From: jmpierce@whale.st.usm.edu (Jimmy Malcolm Pierce)
Subject: Re:  Red Shift ( was  Re: Science and god:  Are they incompatible? )
Organization: University of Southern Mississippi
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 02:23:39 GMT

[ stuff deleted for bandwidth... ]

{ much puzzles me, maybe Jon can convince me about this red shift stuff... }

  "Hmm.. Tsk. :-) I was always told that one counter example explodes
a statistical argument..." DJ. :-)  

Jon writes:
>Four meter telescope time is typically oversubscribed by a factor of 3 to 4.

     " I have seen several articles in Astronomy and Sky And Telescope
  that mention both sides of this controversy. Sometimes i get the 
  impression that one or two of these articles did 'go after' one side
  or the other. I did get the impression that he wasn't allowed, or was
  made fun of, without any real test of what he was trying to prove.
  Of course, I could have misinterpreted. " 
   { But I have seen scientists in full bellow over something... }
 
>Yes, a disproof of Hubble's law would be a major paradigm shift. There
>is a very strong conservatism among scientists about their paradigms.
>This is a good thing. If one were to reject very well founded paradigms

    "I think one of the pictures I have seen was taken in hydrogen light
  or something like that. It was false colour, but I'm uncertain what
  wavelength the photograph was taken in. It did show a link from
  the galaxy and the quasar. Same phase shift or colour or something,
  I would have to look it up."

>This, by the way, is Arp's case. He just can't believe that something
>as energetic as quasars can exist -- so they must be nearby and thus
>not so energetic.

     "Hmm. I got the impression from his book that he feels that only
_some_ quasars are connected to a galaxy, not all of them. I don't
think he believes that all quasars are nearby, just some of them."

>Most of these ideas about how science works are discussed in the book,
>_The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ by Thomas Kuhn. It is one of
>the classic books on the philosophy of science, and I would recommend
>it to anyone interested in how science does and how it should work.
>
>Hmmm, could I recommend some popular-level books on Astronomy and Cosmology
>that _are_ well thought of by most astronomers?
>
>The First Three Minutes -- Steven Weinburg
>The Big Bang -- Joe Silk
>Galaxies -- Timothy Ferris
>A Brief History of Time -- Stephen Hawking
>The Milky Way -- Bart Bok and Priscilla Bok
>Cosmos -- Carl Sagan
>The Physical Universe -- Frank Shu (an undergrad textbook, but very readable.)

   I have read some of these. I haven't read any 'scientific level' papers,
 but I do know a fair amount about astronomy, but as my leaky mind shows,
 I don't always remember details of a book I read years ago.
 { I consider several of these to be 'popular' books. }

>This is a bit dated, but here is a 1973 direct comparison of Arp and
>the standard picture:
>Redshift Controversy -- George B. Field, H. Arp, and John N. Bahcall.

     "Hmm. I think this is the one I was refering to, I have a copy of it." 

   "Mike, I'll buy Jon's next five drinks,"DJ.

-- 
 Jim Pierce Bach. of Sci. in Applied Computer Science USM - Gulf Park Campus 
             jmpierce@whale.st.usm.edu  Disclaimer: Standard.
Newsgroups: alt.callahans