Seeing
Red:Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science
(paperback, 306 pages plus 8 pages of colour plates; ISBN 0-9683689-0-5)
Seeing
Red:
Redshifts,
Cosmology and Academic Science
(paperback, 306 pages plus 8 pages of colour plates; ISBN 0-9683689-0-5)
Halton
Arp
Arp's
new book is a frontal assault on the standard model of the universe, replete
with anecdotes and illustrations, including 8 pages of colour plates.
Excerpts
from the Author’s preface
"I believe the observational evidence has become
overwhelming, and the Big Bang has in reality been toppled. There is now a need
to communicate the new observations, the connections between objects and the new
insights into the workings of the universe—all the primary obligations of
academic science, which has generally tried to suppress or ignore such dissident
information."
"The present book is sure to outrage many academic
scientists. Many of my professional friends will be greatly pained. Why then do
I write it? First, everyone has to tell the truth as they see it, especially
about important things. The fact that the majority of professionals are
intolerant of even opinions which are discordant makes change a necessity. Those
friends of mine who also struggle to get the mainstream of astronomy back on
track mostly feel that presenting evidence and championing new theories is
sufficient to cause change, and that it is improper to criticize an enterprise
to which they belong and value highly. I disagree, in that I think if we do not
understand why science is failing to self-correct, it will not be possible to
fix it."
"This, then, is the crisis for the reasonable
members of the profession. With so many alternative, contradictory theories,
many of them fitting the evidence very badly, abandoning the accepted theory is
a frightening step into chaos. At this point, I believe we must look for
salvation from the non-specialists, amateurs and interdisciplinary
thinkers—those who form judgments on the general thrust of the evidence, those
who are skeptical about any explanation, particularly official ones, and above
all are tolerant of other people’s theories."
"The only hope I see is for the more ethical
professionals and the more attentive, open-minded non professionals to combine
their efforts to form a more democratic science with better judgment, and slowly
transform the subject into an enlightened, more useful activity of society. This
is the deeper reason I wrote this book and, although it will cause distress, I
believe a painfully honest debate is the only exercise capable of galvanizing
meaningful change."
Preface
Introduction
Why are Redshifts the Key to Extragalactic Astronomy?
Chapter 1
X-Ray Observations Confirm Intrinsic Redshifts
Chapter 2
Seyfert Galaxies as Quasar Factories
Chapter 3
Excess Redshifts all the Way Down
Chapter 4
Intrinsic Redshifts in Stars!
Chapter 5
The Local Supercluster
Chapter 6
Clusters of Galaxies
Chapter 7
Gravitational Lenses
Chapter 8
Quantization of Redshifts
Chapter 9
Cosmology
Chapter 10
Academia
Epilogue
Glossary
List of Plates
Index
Halton Arp graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1949 and
earned a Ph.D. from Caltech in 1953 (also cum laude). His first postdoctoral
position was as an assistant to Edwin Hubble. He worked as a staff astronomer at
Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar for 29 years before moving to Max-Planck-Institute
for Astrophysics in Munich. Arp's observations of quasars and galaxies are
world-renowned. He is the author of the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (1963: a
collectors' item), Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies (1987), as well as
numerous articles in scholarly journals. He has been awarded the Helen B. Warner
Prize of the American Astronomical Society and the Newcomb Cleveland award of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and served as president
of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific from 1980 to 1983. In 1984, he
received the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award.