Dr. Bryan G. Wallace
FARCE OF PHYSICS
Chapter 2
Pathological Physics
There is a very interesting article published in the October
1989 issue of Physics Today.[86] The article is titled
"PATHOLOGICAL SCIENCE" and the abstract reads:
Certain symptoms seen in studies of 'N rays' and other elusive
phenomena characterize 'the science of things that aren't so.'
The introduction to the article starts:
Irving Langmuir spent many productive years pursuing Nobel-
caliber research (see the photo on the opposite page). Over
the years, he also explored the subject of what he called
"pathological science." Although he never published his
investigations in this area, on 18 December 1953 at General
Electric's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, he gave a colloquium
on the subject that will long be remembered by those in his
audience. This talk was a colorful account of a particular
kind of pitfall into which scientists may stumble.
Langmuir begins his presentation with:
The thing started in this way. On 23 April 1929, Professor
Bergen Davis from Columbia University came up and gave a
colloquium in this Laboratory, in the old building, and it was
very interesting....
Langmuir then gives the details of the Davis and Barnes
controversial experiment that produced a beam of alpha rays from
polonium in a vacuum tube with a hot cathode electron emitter and
a microscope for counting alpha induced scintillations on a zinc
sulfide screen. Then Langmuir described the results of a visit
he and a colleague, C. W. Hewlett, made to Davis's laboratory at
Columbia University. With regard to the experiment Langmuir
states:
And then I played a dirty trick. I wrote out on a card of
paper ten different sequences of V and 0. I meant to put on a
certain voltage and then take it off again. Later I realized
that [trick wouldn't quite work] because when Hull took off the
voltage, he sat back in his chairÄÄthere was nothing to
regulate at zero so he didn't. Well, of course, Barnes saw him
whenever he sat back in his chair. Although the light wasn't
very bright, he could see whether [Hull] was sitting back in
his chair or not, so he knew the voltage wasn't on, and the
result was that he got a corresponding result. So later I
whispered, "Don't let him know that you're not reading," and I
asked him to change the voltage from 325 down to 320 so he'd
have something to regulate. I said, "Regulate it just as
carefully as if you were sitting on a peak." So he played the
part from that time on, and from that time on Barnes's readings
had nothing whatever to do with the voltages that were applied.
Whether the voltage was at one value or another didn't make the
slightest difference. After that he took 12 readings, of which
about half were right and the other half were wrong, which was
about what you would expect out of two sets of values.
I said: "You're through. You're not measuring anything at
all. You never have measured anything at all."
"Well," he said, "the tube was gassy. The temperature has
changed and therefore the nickel plates must have deformed
themselves so that the electrodes are no longer lined up
properly."
"Well," I said, "isn't this the tube in which Davis said he
got the same results when the filament was turned off
completely?"
"Oh, yes," he said, "but we always made blanks to check
ourselves, with and without the voltage on."
He immediatelyÄÄwithout giving any thought to itÄÄhe
immediately had an excuse. He had a reason for not paying any
attention to any wrong results. It just was built into him.
He just had worked that way all along and always would. There
is no question but [that] he is honest: He believed these
things, absolutely....
At the end of that section, Langmuir states:
To me, [it's] extremely interesting that men, perfectly
honest, enthusiastic over their work, can so completely fool
themselves. Now what was it about that work that made it so
easy for them to do that? Well, I began thinking of other
things. I had seen R. W. Wood and told him about this
phenomenon because he's a good experimenter and doesn't make
such mistakes himself very oftenÄÄif at all. [Wood was a
physicist from Johns Hopkins University.] And he told me about
the N rays that he had an experience with back in 1904. So I
looked up the data on N rays.[87]
Then Langmuir gave a detailed account of N rays, and how they
were discovered in 1903 by a respected French physicist, Ren‚-
Prosper Blondlot, at the University of Nancy. The N-rays were
supposed to be generated by a hot wire inside an iron tube that
has an 1/8 inch aluminum window in it, and the rays are detected
by a calcium sulfide screen which gave out a very faint glow in a
dark room. One of the experiments involved a large prism of
aluminum with a 60 degree angle. Wood visited Blondlot's lab and
Langmuir recounts the following trick Wood played on Blondlot:
Well, Wood asked him to repeat some of these measurements,
which he was only too glad to do. But in the meantime, the
room, being very dark, R. W. Wood put the prism in his pocket
and the results checked perfectly with what [Blondlot] had
before. Well, Wood rather cruelly published that.[88] And
that was the end of Blondlot.
Langmuir next deals with the 1923 mitogenetic ray experiments of
Prof. Alexander Gurwitsch at the First State University of
Moscow.[89] After the mitogenetic ray section, Langmuir
presents the following section, which is the heart of his
article:
Symptoms of sick science
The Davis-Barnes experiment and the N rays and the mitogenetic
rays all have things in common. These are cases where there is
no dishonesty involved but where people are tricked into false
results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can
do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective
effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions. These are
examples of pathological science. These are things that
attracted a great deal of attention. Usually hundreds of
papers have been published on them. Sometimes they have lasted
for 15 or 20 years and then gradually have died away. Now here
are the characteristic rules [see the box above]:
> The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a
causative agent of barely detectable intensity. For example,
you might think that if one onion root would affect another due
to ultraviolet light then by putting on an ultraviolet source
of light you could get it to work better. Oh no! Oh no! It had
to be just the amount of intensity that's given off by an onion
root. Ten onion roots wouldn't do any better than one and it
didn't make any difference about the distance of the source.
It didn't follow any inverse square law or anything as simple
as that. And so on. In other words, the effect is independent
of the intensity of the cause. That was true in the
mitogenetic rays and it was true in the N rays. Ten bricks
didn't have any more effect than one. It had to be of low
intensity. We know why it had to be of low intensity: so that
you could fool yourself so easily. Otherwise, it wouldn't
work. Davis-Barnes worked just as well when the filament was
turned off. They counted scintillations.
> Another characteristic thing about them all is that these
observations are near the threshold of visibility of the eyes.
Any other sense, I suppose, would work as well. Or many
measurements are necessaryÄÄmany measurementsÄÄbecause of the
very low statistical significance of the results. With the
mitogenetic rays particularly, [people] started out by seeing
something that was bent. Later on, they would take a hundred
onion roots and expose them to something, and they would get
the average position of all of them to see whether the average
had been affected a little bit... Statistical measurements of
a very small...were thought to be significant if you took large
numbers. Now the trouble with that is this. [Most people have
a habit, when taking] measurements of low significance, [of
finding] a means of rejecting data. They are right at the
threshold value and there are many reasons why [they] can
discard data. Davis and Barnes were doing that right along.
If things were doubtful at all, why, they would discard them or
not discard them depending on whether or not they fit the
theory. They didn't know that, but that's the way it worked
out.
> There are claims of great accuracy. Barnes was going to get
the Rydberg constant more accurately than the spectroscopists
could. Great sensitivity or great specificityÄÄwe'll come
across that particularly in the Allison effect.
> Fantastic theories contrary to experience. In the Bohr
theory, the whole idea of an electron being captured by an
alpha particle when the alpha particles aren't there, just
because the waves are there, [isn't] a very sensible theory.
> Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur
of the moment. They always had an answerÄÄalways.
> The ratio of the supporters to the critics rises up somewhere
near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion. The critics
couldn't reproduce the effects. Only the supporters could do
that. In the end, nothing was salvaged. Why should there be?
There isn't anything there. There never was. That's
characteristic of the effect.
In an evaluation of modern physics based on Langmuir's
arguments, we find that many of the dominant theories should be
classed as pathological science. For example, starting with his
first characteristic rule "The maximum effect that is observed is
produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity.";
we find that Einstein's special relativity theory which is
generally acknowledged as the foundation of the rest of the
dominant theories of 20th century physics, is based on the fact
that the Michelson-Morley experiment could not detect the motion
of the earth through the ether! As I have shown in Chapter 3
"Mathematical Magic", Einstein believed that the ether sea exists
but that it is invisible and can't be detected by experiments.
As a second example of the spectrum of modern theories that
should be classed as pathological, we have the particle
physicists that argue that invisible quarks exist inside of the
detectable protons and neutrons.[64] Actually, their arguments
have expanded over the years to include a whole zoo of invisible
particles that come in different colors and flavors, the zoo
contains, quarks, gluons, gravitrons, Higgs bosons, etc. All of
these particles are detectable only by using very elaborate
"Mathematical Magic" to analyze the particles that are detected.
On this question, Werner Heisenberg, one of the most prominent
physicists of this century, makes the following remarks in his
article[90] titled "The nature of elementary particles":
...Before this time it was assumed that there were two
fundamental kinds of particles, electrons and protons, which,
unlike most other particles, were immutable. Therefore their
number was fixed and they were referred to as "elementary"
particles. Matter was seen as being ultimately constructed of
electrons and protons. The experiments of Anderson and
Blackett provided definite proof that this hypothesis was
wrong. Electrons can be created and annihilated; their number
is not constant; they are not "elementary" in the original
meaning of the word.... A proton could be obtained from a
neutron and a pion, or a hyperon and a kaon, or from two
nucleons and one antinucleon, and so on. Could we therefore
simply say a proton consists of continuous matter?... This
development convincingly suggests the following analogy: Let us
compare the so-called "elementary" particles with the
stationary states of an atom or a molecule. We may think of
these as various states of one single molecule or as the many
different molecules of chemistry. One may therefore speak
simply of the "spectrum of matter."...
My intention, however, is not to deal with philosophy but
with physics. Therefore I will now discuss that development of
theoretical particle physics that, I believe, begins with the
wrong questions. First of all there is the thesis that the
observed particles such as the proton, the pion, the hyperon
consist of smaller particles: quarks, partons, gluons, charmed
particles or whatever else, none of which have been observed.
Apparently here the question was asked: "What does a proton
consist of?" But the questioners appear to have forgotten the
phrase "consist of" has a tolerably clear meaning only if the
particle can be divided into pieces with a small amount of
energy, much smaller than the rest mass of the particle itself.
...In the same way I am afraid that the quark hypothesis is not
really taken seriously today by its proponents. Questions
dealing with the statistics of quarks, the forces that keep
them together, the reason why the quarks are never seen as free
particles, the creation of pairs of quarks inside an elementary
particle, are all left more or less undefined. If the quark
hypothesis is really to be taken seriously it is necessary to
formulate precise mathematical assumptions for the quarks and
for the forces that keep them together and to show, at least
qualitatively, that all these assumptions reproduce the known
features of particle physics...
Therefore this article can be concluded with a more
optimistic view of those developments in particle physics that
promise success. New experimental results are always valuable,
even if they only enlarge the data table; but they are
especially interesting if they answer critical questions of the
theory. In the theory one should try to make precise
assumptions concerning the dynamics of matter, without any
philosophical prejudices. The dynamics must be taken
seriously, and we should not be content with vaguely defined
hypotheses that leave essential points open. Everything
outside of the dynamics is just a verbal description of the
table of data, and even then the data table probably yields
more information than the verbal description can. The particle
spectrum can be understood only if the underlying dynamics of
matter is known; dynamics is the central problem.
In 1977, in collaboration with Prof. Wilbur Block and Prof.
Richard Rhodes II, I submitted a research proposal through Eckerd
College to the National Science Foundation. The proposal was for
$159,512, of which $99,655 was to go for a high-performance
Harris computer. We intended to use computer methods to attack
the difficult mathematics of the underlying dynamics of matter as
outlined in Heisenberg's article. The February 1978 rejection
letter from Dr. Barry R. Holstein, Program Officer for
Theoretical Physics, stated the proposal was declined because
their reviewers had an overwhelming feeling that there is no
reason to abandon the conventional and remarkably successful
theories of electron and quark interactions in favor of our
model. The letter supplied the motivation for my campaign to
discredit the quark theorists. The campaign involved for the
most part, attacking prominent quark theorists at the American
Physical Society meetings, and to add insult to injury, I
published the following letter[91] in Physics Today:
Heisenberg and QCD
I would like to comment on Gerald E. Brown's and Mannque Rho's
recent paper "The structure of the nucleon" (February, page
24). At the APS 1982 Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C., Brown
gave an invited paper entitled "Structure of the Nucleons."[92]
After he delivered his paper, I challenged Brown to defend his
QCD arguments. I stated that Werner Heisenberg had argued[90]
that he was afraid that the quark hypothesis was not really
taken seriously by its proponents. He pointed out that they do
not deal with the mass dynamics of the transformation of mass
from energy to the particle spectrum, and that it was
irrational to speculate on the division of quarks into
subparticles because it would take many times the rest energy
of the particles to produce them. I asked him how he would
challenge Heisenberg's arguments. He stated that he could not,
and that it would be best to ask this of others since he was a
nuclear physicist.
In answer to Brown's comment, I have asked other QCD
theorists and their supporters how they would challenge
Heisenberg's arguments. One prominent particle theorist who
presented an invited paper at the same Spring Meeting shouted
"No Way!" before I could even finish pronouncing Heisenberg's
name. In general, this question has had the same sort of
devastating effect on all the physicists I've asked it of.
Considering Heisenberg's status, it's no wonder that few
physicists are willing to challenge his arguments....
In the April 1982 issue of Physics Today,[93] there appeared an
article titled "Instant fame and small fortune" which states:
At the San Francisco APS meeting in January, Arthur Schawlow
announced the results of a contest he initiated last year
(PHYSICS TODAY,March 1981, page 75). In his retiring
presidential address he said, "This year, I have sponsored a
contest for APS members to propose the best way to publicize
their own contributed papers. The contest has been judged by a
distinguished panel of graduate students and secretaries, who
will remain anonymous for their own safety.
"First prize of ten dollars goes to...
"Second prize of, five dollars, goes to...
"Third prize, a copy of my latest paper, goes to...
"Fourth prize, a copy of my two latest papers, goes to Bryan
G. Wallace of Eckerd College, who pointed out that the
abstracts are reproduced photographically, and so he had been
able to use tricks like italics and extra heavy type to make
his abstracts stand out....
Actually, the full text of my entry concerned more than dark
italic type, and goes as follows:
Dear Art:
With reference to your open letter that accompanied the 1982
renewal invoice, I would like to enter your "Instant Fame and
(small) Fortune contest. We have had a major problem with QCD
theorists acting as referees in trying to obtain funding and
publication for our mass dynamics research. As an example, one
of our NSF proposals was declined because "There was an
overwhelming feeling that there is no reason to abandon the
conventional and remarkably successful theories of electron and
quark interactions in favor of your model which is beset with a
number of fatal conceptual difficulties." In order to
compensate for this problem we have adopted a policy of
presenting current research results in the form of a
contributed paper annually, with abstracts published in the
Bulletin making an archival record. Since the APS Spring
Meeting is traditionally held at or near Washington D.C. we
felt we could get the most bang per buck from it.
I have devised a number of methods of publicizing the
contributed papers. To begin with, I use my trusty old Sears
typewriter that has large Italic type, use a new ribbon, and
set it for maximum impact to type the published abstract.
Enclosed you will find a copy of the abstracts published to
date. They stand out like a sore thumb from the other
abstracts, and are real eye grabbers. The next tactic is to
attend the Spring Meeting symposiums where the QCD super stars
are giving their invited papers. The idea is to present short,
high impact commercials, our brand (Mass Dynamics) versus the
other brand (QCD). Where a TV commercial might use a well
known movie or television star to help sell their product, I
use statements made by Werner Heisenberg, who of course is a
physics super duper star. The statements come from
Heisenberg's article "The nature of elementary particles" in
the March 1976 issue of "Physics Today." Heisenberg had some
nice things to say about mass dynamics and some very nasty
things to say about QCD type theories. His statements have
made effective stones for the sling of this modern day David.
As two examples of what I consider to be the best shots fired
to date:
At the 1979 HA Special Session To Celebrate The Hundredth
Anniversary Of Dr. Albert Einstein's Birth before a packed
room of perhaps 1000 physicists, Steven Weinberg presented a
talk entitled "Unification of the Forces of Nature." Peter
Bergmann who was presiding the session gave me Weinberg's
throat mike, we were all standing by the overhead projector.
I stated that Heisenberg published a paper on the nature of
elementary particles a few years ago in Physics Today, and
that in the paper he made the contention that Quark theories
are little more than a verbal description of the data table
and that we will not understand the nature of the particle
spectrum until we invent a theory of the dynamics of matter,
then I asked him to comment on this. He was flustered and
stated that of course this was a legitimate point of view and
there are many problems with trying to develop the mass
dynamics of quark theories, then he threw up his hands and in
an emotional voice shouted that he just believed in them!
At the 1981 JA Symposium "High-Energy Facilities of the
Future," Leon Lederman gave a talk on "Future Facilities at
Fermilab." I was the first to comment and said that
Heisenberg has argued that QCD theories are nothing more than
a verbal description of the data and that we would not
understand the nature of the particle spectrum until we
developed theories of the mass dynamics, and here he was
basing his arguments for more funding on theories that were
mere verbal descriptions of the data. Perhaps the large
accelerators are the SSTs of modern physics and we should let
the Europeans waste their money on them and we could spend
ours on more important things like physicist's salaries and
computers. He answered that of course he would not want to
argue with Heisenberg, and that I had a good point and he
would like to get with me later and talk about it. After the
session, he came over and asked "Why me? Why me? Why didn't
you pick on any of the others?" I said he was the first to
use QCD to support his argument for more funding. He stated
that he felt that if Heisenberg were still alive, he probably
would support QCD, look at the Nobel prize, the large number
of theorists that support it. I asked him if he had read
Heisenberg's article, he said no, but now he was going to
make a point to read it. At the end of our conversation, I
gave him 2 cents and said it was my share of the money he
needed and that I had nothing against accelerators, only
quarks.
In a 1985 Physics Today article[94] titles "The SSC: A machine
for the nineties," Dr. Sheldon L. Glashow and Dr. Leon M.
Lederman present the following argument:
True, the Standard Model does explain a very great deal.
Nevertheless it is not yet a proper theory, principally because
it does not satisfy the physicists naive faith in elegance and
simplicity. It involves some 17 allegedly fundamental
particles and the same number of arbitrary and tunable
parameters, such as the fine-structure constants, the muon-
electron mass ratio and the various mysterious mixing angles
(Cabibbo, Weinberg, Kobayashi-Maskawa). Surely the Creator did
not twiddle 17 dials on his black box before initiating the Big
Bang, and its glorious sequela, mankind. Our present theory is
incomplete, insufficient and inelegant, though it may be long
remembered as a significant turning point. It remains for
history to record whether, on the threshold of a major
synthesis, we chose to turn our backs or to thrust onward. The
choice is upon us with the still-hypothetical SSC.
In effect, Glashow and Lederman are arguing that after spending
billions of dollars on particle accelerators, all we have to show
for it is a bunch of worthless mathematics, or what Heisenberg
calls using the language of mathematics to produce "a verbal
description of the table of data." They want us to spend many
more billions of dollars to build the SSC, a machine that is up
to 112 miles in circumference and that can accelerate protons to
40 trillion electron volts of energy. They offer the slim hope
that if we explore the short-lived trash at the high end of the
particle spectrum at energies far beyond that of the stable
particles of the everyday world, we might have some additional
insight into a unified theory! The 1985 APS retirement address
of the particle physicist Dr. Robert R. Wilson that I quoted in
Chapter 4, and the above reply to my NSF proposal tends to
indicate that the average particle physicist is opposed to a
unified theory along the lines presented by Einstein and
Heisenberg, and that funding of the SSC could very likely hamper
the development of a realistic unified theory that would bring
enormous benefits for mankind. At the 1985 APS Spring Meeting,
the Nobel prize winning particle physicist Dr. Carlo Rubbia gave
a talk in which he indicated a major problem in separating the
data from the artifacts of machine operation. The only way to be
certain of the results, was when different accelerators gave
consistent data at the same energies. During the comment and
question session following his talk, I asked him if the current
accelerators had reached the point of diminishing returns, and he
answered "Yes." So we face the prospect of spending many
billions of dollars for a machine that will produce uncertain
results, of marginal value, a real "white elephant." The
following excerpts from the letter published in the July 1988
issue of Physics Today,[95] by Dr. John F. Waymouth of GTE that
is titled "WHAT PRICE FUNDING THE SUPER COLLIDER?" brings to bear
some interesting arguments on this question:
I am an R&D director in industry whose own work is almost
entirely company funded. I nevertheless believe that
government funding of long-range research in the physical
sciences is essential to the future health of the US economy.
I am, however, extremely distressed by the direction that
recent proposals for such funding are takingÄÄtoward hundreds
of millions, ultimately billions of dollars for a gigantic
particle accelerator to explore physical phenomena in the tera-
electron-volt range. At the same time, I see from my
perspective as an eventual "customer" of university-based low-
energy plasma, atomic, molecular, electron and optical physics
research, and as a former member of the NSF Advisory Committee
for Physics, that these areas are being severely constrained by
inadequate funding. I believe that this allocation of
priorities in funding of the physical sciences would be in
error, for the reasons outlined in the following....
This line of reasoning leads me to the conclusion that the
only satisfactory argument justifying society's support of
physics research over the long term is the fourth one: that
physics research in the past has led to a cornucopia of new
products, industries and jobs and thereby to the wealth and
quality of life that we now enjoy; failure on our part to
provide the same kind of support will deprive our children, and
our children's children, of similar benefits in the future....
As I reflect back on what physics research has provided to
society in the past, I am struck by the fact that not all
physics research is uniformly productive of economic benefits.
In my own mind, I have divided physics into three basic areas:
electron-volt physics, in which energy exchanges on an atomic,
molecular or electronic scale are less than 100 000 volts; MeV-
GeV physics, which primarily involves nuclear and subnuclear
particles; and high-energy physics, covering GeV to TeV and up,
involving the structure of subnuclear matter.
Out of Ev physics have come electricity and magnetism,
telegraphy, telephony, the electric light and power industry,
stationary and propulsion electric motors, radio, television,
lasers, radar and microwave ovens, to name just a few. In
short, it is the core science of the modern world.
X rays and the resulting medical physics industry were the
high-energy physics of their day, but fall within my definition
of Ev physics. Digital computers arose from the computational
needs of MeV physics, but the technology for satisfying those
needs came entirely out of Ev physics; microminiaturization of
those computers for space exploration was accomplished also by
Ev physics, resulting in the capability to put computing power
undreamed of by John von Neumann in the hands of an elementary
school child.
Moreover, Ev physics has been the core science in the
training of generations of engineers who have invented,
developed and improved products in all of the above areas. It
is, in addition, the core science in the extremely exciting
development of understanding of the detailed processes involved
in chemical reactions, and the ultimate understanding of
biological reactions and the life process itself. Every single
member of our society has been touched in very substantial ways
by the accomplishments of Ev physics, and many of them are
fully aware of it.
MeV-GeV physics has given us radioisotope analysis, a
substantial portion of medical physics, and nuclear energy
(which a significant, vocal minority of our society regards as
an unmitigated curse instead of a blessing). High-energy
physics has to date given us nothing....
In my opinion, there is another interpretation. Electron-
volt physics is the science of things that happen on Earth;
MeV-GeV physics is the science of things that happen in the
Sun, the stars and the Galaxy; TeV physics has not happened
anywhere in the universe since the first few milliseconds of
the Big Bang (except possibly inside black holes, which are by
definition unknowable).
Consequently, it should come as no surprise that items
useful on Earth will come primarily from the branch of physics
that deals with what happens here on Earth, with lesser
contributions from the science of what happens in the nearby
Sun and the intervening space. I firmly believe that this
situation is quite fundamental, and that despite the best
efforts of many dedicated TeV physicists, the probability that
economic benefit to society in the future will result from
their activities is very remote: in the phraseology of the
research director justifying his budget, "a high-risk, longshot
gamble."
Waymouth's above article presented the currently popular argument
for the justification of funding the SSC, that it will shed light
on the phenomena that happened in the first few milliseconds of
the Big Bang creation of the entire universe. In examination of
this argument we should consider the fact that there is ample
evidence that Big Bang creation theories are pathological science
at its very worst. Some interesting insight into the development
of the Big Bang type of theories is contained in the following
excerpts from a recent Physics Today article[96] titled "EDWIN P.
HUBBLE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF COSMOLOGY":
...It is now usual to trace the idea of an expanding universe,
at least in the mathematical sense, to two papers[97] published
by the Russian mathematician and meteorologist Alexander
Friedmann in 1922 and 1924. Friedmann's starting point was the
field equations of general relativity that Einstein had
developed in 1917,... Rather, the first person to join theory
and observation in a way that would come to be widely seen as
physically meaningful within the general framework of the
expanding universe was, as Helge Kragh has argued
convincingly,[98] a 33-year-old Belgian abb‚ and professor at
the University of Louvain, Georges LemaŒtre.
In 1927 LemaŒtre published what would later be recognized as
the seminal paper on the expanding universe.[99] But for a
brief time, LemaŒtre's work drew no interest. Even Einstein
told LemaŒtre, at the fifth Solvay conference in 1927, that he
did not accept the notion of the expanding universe or the
physics underpinning the paper....
Hubble was always careful in print to avoid definitely
interpreting the redshifts as Doppler shifts. But the writings
of Eddington and others soon meshed the calculations of
LemaŒtre and various theorists with Hubble's observational
research on the redshift-distance relation. The notion of the
expanding universe was swiftly accepted by many, and the linear
relationship between redshift and distance was later widely
accepted as Hubble's law.
...But Eddington explicitly rejected the notion of a creation
of the universe, as seemed to be implied by a universe with
more mass than the Einstein universe, because "it seems to
require a sudden and peculiar beginning of things."...
During the early 1930s several people, including a sometime
collaborator of Hubble's, the Caltech mathematical physicist
Richard C. Tolman, examined possible physical mechanisms to
explain the expansion. Of course an alternative explanation of
the expansion was that it really did start with the beginning
of the entire universe, and it was LemaŒtre who introduced this
concept into the cosmological practice of the 1930s. In 1931
he suggested the first detailed example of what later became
known as Big Bang cosmology. But unlike the universe of modern
Big Bang theories, LemaŒtre's universe did not evolve from a
true singularity but from a material pre-universe, what
LemaŒtre referred to as the "primeval atom".[98]
Additional insight into Hubble's views of this matter comes from
the following material taken from a 1986 article[100] by Dr.
Barry Parker of the Idaho State University, titled "Discovery of
the Expanding Universe":
It was evident by now, however, that Hubble's attitude had
changed. He no longer referred to his graph as a velocity-
distance relation, though still confident that his distance
scale was reasonably accurate. The interpretation of redshifts
as velocities bothered him, and he now referred to "apparent
velocity displacements." This wording implied there were other
possibilities, and indeed there were....
Lemaitre's theory also predicted an expanding universe, so
in itself it probably did not bother Hubble. However, a paper
published the same year by his Mount Wilson colleague Fritz
Zwicky apparently did. Zwicky was convinced that the redshift
did not necessarily indicate motion; he was sure that the
extremely large speeds recently obtained by Humason were
impossible.
As an alternative, Zwicky introduced the idea that the
redshifts were due to an interaction between light and matter
in space. The light gradually lost energy, which shifted it,
and the spectral lines, to redder wavelengths. The farther
away an object, the more its light would "tire" during the trip
to Earth.... He was now very close to the limit of the 100-
inch telescope, but there was a new one on the horizon, the
200-inch. He was confident that this instrument would enable
astronomers to resolve, once and for all, most of the major
cosmological problems....
With regard to Hubble's expectation that the 200-inch would
resolve the problem, the following information taken from a
recent article[101] published in THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL by Dr.
Paul A. LaViolette, and titled "IS THE UNIVERSE REALLY
EXPANDING", shows that the current evidence supports the Zwicky
tired-light model. The abstract of the article reads:
The no-evolution, tired-light model and the no-evolution, qo
= 0, expanding universe cosmology are compared against
observational data on four kinds of cosmological tests. On all
four tests the tired-light model is found to make the better
fit to the data without requiring the ad hoc introduction of
assumptions about rapid galaxy evolution. The data may be
interpreted in the simplest fashion if space is assumed to be
Euclidean, galaxies cosmologically static, evolutionary effects
relatively insignificant, and photon energy nonconserved, with
photons losing about 5%-7% of their energy for every 109 light
years of distance traveled through intergalactic space. The
observation that redshifts are quantized may be accommodated by
a version of the tired-light model in which photon energy
decreases occur incrementally in a stepwise fashion.
The introduction of the article starts with:
The notion that the cosmological redshift is a non-Doppler
phenomenon in which photons continuously undergo an energy
depletion or "aging" effect is not new. This idea was first
suggested by Zwicky (1929). Later, Hubble and Tolman (1935)
discussed this alternative, postulating that photon energy was
depleted in a linear fashion with increasing photon travel
distance. Hubble (1936) claimed that his galaxy number count
results strongly supported the linear energy depletion
hypothesis....
On the 2nd page of the article LaViolette writes:
The performance of the tired-light and expanding universe
comologies are evaluated on four cosmological tests: the
angular size-redshift test, the Hubble diagram test, the galaxy
number-count-magnitude test, and the number-count-flux density
test (log dN/dS-log S test). It is determined that on all four
tests the tired-light model exhibits superior performance.
That is, it makes the best fit to the data with the fewest
number of assumptions. Finally, the redshift quantization
phenomenon is briefly discussed. Although not a cosmological
test per se, this phenomenon is something that any candidate
cosmology must somehow address. It is shown that redshift
quantization is quite compatible with the tired-light model.
On the other hand, when the expanding universe hypothesis is
adhered to, ad hoc assumptions must be introduced about the
possible existence of macroscopic dynamical quantization in the
universe's expanding motion.
In the CONCLUSION LaViolette states:
...It is concluded that the tired-light model makes a better
fit on all four data sets. The expanding universe hypothesis
may be considered plausible only if it is modified to include
specific assumptions regarding the evolution of galaxy cluster
size, galaxy radio lobe size, galaxy luminosity, and galaxy
number density. In addition, if the redshift quantization
effect is also to be accounted for, special assumptions must be
introduced regarding the operation of dynamical quantization on
a cosmological scale. But the required assumptions are
numerous. Consequently, the tired-light model is preferred on
the basis of simplicity. Presently available observational
data, therefore, appear to favor a cosmology in which the
universe is conceived of as being stationary, Euclidean, and
slowly evolving, and which photons lose a small fraction of
their total energy for every distance increment they cover on
their journey through space.
In a recent review[102] of a book[103] titled "QUASARS,
REDSHIFTS, AND CONTROVERSIES" published by Dr. Halton Arp, the
world-renowned astrophysicist Dr. Geoffrey Burbidge, writes:
Chip Arp started with impeccable credentials. Educated at
Harvard and Caltech, after a short spell at Indiana he was
appointed to a staff position at the Mount Wilson and Palomar
Observatories, where he remained for 29 years. A little more
than 20 years ago Arp began to devote all his time to
extragalactic astronomy. At first he compiled the marvelous
Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. Then he started to find what he
believed were physical associations between some of these
galaxies and previously identified powerful radio sources.
Soon he found many cases of apparent associations between
galaxies and quasi-stellar objects, or quasars.
All of this would have been completely acceptable if the
associated objects had the same redshifts, but they did not.
Yet Arp believed in the reality of the associations, and, after
struggles with referees, his papers were published. Others
were finding similar results, and soon the terms "nonvelocity
redshifts" (those not associated with the expansion of the
universe) and "local" (as distinct from distant, or
"cosmological") quasars entered the literature. Arp's ranking
in the "Association of Astronomy Professionals" plunged from
within the first 20 to below 200. As he continued to claim
that not all galaxy redshifts were due to the expansion of the
universe, his ranking dropped further.
About four years ago came the final blow: his whole field of
research was deemed unacceptable by the telescope-allocation
committee in Pasadena. Both directors (of Mount Wilson and Las
Campanas, and Palomar, observatories) endorsed the censure.
Since Arp refused to work in a more conventional field, he was
given no more telescope time. After abortive appeals all the
way up to the trustees of the Carnegie Institution, he took
early retirement and moved to West Germany. Earlier, Fritz
Zwicky had also been frequently criticized by his colleagues in
Pasadena (by coincidence?). Zwicky remained a staff member at
Mount Wilson and Palomar until he retired, but much of his work
continued to be ignored or derided until some years after his
death.
Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies contains Arp's account
of his own work and that of others leading, in his mind, to the
conclusion that redshifts are not always correlated with
distances. It also contains his personal view of the way he
has been treated. When he is critical of others, he omits
their names. Zwicky was more blunt in his Morphological
Astronomy....
The other part of this learning process has been unpleasant,
probably because I have a strong instinct for fair play. It
may be argued that this is no substitute for good judgement.
But neither are the tactics that have been used by those who
want to maintain the status quo. These include interminable
refereeing, blackballing of speakers at meetings, distortion
and misquotation of the written word, rewriting of history, and
worst of all, the denial of telescope time to those who are
investigating what some believe are the wrong things. Thus,
for both scientific and sociological reasons, I am sympathetic
to Arp....
In my view the best evidence for the existence of
noncosmological redshifts is the following: the three quasars
within 2 arc minutes of the center of NGC 1073, each have a
redshift at a peak in the distribution found earlier; the low-
redshift quasar Markarian 205 joined to NGC 4319; the pair of
galaxies NGC 7603 and its companion, which are connected by a
luminous bridge but have very different redshifts; and the
statistical evidence relating many quasars to bright ÄÄ not
faint ÄÄ galaxies....
One of the most fascinating chapters describes the idea that
the alignments of objects with different redshifts are not
accidental, but real, implying that galaxies can eject objects,
up to and including other galaxies...
Dr. I. E. Segal of M.I.T. has published an article[104] that
examines the claim that the cosmic background radiation is
evidence in support of the Big Bang theories. In the last
sentence of the article, he states:
...Unless it can be shown that a temporally homogeneous
universe is not physically sustainable, and this has not been
possible even in the specific, nonparametric case of the
chronometric cosmology, a claim for the big bang theory that it
is the natural or logical explanation for the CBR and its
apparently Planck law spectrum would appear untenable.
With regard to the current evidence on the radiation, a recent
article[134] titled "Background radiation deepens the confusion
for big bang theorists" states:
THE LATEST results from NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer
(COBE) satellite are continuing to mystify astronomers. They
show that the matter of the early Universe was spread so
smoothly that it is difficult to understand how galaxies and
clusters of galaxies could have formed (New Scientist,Science,
19 December).
Astronomers presented the results last week at a meeting of
the American Physical Society in Washington DC. Although the
results confirm those released earlier, they are from
observations of the whole sky rather than from just a small
portion (This Week,20 January).
COBE was launched earlier this year to observe the cosmic
background radiation, the remnant radiation of the big bang in
which the Universe was born 15 billion years ago. The
radiation was created a mere 300 000 years after the big bang.
By determining how smoothly that radiation is distributed
across the sky we can learn how smoothly matter was distributed
at that epoch.
"These measurements are more and more puzzling," says
Michael Hauser of the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center. The
COBE data show that 300 000 years after the big bang, the
matter of the Universe had a density uniform to one part in
10,000.
Many of the scientists at the meeting expressed concern that
many accepted theories of galaxy formation will have to go if
the data build up and continue to show there is no variation in
the background radiation. Galaxies could only have condensed
from the stuff of the big bang if it was lumpy.
"We will be surprised if we don't start seeing wiggles at
the level of one part in 100 000 of accuracy," said David
Wilkinson of Princeton University. "If COBE gets to [one part
in a million] and still sees things smooth big bang theories
will be in a lot of trouble."
According to George Smoot of the University of California,
Berkeley, the data from COBE are really more accurate than one
part in 10,000, but the scientists are not revealing these data
until they have a chance to correct for any systematic errors.
They hinted, however, that they have found nothing even at this
level of detail.
There was a 1/3/91 article in my local St. Petersburg Times
newspaper that was reprinted from The New York Times. The title
of the article was Big Bang theory turning out to be big bust and
the abstract states:
Satellite research casts doubt on a key part of the widely held
theory of how the universe was formed.
Two paragraphs in the middle of the article state:
In a report published today in the journal Nature, they said
the theory in its present form must be abandoned.
The journal noted that the report by Dr. Will Saunders of
Oxford University and colleagues "is all the more remarkable
for coming from a group of authors that includes some of the
theory's long time supporters."
The Big Bang theories fit all of Langmuir's rules for
pathological science, but in particular, they fit his 4th one of
"Fantastic theories contrary to experience." For example, the
following is the sort of fantastic arguments one finds in most
modern text books on this matter:
...These new theories are call Grand Unified Theories or GUTs.
Studies of GUTs suggest that the universe expanded and
cooled until about 10-35 seconds after the big bang, at which
time it became so cool that the forces of nature began to
separate from each other. This released tremendous amounts of
energy, which suddenly inflated the universe by a factor
between 1020 and 1030. At that time the part of the universe
that we can see now, the entire observable universe, was no
larger than the volume of an atom, but it suddenly inflated to
the volume of a cherry pit and then continued its slower
expansion to its present extent.... [8 p.325]
As another example of the fantastic type of arguments one finds
in scientific journals, the following was taken from a
article[105] titled "The Inflationary Universe" that was
published in the prestigious journal Scientific American:
From a historical point of view probably the most revolutionary
aspect of the inflationary model is the notion that all matter
and energy in the observable universe may have emerged from
almost nothing. This claim stands in marked contrast to
centuries of scientific tradition in which it was believed that
something cannot come from nothing.