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Galaxy cluster MACS J0025.4-1222. Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Stanford/S.Allen);
Optical/Lensing (NASA/STScI/UC Santa Barbara/M.Bradac)

 

Sep 24, 2008
Cluster Coupling

The image above reveals the merging of deception and prejudice.

The press release accompanying the image explains that it shows the collision of two galactic clusters, which separates gas from mass:

"Using optical images from Hubble, the team was able to infer the distribution of the total mass (colored in blue)—dark and ordinary matter—using a technique known as gravitational lensing. The Chandra data enabled the astronomers to accurately map the position of the ordinary matter, mostly in the form of hot gas, which glows brightly in X-rays (pink) … The separation between the material shown in pink and blue therefore provides direct evidence for dark matter…."

The deception lies in the blue glow juxtaposed with the pink: The pink came from detection of x-ray radiation; the blue came from computer modeling of a belief. The prejudice lies in equating that belief with “direct evidence.”

This merging has accompanied the ostracism of critics and dissenters and the neglect of data that is contrary to, even contradictory of, the consensual faith. The credo of falsification is recited in public and flouted in practice. The “technique” of gravitational lensing has become a desperate ploy to defend an uncritical and institutionalized faith in obsolete mechanistic theories against the space-age discoveries of electrical and magnetic activity in the previously unsuspected plasma that fills space.

Acknowledging that the universe is composed not of hot gas but of plasma provides direct interpretations of the image: The blue glow of computer-generated “faerie dust” disappears. The remaining images of optical and x-ray radiation indicate the proliferation of ejections, pinches, and other instabilities in plasma discharges. These phenomena can be generated and observed in labs and need not be taken on faith in extrapolations from theories whose applicability is doubtful.

Because the belief that redshift indicates distance has been discredited by observations of connections between high-and-low-redshift objects, the distance and therefore the size and energy of this cluster is likely much less than the faithful declaim. The “narrow vision” of modern astronomers and their instruments blinds them to this cluster’s likely association with a nearby active galaxy, from which it may have been ejected.

With the faith-based deception and prejudice removed, we are able to see this image as a cluster of cosmic “sparks” flying from a galactic size “thunderbolt” of plasma.

By Mel Acheson
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