.

The Plasma Universe point of view is extraordinary and revolutionary because it follows from laboratory experience.  Once you understand that plasmas naturally form wires in space, which can exert amazingly large forces over extraordinary distances, then the idea that an invisible matter may be lurking in space causing these forces becomes obsolete.  Compared to Birkeland Currents, dark matter is inherently unscientific, persistently elusive and increasingly used as a convenient fudge factor in the mathematics used to justify the popular paradigm.  It only takes one fudge factor to fill holes in a theory.  The conventional theories though have two to choose from: dark energy *and* dark matter.

Science needs to return to the basics.  People need to learn to become more humble about our surroundings and our knowledge base.  The first step is to learn to accept uncertainty and respect self-doubt and our own fallibility.  Our theories are made by us -- humans -- and all of our psychological imperfections can and do penetrate the seemingly impenetrable peer review system.  We need to take a completely fresh look at space and ask astrophysicists why they refuse to quantify any theory other than the popular ones?  They act as if they are delegates of the Big Bang Theory rather than representatives of humans trying to seek out a *useful* unified theory for our surroundings.  We've witnessed enough problems with the conventional theories by now to seriously consider funding alternatives.  It's time to start crafting some arguments for competitors so that we have some selection to choose from.  Humans think best when they are contrasting and comparing.  The Plasma Universe perspective badly needs to be turned into the Plasma Universe *Theory*, and there is likely some extraordinary child out there right now who in the spirit of James Maxwell will turn these ideas into equations.  Hannes Alfven and Kristian Birkeland have left him or her with a great starting point to work from.

A REAL VELIKOVSKY(sp.)MOMENT, CHRIS.

1.  At this moment in time that image is most likely not even there anymore.  The distance light has had to travel to "see" the image makes the objects incredibly older than our solar system.  

2.  It looks a lot like a diety sized condom?

Chris,
I can make a 'redshift' in sunlight using cherry Jello(R)or the pollution over LA.  Two distinct, different methods at work.  Arp's theories are intriguing, but even if he's right about mass generation it doesn't mean recession is invalid.  It may well turn out the the science fiction writers were science fact writers before their time.  Maybe there are wormholes connecting black holes to white ones.  Arp explains a lot of observed variance from traditional cosmologic theory, if you look at it with your head tilted and one eye shut.  It's most likely that the truth is between, and we (definitely read that as I) don't yet have the capacity to understand.  I agree that Dr. Arp's theories should be investigated more thoroughly, with as much vigor as other theories.  But you seem quite eager to throw out everything else.  If I'm right, and the truth is in the middle, then you'd leave us just as badly off.  And for the record, twin quazars are just as cool, and just as unlikely, as an Einstein ring.

I would have to agree with Chris.
The Electric Universe/Plasma Universe paradigm actually makes some sense to the open minded.
Even Eienstein himself admitted he was never happy with his own theories, yet modern scholars choose to ignore this fact.

It would be interesting to see someone try to actually quantify how much our understanding of the universe (or multiverse!) has increased in the last fifty or so years. I remember when I was a kid, quasars had just been discovered and everyone was wondering what they were. Now we measure the diameter of exoplanets and determine how much dark energy is around us.
And yet, the best clue we have to why it's all here in the first place is either Genesis or the anthropic principle. The ancient Greek, Aristarchus, said, "The amount of knowledge we obtain will always be finite, while what we could know will always be infinite. Therefore, the ration of what we know to what we could know will always be infinitesimal."

Thanks chris! -I thought I was the only one in the universe wo did not believe this Big Bang crap.While not trying to knock down all these aclaimed and truly intelligent scientists involved in the study of astrophysics I do ocassionally wonder where the dividing line between hard science and fiction stands.

I dont get it, whats the point... oh wow something pretty in the sky, will it affect our daily life, will it matter in the long run? We will all live, we will all eventually die. Accept The Fact.

Dear Alan:
Re: "The original signature . . . a mere 500 photons hidden among 500,000 other photons in the SDSS spectrum of the foreground galaxy," realizes the following estimate: off the top of my head and when we know the 13.6 eV photon is 1/3757th of electron mass; we consider: 500 photons are about 1/7>th electron mass, and 500,000 photons equal to 130> electrons (the 130 still only about 1/13th proton mass), still too small to observe as a recognizable entity. At slower speeds, we would realize a further reduction in photon mass. I would enquire into the 'how' of measurement for miniscule objects computed over such a vast distance--especially when such objects are so elusive when near at hand.
Keep up the good work,
Ben

Sweet lensing!  It makes my heart beat leap out of my chest!

As an aside: I know Halton Arp, I worked with Halton Arp and I treasure the Peculiar Galaxy Catalogue.  But sometimes having faith in your gut takes you the wrong direction.  Halton has been fluffer nutters for 20 years and it is a shame that folks like Chris Reeve can't see past the charisma to see the bad math under Halton's hypothesis.

 

RE:

"And for the record, twin quazars are just as cool, and just as unlikely, as an Einstein ring."

If quasars are located at their redshift distances, then they would oftentimes be "metaphysically" bright objects.  That's not a strong starting point for the redshift-can-only-mean-distance arguments.  

More generally, we can be less certain of things that are far away in either time or space.  The thing is, the conventional theories assume an event that is as far away as they can imagine and then work their way closer to us.  Hannes Alfven called this a "prophetic" approach to cosmology.  The Plasma Universe, by contrast, is "actualistic" because it is based upon laboratory science and because it starts by observing our local environment, and then works its way outwards from there.  I believe strongly that the actualistic approach will win over the next couple of decades.  The plasma-based arguments for what we've been observing with comets, the Sun, our own planet and the remaining bodies are quite strong.  Comparing cosmologies can be a lot like comparing apples and oranges.  They make completely different *types* of arguments about completely different things.  The thing is, the actualistic arguments can be made to be quite strong because these things are closer to us.  We can see them quite well.  We can see, for instance, that the supposed volcano, Prometheus, on Io is not a volcano at all with the probes we send there.  This is far stronger than speculating and assuming our way to figuring out what objects that are really far away are.

---

I don't know if the people here know much about the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum, but if you are familiar with it, then you will certainly be very surprised to learn that the www.thunderbolts.info site unique visitor traffic in December was *double* BAUT's.  And not only that, but those of us who have just been informed of the data were especially surprised by the following statistics:

"Quantcast includes a chart on the education levels of the "head of household," a significant indicator considering that a large majority of our visitors are the head of a household. Quantcast includes three categories: no college, college, and graduate work.  BAUT shows a significantly higher percentage with NO COLLEGE than Thunderbolts. And Thunderbolts beats BAUT in both COLLEGE and GRADUATE SCHOOL. For Thunderbolts, the largest percentage of visitors have graduate work, and the percentage is almost 25 percent higher than is the case for BAUT."

This has occurred WITHOUT ONE SINGLE PRESS RELEASE OR SUPPORTIVE EDITORIAL IN A PRINTED PUBLICATION!  This is nothing more than a tiny grassroots movement at this point.  The number of people up until around six months ago who knew what the Electric Universe argued was certainly less than 5,000 people.

The BAUT Forum is supposed to be the bastion of conventional astrophysicists, and grad students appear to be paying *more* attention to the Electric Universe than conventional astrophysics.  If you are smart, you guys will see it as the canary in the coal mine.  And trust me, this is not a temporary spike.  Organizations like MSNBC can refuse to run a story on this situation, but that's apparently not going to stop it from growing quite rapidly.  I smell paradigm change, and it's going to be a very dramatic situation.  The allegations being made are startlingly different from what is currently accepted within the discipline, and the switchover will touch every single scientific field.  These grad students will surely be publishing papers over the next few years in support of the Plasma Universe, and this debate is going to go 100% nuclear.

Within that context, does it make sense to continue to ignore the claims?  No, it does not.  We should all attempt to understand the issues that will be debated, and the first step is to learn what these guys are saying.  There's no way around it if our goal is to honestly identify the truth.

What if there is nothing behind that galaxy, but water beetween ours and that?
Water also bends light.

Here's a thought.... If light bends around an object (with heavy gravitational pull), then perhaps light does escape black holes. Its just distorted.

Okay...really... throw away the copies of "what the bleep do we know!?" and start being rational.  Einstien wasn't happy with his theories, cause he hadn't completed his work on a unified theory.  Arp is as interesting as star trek fanfiction.  Just because somebody throws convention on its head does not mean that particular somebody is right.. I.E. Copernicus was not the only scientist with new ideas that died "alone and mad."  In fact it was probably due to the fact that there were a thousand other idiots throwing around inane ideas effectively crying wolf and drowing out any kind of truth.  Every theory has holes, including your precious Arp; the difference being is that hard science actually attempts to explain the holes rather than simply ignoring them.  The simple fact of the matter is that hard science is hard work and there isn't nor will there be in our or our great great grandchildrens lifetime, a unified theory.  Furthermore, I believe (but not sure) it was Newton who said, "If I see any farther, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants."  Science is built, not divined, even or especially, an engineer should be able to understand that.

Anyway...stick to Hawking, stick to Einstien, read the journals, and let the astrophysicists do the astrophysics.

Pure nonsense!
Twenty-five years ago, I figured out VERY EASILY how to "go faster than light", but, because I don't have a "whole string of college degrees", no one of the so-called "experts" will allow me to publish my info, it's like "How DARE you say something different from the "known" science!" Even though my info is rock-solid, WHY won't the "experts" accept it???? I challenge them to look at my info, with any reporters present, to publicly examine my info!!!! respond to me at: rho@hci.net
Thankyou!

As someone who studied physics and astrophysics many years ago, I have some sympathy with Chris because the vast majority of the public has no idea how many "simplifying" assumptions go into much of what is quoted as scientific gospel. It wasn't so long ago that one of those "simplifying" assumptions was that there was only one type of Cepheid variable star, but it turned out there wasn't and the size of the universe grew suddenly by a factor of two. Many of today's cosmological arguments are largely based on even weaker arguments about "standard" luminosity objects, and need to be taken with a grain or two of salt. Further, the electromagentic force is almost always dismissed as a cosmological actor, for dubious reasons. It would take very little net charge in all those supergiant black holes to equal all the dark matter's alleged contributions. For that matter, only a small neutrino rest mass would do the same thing.

We should always keep a firm distinction in mind between sciences where controlled experiments can be conducted and those where they can not. Controlled experimentation earned those sciences their reputations, and sadly the others are frittering it away.

I'm just glad to see people responding to the article. Differences of opinions always lead to further thought AND most thought processes if taken seriously lead to improved understanding.

I HAVE KIND OF A DUMB QUESTION.IF LIGHT HAS ANUFF MASS TO BE DISTORTED OR AFFECTED BY GRAVITY WOULD IT NOT ALSO HAVE ANUFF MASS TO BE SLOWED DOWN AFTER TRAVELING THE VASTNESS OF SPACE FOR MILLIONS OR BILLIONS OF YEARS?  WOULD'NT THAT AFFECT THE COMMON THEORIES OF HOW WE CALCULATE THE DISTANCE OF ALMOST EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE  

Is it possible that the antimatter that is produced by the ejecta of neutron starts and other mass being gobbled up and shot out by black holes are then amplified to produce more antimatter than the mass that was used to create it (could this be what is happening).  If so, is antimatter the so called "dark matter"? Multiply this by all the blackholes that produce this effect in the universe.  Would this add up to the misssing mass that the term dark matter was used to explain?  It has also been suggested that antimatter can coexist with matter, such as at the heart of the Milky way without destroying each other quickly.

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