Arp objects, QSOs, Statistics

Hopefull gudielines for this thread.

1. Please try to stay on topic, if you bring in material it should be directly related to the topic at hand. ( I know I am great derailer!)
2. Please do not spam the thread with multiple links that are unrelated to the topic, discussions of Dark Matter, Electric Universe, Plasma Cosmology or attacks on the same should be limited and relevamt to the thread.
3. Please do not use ad homs, character slurs or accuse people of reading comprehension problems, or attack spelling and grammar...

I would prefer to keep this thread open and unmoderated, I will request splits as needed. I also encourage people to notify mods of any posts that are rude or disruptive.

Thanks!

Dependent vs. independent variables. Independent variables are those that are manipulated whereas dependent variables are only measured or registered. This distinction appears terminologically confusing to many because, as some students say, "all variables depend on something." However, once you get used to this distinction, it becomes indispensable. The terms dependent and independent variable apply mostly to experimental research where some variables are manipulated, and in this sense they are "independent" from the initial reaction patterns, features, intentions, etc. of the subjects. Some other variables are expected to be "dependent" on the manipulation or experimental conditions. That is to say, they depend on "what the subject will do" in response. Somewhat contrary to the nature of this distinction, these terms are also used in studies where we do not literally manipulate independent variables, but only assign subjects to "experimental groups" based on some pre-existing properties of the subjects. For example, if in an experiment, males are compared with females regarding their white cell count (WCC), Gender could be called the independent variable and WCC the dependent variable.

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Why stronger relations between variables are more significant. Assuming that there is no relation between the respective variables in the population, the most likely outcome would be also finding no relation between those variables in the research sample. Thus, the stronger the relation found in the sample, the less likely it is that there is no corresponding relation in the population. As you see, the magnitude and significance of a relation appear to be closely related, and we could calculate the significance from the magnitude and vice-versa; however, this is true only if the sample size is kept constant, because the relation of a given strength could be either highly significant or not significant at all, depending on the sample size (see the next paragraph).

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Why significance of a relation between variables depends on the size of the sample. If there are very few observations, then there are also respectively few possible combinations of the values of the variables, and thus the probability of obtaining by chance a combination of those values indicative of a strong relation is relatively high. Consider the following illustration. If we are interested in two variables (Gender: male/female and WCC: high/low) and there are only four subjects in our sample (two males and two females), then the probability that we will find, purely by chance, a 100% relation between the two variables can be as high as one-eighth. Specifically, there is a one-in-eight chance that both males will have a high WCC and both females a low WCC, or vice versa. Now consider the probability of obtaining such a perfect match by chance if our sample consisted of 100 subjects; the probability of obtaining such an outcome by chance would be practically zero. Let's look at a more general example. Imagine a theoretical population in which the average value of WCC in males and females is exactly the same. Needless to say, if we start replicating a simple experiment by drawing pairs of samples (of males and females) of a particular size from this population and calculating the difference between the average WCC in each pair of samples, most of the experiments will yield results close to 0. However, from time to time, a pair of samples will be drawn where the difference between males and females will be quite different from 0. How often will it happen? The smaller the sample size in each experiment, the more likely it is that we will obtain such erroneous results, which in this case would be results indicative of the existence of a relation between gender and WCC obtained from a population in which such a relation does not exist.

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What is "statistical significance" (p-value). The statistical significance of a result is the probability that the observed relationship (e.g., between variables) or a difference (e.g., between means) in a sample occurred by pure chance ("luck of the draw"), and that in the population from which the sample was drawn, no such relationship or differences exist. Using less technical terms, one could say that the statistical significance of a result tells us something about the degree to which the result is "true" (in the sense of being "representative of the population"). More technically, the value of the p-value represents a decreasing index of the reliability of a result (see Brownlee, 1960). The higher the p-value, the less we can believe that the observed relation between variables in the sample is a reliable indicator of the relation between the respective variables in the population. Specifically, the p-value represents the probability of error that is involved in accepting our observed result as valid, that is, as "representative of the population." For example, a p-value of .05 (i.e.,1/20) indicates that there is a 5% probability that the relation between the variables found in our sample is a "fluke." In other words, assuming that in the population there was no relation between those variables whatsoever, and we were repeating experiments like ours one after another, we could expect that approximately in every 20 replications of the experiment there would be one in which the relation between the variables in question would be equal or stronger than in ours. (Note that this is not the same as saying that, given that there IS a relationship between the variables, we can expect to replicate the results 5% of the time or 95% of the time; when there is a relationship between the variables in the population, the probability of replicating the study and finding that relationship is related to the statistical power of the design. See also, Power Analysis. In many areas of research, the p-value of .05 is customarily treated as a "border-line acceptable" error level.

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Sampling errors (the focus of this presentation) occur when estimates are derived from a sample rather than a census of the population. The sample used for a particular survey is only one of a large number of possible samples of the same size and design that could have been selected. Even if the same questionnaire and instructions were used, the estimates from each sample would differ from the others. This difference, termed sampling error, occurs by chance, and its variability is measured by the standard error associated with a particular survey.

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There has been much fruitless discussion of what might appear a straightforward statistical problem - are there or are there not excess QSOs in the directions of bright galaxies? The difficulties lie in the fact that QSO searches are still quite inhomogeneous over the sky, and thus a search may be deep enough to tell us something but cover too little solid angle, or cover the whole sky with too few QSOs. For example, there are four close galaxy-QSO pairs in the 3C catalog (Burbidge, Burbidge, Solomon, and Strittmatter 1971 ApJ 170, 233). These are pretty famous pairs now - namely NGC 3067/3C 232, NGC 4651/3C 275.1, NGC 4138/3C 268.4, and NGC 5832/3C 309.1. But with only about 100 quasars over half the sky, the statistics were too sparse to do more. Perhaps large-scale automated surveys will be able to resolve this (using not only multicolor optical selection, but identifications of ROSAT survey sources). The methodology Arp has frequently adopted doesn't help - starting from a galaxy and searching outward until a quasar shows up, then if it's "interestingly" close keep on going outward. This is guaranteed to produce an apparent excess, on the "seek and ye shall find" principle. A final problem with a statistical analysis is that it is not always clear what it is whose likelihood we want to assess. Some papers talk about QSO-galaxy pairs, some about QSO pairs with discordant redshift, lines of quasars... Statistics after the fact has a bad reputation. As if to make things worse, we do expect an excess number of quasars in the directions of galaxies at some redshift ranges from gravitational lensing, as long as the QSO counts rise rapidly with magnitude, even in a boringly conventional picture.

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It is reported here that quasars also tend to be preferentially aligned along the minor axes of active disk galaxies.

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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.

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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/re...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?optio...241.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 (http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/ful...260.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 arcsec2." 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/ful...558.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/ful...h3558/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...780/51780.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/as...s/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/np...0f19ad6db11758) 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/20...localgroup.jpg

from http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/20...localgroup.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/im...galaxy.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.

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There are 4
objects with very different redshifts apparently connected by a filament associated with the lower redshift galaxy. This system is at present the most spectacular case that we know among the candidates for anomalous redshift.
Future studies of this system are clearly warranted.

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5.2.1. QSOs statistics
In §3.2, we concluded that there are three objects that follow eq. (1) within a radius
R = 1.5 arcminutes from the center of NGC 7603 (the distance to object #36). One of
these (object #23) is not a QSO (see §4). The other two were too faint to be observed
spectroscopically with the available telescope and time (perhaps a larger telescope would
be needed). Therefore, we have at most two QSOs in the field of NGC 7603 [indeed, some
extra QSOs are possible, but with a low probability because the multicolour criterion
covers 80-90% of all QSOs (see §3.2)] with mbj = 22.6, 23.6 (respectively for objects #19
and #36; derived from Sloan filters information as in §4.1).
The probability for such a event is (assuming roughly that pi, the probability for the
detection of each QSO, follows epi  1):
PQ 
(R2)2NQSO(mbj < 22.6)NQSO(mbj < 23.6)
2!
. (7)
According to the QSO counts from eq. (A.3), the probability is PQ  0.029, so one might
expect these number of background QSOs to occur by chance (2.2- at most, if both
candidates are confirmed as QSOs).
5.2.2. Probability of NGC 7603 and its 3 companions being a chance projection
effect
From Figs. 1 of Paper I; and Fig. 4 or 6 of this paper, it seems extremely improbable
that four objects at different distances can show a chance projection in the way these
figures reveal. Statistics have been calculated in several ways for some time concerning
the anomalous redshift problem (e.g., Arp 1981, 1999a; Burbidge et al. 1997), in order
to assess the probabilities of peculiar configurations. However, many other authors (e.g.,
Noerdlinger 1975; Sluse et al. 2003) have suspected that many of these calculations are
L´opez-Corredoira & Guti´errez: NGC 7603 17
unappropriate. Some authors also say that one should not carry out a calculation of the
probability (“a posteriori probability”) for an a priori known configuration of objects (for
instance, that they are aligned, or that they form a certain geometrical figure) because all
possible configurations are peculiar and unique. For example, if the Orion constellation
is observed and we want to calculate the probability of their stars to be projected in
that exact configuration, we will find that the probability is nil (it trends to zero as
the allowed error in the positions of the stars with respect the given configuration goes
to zero), but the calculation of this probability is worthless because we have selected
a particular configuration which has been observed a priori. Therefore, the statistics to
be carried out should not concern the geometrical figure drawn by the sources, unless
that geometrical configuration be representative of a physical process in an alternative
theory (for instance, aligned sources could be representative of the ejection of sources
by a parent source). In this last sense, we think that many of the statistics already
published are worthwile and indicate the reality of some statistical anomaly. The real
question is to look for peculiarities associated with peculiar physical representations, not
just peculiarities in the sense of being unique.
For our case, we will use a simple fact: the connection of four objects throughout a
filament. This aspect represents a physical peculiarity, not because of their uniqueness
but because they could be better represented by an alternative theory claiming that the
four galaxies are at the same distance, three of them ejected with the filament by the
parent galaxy NGC 7603. We are not going to determine the probabilities of forming
triangles or any shape observed a priori. The peculiarity that we want to analyse is not
comparable with the previous example of Orion because we have in mind a physical
representation rather than the given peculiar distribution of sources. The difference from
the Orion problem is that the peculiarity of Orion is not associated with any particular
physical representation to be explained by an alternative theory. The question is as
follows: what is the probability, P, of the apparent fact arising from a random projection
of sources with different distances? Or, in other words, what is the probability, P, that
the standard theory can explain the observed facts without aiming alternative scenarios?
This probability is as follows: NGC 7603 has a filament of area A. The probability of
having three further independent sources, with the corresponding magnitudes of the
objects 1-3, projected on that filament is (assuming that the individual probabilities for
each event pi follow epi  1):
P=
A3N1(m  m1)N2(m  m2)N3(m  m3)
3!
, (8)
where Ni is the source density on the sky for the type of sources of object i with apparent
magnitude less than mi (magnitudes corrected for Galactic+filament extinction, in order
to be comparable with the galaxy counts from appendix A), for the filter in which we
know the magnitude of the source. We will use, for instance, filter B, but the statistics
18 L´opez-Corredoira & Guti´errez: NGC 7603
would give similar results for any filter. Some authors (e.g., Sluse et al. 2003, hypotheses
H2-H3) use in the calculation of the probabilities the limiting magnitude of the survey
instead of the magnitude of the object, which gives a higher probability. However, this
is not totally correct because, randomly, one would expect most of the detected objects
to be close to the limiting magnitude. If this method is followed, the magnitude of the
object and the limiting magnitude of the survey are very close and there are no major
differences in the calculation; but, in the case the magnitude of the object being much
brighter than the limiting magnitude one should multiply P by a factor that characterizes
the probability this object being much brighter than the limiting magnitude (the brighter
it is, the lower the probability), and this is equivalent to use the magnitude of the object.
So we think that Sluse et al. (2003) hypotheses H2-H3 are inappropriate.
The area of the filament is approximately 35 arcsec in length multiplied by 4 arcsec
in width (the area plotted in Fig. 6):
A  35” × 4” = 140 arcsec2 = 1.1 × 10−5 deg2. (9)
We are not going to use other peculiarities of the system like the fact that objects
#1 and #2 are positioned where the filament contacts NGC 7603B and NGC 7603
respectively. Neither, are we going to use the fact that two of the three galaxies are HIIgalaxies;
we pay no attention to galaxy type. Neither, are we going to use the distribution
of redshifts (from major to minor). If we took these facts into accounts, the probability
P would be somewhat lower.
NGC 7603B is a galaxy with mB,1 = 16.6 (Sharp 1986, corrected only for Galactic
extinction; it would be less if the foreground filament produced any extinction in the
galaxy). And the magnitudes corrected for extinction of the two HII-galaxies are: mB,2 =
21.1 ± 1.1 and mB,3 = 22.1 ± 1.1. With all these numbers, and the counts given by eq.
(A.2), the deduced probability is
log P = −8.6 ± 0.8. (10)
The error is large, due to the uncertainty of 1.2 mag in the objects #1 and #2, but the
order of magnitude does not change too much. This means that we have a probability of
a few times 10−9 of finding three galaxies of any type by chance with different distances
projected on a filament (an arm or another structure) with an area of 140 arcsecond2 of an
arbitrary galaxy with respective apparent magnitude (corrected for extinction) less than
or equal 16.6, 21.1, 22.1 respectively, and somewhat higher if the magnitudes are up to 1.2
fainter in the last two objects. If there were no filament extinction at all, the value of log P
would be -7.1. There are certain facts that could make the probabilities calculated above
larger. For instance, the density of any of the objects would be significantly larger than
we have assumed, if the distribution of any of these sources were clustered in some specific
regions, or if there were bias selection effects. There is not justification for a conspiracy in
L´opez-Corredoira & Guti´errez: NGC 7603 19
which our line of sight crosses three clusters of galaxies at different redshifts (z = 0.056,
z = 0.245 and z = 0.394). However, maybe at least one of the objects is in a cluster
(for instance the object at z = 0.245 since we have found another object with z = 0.246
not very far away). In any case, the increase in the probability due to the increase of
the density in lines of sight with clusters is compensated with the additional factor to
be multiplied by the present amount P to take into account the probability of finding
clusters in the line of sight. On average, in all the arbitrary lines of sight on the sky,
the probability will be given anyway by the above value of P (see further discussion in
§5.3.1). With regard bias selection effects, there are no such biases, because we have used
complete galaxy counts from complete surveys up to a given magnitude (appendix A).

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Dancing David said:

2. An argument along the lines of "we got ten heads in a row when we flipped a coin" and there is a 0.00048828125 or a 1 in 2,048 chance of that happening.

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Dancing David said:

2. An argument along the lines of "we got ten heads in a row when we flipped a coin" and there is a 0.00048828125 or a 1 in 2,048 chance of that happening.

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PixyMisa said:

Um. Was there a question?

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Dancing David said:

http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/re...figure_1_b.jpg

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Dancing David said:

Just so you know, when i copied them , it was a block copy and paste.

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Dancing David said:

test test

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Arp hasn't claimed to be able to tell you the real distance to every object in the universe, RC. Only the mainstream has made that claim. Arp just maintains that some objects which you claim to know the distance to are not at those distances based on a wide range of observations and calculations of probabilities ... which you and David have specifically ignored or dismissed with nothing more than handwaving. And his theory (actually Narlikar's and Hoyle's) provides the theoretical basis for explaining why redshift of these objects might not correspond to distance ... but rather to the time since they were first created.

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Really? Tell us how dark matter explains that quasar that appears to be in front of a galaxy (NGC 7319). Tell us how dark matter explains the highly unlikely association of high and low redshift objects along that filament coming from NGC 7603. Tell us how dark matter explains the unlikely association of high and low redshift objects with respect to NGC 3628 and its features. Tell us how dark matter explains similar unlikely associations around GC 6217, NGC 470/474, NGC 3516, NGC 5985. Tell us how dark matter explains why in each of the cases the redshift of the high redshift objects near the low redshift object decreases as one moves away from the low redshift object. Tell us how dark matter explains the positional alignment of the various objects in the Local Group with respect to the major object in the group, M31? What's dark matter got to do with any of them?

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Dancing David said:

- to say that a QSO has x probability of being in y area of the sky and that there is z chance that 4 objects would appear in y has intuitive appeal. It is not however a good use of population statistics. That would be making an argument that the members of the population would be evenly distributed through out the region, that they were spaced out on a regular basis.
Now assuming that this would be true, the stars that we could see would be allocated to the sky in a uniform sphere, if there was a ratio of x/y then for each section of y there would be x stars. So they would be distributed at the same regular intervals across the sky. So we would not have structure like constellation and other visible structures, so while you might determine a sample density per unit, it would be an error to construe the likelihood of a particular probability of a certain arrangement from the average population density.
Another analogy (and these are always full with peril) would be to look at the average populations density of human being on the landscape, these statistics are very common. But if you then found a city you could argue the low probability of the city occurring, if you assumed that all the human being were evenly spaced out, say that our city is a kilometer square and that the density if (.1 person/sq. km.) so if we had 10 people in our city you could falsely say that there was a (.1)^10 chance of this happening.

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Dancing David said:

- to say that a QSO has x probability of being in y area of the sky and that there is z chance that 4 objects would appear in y has intuitive appeal. It is not however a good use of population statistics. That would be making an argument that the members of the population would be evenly distributed through out the region, that they were spaced out on a regular basis.
Now assuming that this would be true, the stars that we could see would be allocated to the sky in a uniform sphere, if there was a ratio of x/y then for each section of y there would be x stars. So they would be distributed at the same regular intervals across the sky. So we would not have structure like constellation and other visible structures, so while you might determine a sample density per unit, it would be an error to construe the likelihood of a particular probability of a certain arrangement from the average population density.
Another analogy (and these are always full with peril) would be to look at the average populations density of human being on the landscape, these statistics are very common. But if you then found a city you could argue the low probability of the city occurring, if you assumed that all the human being were evenly spaced out, say that our city is a kilometer square and that the density if (.1 person/sq. km.) so if we had 10 people in our city you could falsely say that there was a (.1)^10 chance of this happening.

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Dancing David said:

That is sound population statistics, except that you also have to control for the lensing by massive bodies and how that will magnify distant objects.

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Wangler said:

Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on the 2dF survey:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2dF_Galaxy_Redshift_Survey

Apparently, it covered 1500 square degrees, and includes spectra of 232,155 galaxies, but only 125 QSOs!

Apparently finding any number of QSOs around a bright galaxy is a relative long shot!

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Dancing David said:

I believe the question was, what evidence is there for anamolies in the theory of cosmological redshift?

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