what evidence is there that any objects are at distaances not related to the potential cosmological redshift?
Very well, David ... since you insist (and obviously are going to continue misrepresenting our past conversations), I'll address this issue again. But for the record, all of the following evidence has been posted to you previously. You just ignored it and dismissed it as "coincidence" or, as in your latest hand-waving, "sampling error". In any case, I suggest that wise readers will decide for themselves after reading the following material and links, keeping in mind that I'm only going to touch on the number of examples that Arp and others have actually offered as the basis for questioning whether redshift always equates to distance.
First, there is the case of galaxy NGC 7603 where 3 much smaller, relatively high redshift objects are seen strung along a low redshift plasma filament coming from a similarly low redshift galaxy. You can see this alignment in this image:
http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/research_with_Fred/illustrations/figure_1_b.jpg
Two astronomers, Martin López-Corredoira and Carlos M. Gutiérrez (note that neither of them is Halton Arp), wrote several peer reviewed papers on the above alignment. The first paper (
http://www.aanda.org/index.php?opti...es/aa/full/2002/30/aaea241/aaea241.right.html ) was published in 2002 and titled "Two Emission Line Objects with z>0.2 in the Optical Filament Apparently Connecting the Seyfert Galaxy NGC 7603 to Its Companion”. The second (
www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full/2004/26/aa0260/aa0260.right.html) was titled "The field surrounding NGC 7603: Cosmological or non-cosmological redshifts?" and published in 2004. The third (
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0509630.pdf ), published in 2005, is titled "Research on Candidates for non-cosmological redshifts". I will try to summarize their conclusions but I highly recommend readers visit these links and read the papers for themselves ... particularly the last two.
These astronomers have concluded, based on Hubble Telescope observations, that the three objects are small compact galaxies. Note that makes the Big Bang redshift problem larger than just an inconsistency in quasar data. The astronomers say the two objects along the filament are highly unusual dwarf HII galaxies whose light characteristics are themselves suggestive of a non-cosmological explanation for redshift. Both objects are EXACTLY centered on the filament but at opposite ends.
According to the references the papers cite, statistically there should be "one object like these per each square of 3-7 arcmin size (20 arcmin size for NGC 7603B); much larger than the area of the filament (~100 arcsec
2." Ultimately, the astronomers calculate the probability of the alignment of all three galaxies on the filament at about 3 x 10
-9. That is very, very unlikely. And, by the way, they go into great detail regarding how that probability is calculated in the second and third papers. And the third paper also looks at the (un)likelihood of some other unusual redshift alignment cases. For the sake of brevity, I'll not go into them here but be aware those examples exist. As well as many, many others.
In addition to the above, the astronomers note that the HII galaxy closest to NGC 7603 is "warped towards NGC 7603" and the other has a faint tail that "could indicate that the material in the filament interacts with the galaxies." The authors conclude in the first paper that
"everything points to the four objects being connected among themselves". In the second paper they conclude "an explanation in terms of cosmological redshifts (with or without gravitational lensing, with or without clusters in the line of sight) has a very low probability although it is not impossible." Please see the paper for exactly why they conclude this. In the third paper they conclude: "Summing up, observations challenge the standard model, which assumes that the redshift of all galaxies is due to the expansion of the Universe, and we must consider they are at least an open problem to be solved."
And finally, regarding this particular case, note that there has been no specific response offered by David or any other mainstream proponent to the contents of any of these papers. They've simply been ignored or dismissed out of hand, as David has been trying to do with his self-published, sampling error argument thread.
Now, what other evidence have I offered to support the assertion that redshift is not always related to distance ... evidence that David has specifically ignored? Well, the case of NGC 3628, a low redshift (Z = .0028) galaxy, comes to mind. In this case, numerous high redshift QSO's that are in the vicinity seem to be unusually aligned with certain features of that galaxy. A paper at
http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full/2002/33/aah3558/aah3558.right.html by Arp, Burbidge, Chu, Flesch, Patat and Rupprecht discusses these alignments.
The following image
http://www.eitgaastra.nl/pl/f54a.gif (or download it in smaller form here:
http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full/2002/33/aah3558/img5.gif )
shows the location of the galaxy features relative to the various QSO's. NGC 3628 has an active nucleus with HI plumes emerging in both directions on the minor axis sides. According to the above paper, there are three quasars (z = 1.94, 2.43 and 0.408) at the base of the east-north-east plume, coincident with the start of an optical jet. Two more quasars, with z = 2.06 and 1.46, align along what looks to be the opposite side major axis. Three more quasars lie in the southern plume along the minor axis with z = 0.995, 2.15 and 1.75. There is a candidate quasar called Wee 49 which is the object labeled A near the z = 1.75 quasar. It has a redshift of z = 1.70. Both of these lie along a thickening of the plume. According to the paper, Wee 49 lies right at the tip of the southern HI plume. The article concludes "these quasars are not only aligned with the plumes, but positioned along contour nodes. This is strongly indicative of physical association, and implies that these quasars and HI plumes have come out of NGC 3628 in the same physical process." There are also narrow x-ray filaments coming from the galaxy on the minor axis sides. The authors state that the location of the z = 2.15 quasar is at the very tip of one x-ray filament and that alone has a probability of 2 x 10
-4. The next quasar in toward the nucleus is at z = 0.995 and it is centered on the x-ray filament as well. Notice that at a slightly greater distance on the opposite minor axis side of the galaxy from the Z = 0.995 quasar is a quasar of z= 0.984. The authors note that "these redshifts are closely matched - a characteristic of many previous pairs of quasars across active galaxies - and demonstrate how unlikely it is that they are unassociated background objects."
Now consider the improbability of so many chance alignments in just the above case. So many quasars clustered around a particular galaxy rather than more uniformly distributed. Alignments with other quasars, with plumes, with optical jets, with x-ray filaments, with the minor axis, and with the major axis. The chance of this just happening by accident has to be very, very small. Yet, Big Bang proponents like David insist that all these alignments are just pure chance, even though Arp and others have provided dozens of similar examples where groups of quasars (and other objects) are aligned with the minor axis of low redshift galaxies or with some other prominent feature of those galaxies. David insists this is just sampling error (but note that he hasn't offered any peer reviewed work that looks at the actual statistics ... just a bunch of handwaving). He insists this despite the fact that numerous such examples have been identified to him previously.
For example, Arp and David Russell (notice all the researchers lining up to agree with Arp, folks?) looked at quasar clustering near a wide range of galaxies in the following peer reviewed paper:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v549n2/51780/51780.html . Among their conclusions is that "for the typical association we are dealing with a probability of around 10
-5. ... snip ... Of course some of these associations have probabilities which put them in the class of experimentum crucis, such as NGC 6217 and NGC 470/474. Here these have P < 10
-6 and P <= 2 × 10
-9." This paper also notes the fact that groups of quasars are often noticeably aligned with specific features of low redshift galaxies, such as the minor axis, the major axis, plumes and jets ... as in the case I described above. In particular, the paper states that "alignments of quasars along the minor axes of the Seyfert galaxies NGC 3516 and NGC 5985 could also be cited as having P < 10
-6 and P < 10
-8".
Even more interesting, it appears the redshift of quasars tends to decrease as one moves out from the core of the galaxies to which they seem to be associated. The Arp and Russel paper lists numerous examples of this and it's true in both the NGC 7603 and NGC 3628 examples I described above. Here's still another case ... six quasars aligned along the minor axis of NGC 3516 with redshifts decreasing as one moves away from the galaxy. Here is a link to a diagram of that case:
http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/astronomy_by_press_release/illustrations/figure_1.jpg
Yet, Big Bang proponents like David continue to insist that all these alignments are just a matter of pure chance (or now he's claiming sampling error). Time and time again, peer reviewed papers cite extremely low probabilities for these alignments, yet Big Bang cosmologists wave these concerns away as nothing but coincidence. They don't publish peer reviewed papers in response. Not once do they specifically address the data that is cited and specific probabilities that are calculated. They just ignore them. Wave them away with the words "coincidence" and "sampling error".
But that's not all the evidence I've offered David to support my thesis, either. That's not all the evidence that David has specifically ignored and now dismisses with his bogus sampling error claim. There is the curious alignment of groups of galaxies (as well as quasars), all at various redshifts and all along an important feature of what would appear to be the major galaxy in the group. Our own Local Group is an prime example of that (what a coincidence).
Here's a 1994 paper by Arp (
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...J...430...74A&db_key=AST&high=40f19ad6db11758) that shows an alignment between galaxies. It states that "the two nearest, best-studied groups of galaxies, the Local Group and the M81 group, are analyzed. It is shown that 22 out of 22 major companions have redshifts that are positive with respect to the dominant galaxy. The chance that this can be an accidental configuration of velocities is only
one in four million. Investigations of more distant groups, including clusters such as Virgo, show that the smaller galaxies characteristically have systematically positive redshifts with respect to the larger ones. No selection effects or contamination are capable of avoiding this result."
Here's an image of this Local Group alignment
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/images05/051104localgroup.jpg
from
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051104localgroup.htm where it is described thus: "The Local Group, of which our Milky Way is a member, stretches in a line along the minor axis of M31, the Andromeda galaxy, which is the dominant galaxy in the group. In the image above, the filled circles mark the locations of accepted members. Open circles and plus signs mark the locations of higher-redshift dwarf and spiral galaxies respectively. (Although in other clusters similar dwarfs and spirals are accepted as companions of the larger galaxies, these dwarfs and spirals are excluded because their systematically higher redshifts are too obvious.) Redshifts of several objects are printed beside their names. Long-exposure photographs of this area reveal a cloud of low-luminosity material extending along this line of galaxies and engulfing them. That the higher-redshift galaxies are not “background objects” is shown by their interaction with the cloud: The interacting pair of galaxies, NGC935/IC1801, have a semicircle of brighter material around them. NGC918 has a jet that ends in a bright region of the cloud. The high-redshift radio galaxy, 3C120, is most famous for its “faster-than-light” jet. Astronomers have measured the movements of knots of material in the jet. If the galaxy is located where the redshift-equals-distance theory dictates, the knots would have to be traveling six times the speed of light. But if 3C120 is a member of the Local Group, the knots would be traveling at only four percent of the speed of light. Not shown in the diagram are the line of quasars extending across M33 and the cluster of quasars close around 3C120. In addition, low surface brightness galaxies, with redshifts between .015 and .018, cluster around these two galaxies."
Here's another article,
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0510654, by different authors (not Arp) that seems to corroborate the existence of this alignment. It states, for instance, that "we find that the M31 satellites are asymmetrically distributed with respect to our line-of-sight to this object, so that the majority of its satellites are on its near side with respect to our line-of-sight. We quantify this result and find it to be significant at the ~3 sigma level. Until such time as a satisfactory explanation for this finding is presented, our results warn against treating the M31 subgroup as complete, unbiased and relaxed."
And so far, Big Bang proponents like David have just ignored these observations because they have no logical explanation for them. Their standard response seems to be that all unlikely alignments are coincidence (or perhaps now it's going to be "sampling error"
). The only sampling error I see taking place here is David selectively ignoring any data that disagrees with the mainstream theory and being unable to offer any peer reviewed work to support his claims.
David and his friends on this forum like to go on and on about dark matter being directly "observed" in the case of the Bullet Cluster ... even though there are a host of gnomes and assumption based calculations implicit in that so-called observation. Yet, the 2003 discovery of a high redshift (z = 2.11) quasar that is visually (in ordinary light) between us and the dense core of a low redshift (z = 0.022) galaxy, NGC 7319, is just dismissed out of hand. The galaxy and the quasar in question are shown in the following linked image:
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/graphics/images/2004/spiralgalaxy.new.gif
Not only is the density of matter in that region of the galaxy likely to prevent a quasar from shining through,
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0409215 , a paper that does include Arp amongst its authors, states that "from the optical spectra of the QSO and interstellar gas of NGC 7319 at z = .022 we show that it is very likely that the QSO is interacting with the interstellar gas." That's impossible if the quasar is 93 times farther than the galaxy, as required by the mainstream's redshift/distance relationship. And in closeups of the galaxy (
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/NGC7319quasar2.jpg ) even a lay-person can see there is a short V shaped plasma filament (jet) linking the core of the galaxy to that quasar.
So it seems to me rather tenuous for you to dismiss evidence such as this as "sampling error", David. Perhaps, for once, you can provide a peer reviewed paper that directly confronts the data (and mind you, what I've presented here isn't the only data) that Arp and many others have presented. The fact that you don't is quite telling. In fact, do a Google search with the keywords "Halton Arp" and "sampling error", folks, and you get a total of 8 hits ... not one of which is a peer reviewed paper. Not one of which is a scientific paper at all. So why don't you try to get yours published David ... then you can be the first and become as famous as Halton Arp, who you disparage.
