From: newberry@newton.as.arizona.edu (Mike Newberry)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: B-O Effect (was Re: Proof of quasar non-locality?)
Date: 1 Sep 92 20:25:07 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

In article <Bttp7n.1C1@well.sf.ca.us> metares@well.sf.ca.us (Tom Van Flandern) writes:
>
>newberry@newton.as.arizona.edu (Mike Newberry) writes:
>
>> Here's my 2 dollars' worth:
>>
>> There is absolutely NO way that the spectrum of a Butcher-Oemler "blue"
>> galaxy can be a single star or a small group of stars.  ...  [various
>> lengthy arguments to the effect that spectra resolve any ambiguity left by
>> colors alone about the B-O objects being galaxies, as opposed to clumps of
>> supermassive stars.]
>
>     Mike, I'm sorry you are jumping in so late (I'm just leaving on two
>weeks of foreign travel), as I would like to have discussed your points in
>depth.
>
>     Since that won't happen at least until I return in mid-September,
>perhaps you could in the meantime enrich your contribution above the 2 dollar
>level, and provide some details to supplement your simple, declarative
>sentences.
>
>     One of the points of this discussion is that almost any observation can
>be interpreted with almost any model by patching it in an "ex post facto"
>fashion.  It is then instructive to compare the quality of the various
>interpretations using Occam's Razor.  You have not afforded us the
>opportunity to interpret your data with an alternative model to make such
>comparisons, because you have been so vague about what the actual data are.
>
>     For B-O objects there surely can't be vast numbers of spectral lines,
>since most are so faint.  Please describe a *typical* (not an exemplary)
>case.  How many lines are involved in this spectral comparison, which ones,
>wide/narrow, emission/absorption, variability, discordant redshifts, etc.  In
>other words, what is the data essential to interpreting it with a completely
>different model, including that which doesn't fit quite so well in the
>standard model.  -|Tom|-
>
>-- 
>Tom Van Flandern / Washington, DC / metares@well.sf.ca.us
>Meta Research was founded to foster research into ideas not otherwise
>supported because they conflict with mainstream theories in Astronomy.

The "claims" I made are backed by innumerable papers in the Astrophysical
Journal, Astronomical Journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Monthly
Notices, Pub. of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, various conference
proceedings and other such refereed publications. To substantiate my claims 
would require at least a few graduate courses worth of astronomy. To you,
as a developer of a theory, falls the burden of learning what is already
known from observation.  You can then make interpretations and predictions
in light of your particular theory as well as other theories. It's not my
job to teach you the fundamentals of the observations and, in detail, how
your theory is affected by them--doing this for each type of observation 
or each particular object would require us all to reinvent the entire wheel
for every case, every time, and there's just no point in that.  It wastes
time as well as network bandwidth.  It is *your* responsibility to become
apprised of the body of existing knowledge in order to develop your
theory. I hope I do not sound harsh in this reply, but the statements I
made in the posting you noted are pretty self evident to those who know
the field.

Mike Newberry
newberry@astro.as.arizona.edu