Jul 25,
2006
Gravitational Lensing or Death of a Theory?
The theory of gravitational lensing makes sense of images of distant
quasars around nearby galaxies...until curious minds begin to doubt
it.
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows
five bright spots. Curious minds want to know: What is it? Without a
theory, the image is only bright spots. So curious minds make (in
the sense of the Greek root “poiein”, from which “poetry” derives) a
theory.... (See the essay “What is Actually the Case”)
Analysis of the light from the four outside bright
spots shows a high
redshift (designated by “z”) of 1.73. The
light from the inner bright spot shows a z of only 0.31. In the Big
Bang theory, z is a measure of distance, so the four outside bright
spots must be far away (astronomically speaking) and the inside
bright spot must be nearby. The alignment is coincidental. However,
such a close configuration of four objects at the farther reaches of
the universe incidentally lining up around a nearby object is not
likely.
Another theory supplies another possibility: In
General Relativity, light passing near a massive object will be
bent, much as light is bent as it passes through a lens. The effect
has even been named “gravitational lensing”. If the nearby object
were massive enough and a far object were aligned directly behind
the nearby object along our line of sight, the gravity of the nearby
object could bend the light of the far object into four virtual
images flanking the nearby object.
With appropriate numbers inserted into the blank
spots in the equations, the math works out, and curious minds have
made (again in the sense of the Greek root “poiein”) sense of the
five bright spots: One massive low-z galaxy in the foreground acts
as a lens to bend light from one high-z quasar directly behind it to
give the appearance of four quasars encircling the galaxy. The image
even shows a faint ring of luminosity around the galaxy connecting
the quasars, just as one would expect with a lens.
It’s simple. Too simple.
Further considerations raise doubts. Doubts raise
further questions. Curious minds want to know: What else could it
be?
Item: If the mass distribution matches the
luminosity distribution in the galaxy (it’s more or less spherical
and symmetric), the lens should produce a smeared-out ring, not four
sharp images.
Item: When the z of the quasar is set to the
reference frame of the galaxy (1.73 – 0.31 = 1.42), it falls on a “preferred
value” of z. (In the Big Bang, “preferred values” of z can only
mean that galaxies and quasars are distributed in shells centered on
the Earth, something even more unlikely than the coincidental
alignment of four quasars and a galaxy.)
Item: The faint ring of luminosity connecting the
quasar images is matched by faint spokes of luminosity connecting
the quasar images to the galaxy.
Item: Gravitational lensing is solely a phenomenon
of mass, but galaxies are made of plasma. The primary quality of
plasma is charge—electricity—and the effects of electricity
overshadow the effects of mass
99 to 1. Energetic phenomena
that require 96% dark matter, dark energy and black holes to power
with mass require only 4% plasma—the quantity actually observed.
Halton Arp—a
modern Galileo—may be heard to
sigh: “There are hundreds of these things in the sky. The quasars
and galaxies are
connected.”
In the established institutions of astronomy, no one
hears, no one sees. If galaxies and quasars are connected, z cannot
be a measure of distance and the Big Bang is falsified. Textbooks
will be rewritten. Grants will be lost. Careers will be undermined.
Professors will be fired. The work of a century will die in vain.
But even as astronomers stop their ears and blinker
their eyes, they continue to gather the evidence that testifies
against their pet theory.
To be
continued
Contributed by Don Scott
___________________________________________________________________________
Please visit our
Forum
The Electric Sky
and The Electric Universe
available now!