JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

[Nereid]

(continued)

Nereid said:
And, as a matter of fact, Peratt agrees, and says so in his Paper I:

The remainder of this paper is concerned with what the signature of existence would be to an observer situated within a nonhomogeneous plasma universe consisting of galactic-sized Birkeland currents.

Let's put that in context. From that same paper:

It is the purpose of this paper to extend the study of cosmic plasma to the case of galactic-dimensioned (50 kpc in width) Birkeland filaments by means of three-dimensional, fully electromagnetic, and relativistic particle-in-cell simulations. Fig. 1 is a contrast-enhanced photograph of the Orion nebula but serves the purpose of representing the morphology to be expected by an observer situated within a much larger filamentary meta-galactic structure.
[..]
The only assumption made in the analysis in this paper-if it should be called an assumption-is that the basic properties of plasmas are the same everywhere, from sub-millimeter dimensions to the Hubble distance (1028cm)
[..]
The simulations used in this paper are scaled to Cygnus A...

Peratt is simply saying that the simulations assume plasmas behave the same at all measurable scales. He uses published size estimates of Cygnus A for scaling of the simulations.

Quite right solrey, thanks for highlighting this.

While the actual analysis - published in the rest of Paper I - did not quite live up to the statement in the intro ("The only assumption made in the analysis in this paper-if it should be called an assumption-is that the basic properties of plasmas are the same everywhere, [...]"), Peratt is to be praised for his boldness.

A corollary of this sole assumption is that there is very little wiggle room; either the outputs of his simulation are fully consistent - quantitatively - with all relevant (quantitative) experimental and observational results, or they are not.

And if they are inconsistent with one, just/even one, such result, his entire model is falsified!

(to be continued)

[seb]

Returning to this thread, and trying to catch up ...

as the currents move, so too do the stars along their lengths

if the moving electric current drags the ionised part of the Sun along with it at the observed galactic rotation rates

What (force?) is acting on the stars - the ionised parts of them - to make them move like this?

The same force acting on the intragalactic currents - an application of the left-hand rule. Admittedly it requires the currents and magnetic fields to be suitably aligned, which is of course an assumption. An example would be if there were a magnetic field across the galaxy depth-ways and the intragalactic currents were flowing radially. An alternative would be if currents flowed vertically through the galaxy (parallel to the hypothesised intergalactic Birkeland currents) and the magnetic field curled around the centre of the galaxy.

I see EM as a nifty way to run a galaxy. The biggest question in my mind is why the galaxy forms a plane so thin relative to the distances between galaxies. What makes one form where it does and then you have to go millions of light years to the next one?

(While the calculation assumed 100% ionisation, the margin is so high here that we should be able to have very little ionisation to ensure an electromagnetically dominated rotation around the galaxy.)

Can you say a bit more about this please? I'm afraid I don't follow it at all.

Sorry, what I meant is that you don't seem to need to forcibly move much of the Sun's mass to make the rest of it follow under gravity. The self-gravity of any region of the Sun is about 9 orders of magnitude higher than the forced acceleration of the ionised part tugging it out of place. This means that if the electromagnetic tug acted on only a small part it will not simply rip it out and leave the rest of it behind; the tug will very gently move the centre of gravity much more slowly than the rest of the Sun will move to balance itself out.

If there are any mistakes in the maths or reasoning, feel free to point them out.

There are parts which I didn't follow (I asked about one such part, above), and the approach you took seems a little unusual, but - those caveats aside - I can't see any that would invalidate what seems to be your main conclusion ("What do these need to be to exert a 3.2e20 N force on the Sun?").

I think it's worth noting that this force on the Sun is only 0.1% of that exerted gravitationally by Jupiter, which is observational evidence that the EM-driven tug of the Sun will not disrupt it in any way.


In another post:

A corollary of this sole assumption is that there is very little wiggle room; either the outputs of his simulation are fully consistent - quantitatively - with all relevant (quantitative) experimental and observational results, or they are not.

And if they are inconsistent with one, just/even one, such result, his entire model is falsified!

Would they not need to be inconsistent at only astronomical scales to be falsified, showing that they do not scale as proposed? If his simulations are wrong it may simply be a fault with the simulation rather than a fault with the theory, which would be indicated by being wrong at laboratory scales too.

[Nereid]

Continuing to look at the sources cited in Paper I's Table 1 (COMPARISON OF SIMULATION AND ESTIMATED GALAXY PARAMETERS).

The other source cited for "Total source energy, ergs" is "de Young and Axford (1967)". I cannot find this in the References section of the paper, but this may be it: "Stellar Collisions". Here's the abstract:

The motion of a one-dimensional driven shock in an inhomogeneous medium is considered. It is found that the driving piston closely controls the shock behavior in regions of increasing density, with essentially free shock propogation occurring in regions of decreasing density. These results are used in discussing the gross features of a head-on collision between two stars.

I do not have a copy of this paper, nor am I likely to be able to get access any time soon; however, from the Fulltext Preview it seems that it's "quasars and other strong radio sources" which are modelled. If so, then the two sources de Young and Axford cite may help.

The first is L. Woltjer: NATURE, 201, 803 (1964), whose abstract contains this:

RECENT discussions about the source of energy in strong extra-galactic radio sources have indicated the possible importance of the nuclei of galaxies. In the nuclei the densities are large, and thus the energies available in principle are large, too. The matter in these nuclei is probably largely stellar and the problem that arises is how the stars can yield the energy that is needed (up to 1060 ergs) in a sufficiently short time.

The second is "T. Gold, W. I. Axford and E. C. Ray: Quasi-Stellar Sources and Gravitational Collapses, ed. I Ronbinson, A. E. Schild and E. L. Schuking (Chicago, 1965), p. 93"; I can find nothing on the estimated total energy of quasars or other AGN (as we'd call them today) in this source, mainly because I cannot find anything in this paper (other than references and citations).

"Gisler and Miley (1979)" is a source cited for two entries in Table 1, Thermal plasma temperature, and Plasma density. As with de Young and Axford (1967), I cannot find this in the References section of the paper, but this may be it: "610 MHz observations of the Perseus Cluster of galaxies with the Westerbork synthesis radio telescope". Here's the abstract:

Observations of the Perseus Cluster have been made with the Westerbork Telescope at 610 MHz. Details of the observations and reduction procedure are given. The dynamic range within the maps exceeds 1000. A catalog of 50 sources from the field is presented, together with special information, where available. Several newly detected sources are identified with cluster galaxies. A faint extension found close to NGC 1265 suggests that the main body of this tailed source has been bent by buoyancy forces. On the assumption that this is the case, a conservative lower limit to the mass of the Perseus Cluster of 1.4 x 10 to the 15th solar masses is derived. This reinforces previous arguments from the virial theorem that the cluster is bound. The origin of the extended component surrounding NGC 1275 is discussed, and a 610/1415-MHz spectral-index distribution for it is presented. Its amorphous structure may be influenced by the presence of the cluster gas, but comparisons with similar-resolution X-ray observations are inconclusive. No evidence is found for the existence of the previously reported cluster halo of approximately 65 x 25 arcmin, 3C 84B.

The only mention of plasma temperature and density in the whole paper is in a single paragraph, which I'll quote in full:

Another factor which must play a leading role in determining the structure of the NGC 1275 halo is the presence of a hot dense gas at the center of the Perseus Cluster. (The recent detection of X-ray line emission from highly ionized iron (Mitchell and Culhane, 1977) leads us to reject the alternative inverse Compton interpretation of the X-ray continuum emission.) The gas (T ~ 108 K, ρ~10-27 g cm-3) exerts a pressure ~10-11 dyne cm-2 compared with the minimum internal (equipartition) pressure of 10-13 dyne cm-2 which we calculate from synchrotron theory for the relativistic plasma of the halo.

The quoted values are consistent with those in Peratt's Table 1.

In several places in the paper Gisler and Miley use the Hubble redshift-distance relationship, with 75 km s-1 Mpc-1 as the value of the Hubble constant. However, it is unclear (to me at least) whether, and if so how, this enters into the calculations which led to the the plasma temperature and density estimates in the Gisler and Miley paper.

Note: NGC 1275 is also Perseus A, located more or less at the centre of the cluster. It is rather strange galaxy; however, just like Cygnus A, it is (or contains) an AGN. If I recall a detail of Arp's model/conclusion/whatever correctly, all AGNs have an intrinsic redshift; if so, then the many estimates of distance that have entered into various calculations which led to the values in Table I must be wrong at some level, unless they have been made using methods independent of the Hubble redshift-distance relationship.

[jjohnson]

I have downloaded 4 different images of NGC 4346 (none from Hubble or NRAO or ESA that I could find, unfortunately), that odd galaxy pointed out by Peratt as displaying a diocotron instability. I had to reverse (flip L-R) one image because it had the west side on the left, which is the opposite of telescope image coonvention. Then I converted them to the same image dimensions after cropping them to as near the same area of sky and galaxy as possible. Then I used some sharpening and brightness and contrast adjustments in Photoshop Elements to get their general appearances as close and consistent with one another as I could. Only the SDSS image was in color; the other 3 were in B&W and I have no data from which to obtain film sensitivities at other than optical wavelengths, which can influence exposure and sharpness considerably.

All that said, to the eye the wavy area along the north edge of the outer ring of the galaxy is visible even in the SDSS image. The colored image has substantially better stellar resolution, helped in part by some color differentiation which the eye is good at picking out. There are still knots distributed along a sort of cursive "m" shaped wavy form. At this scale, anything as large as a "knot" with a visible diameter has to be a larger radiator than even the largest star. Whether this is in fact an "actual" diocotron instability in the plasma makeup of this galaxy, I cannot say. I'm not a cosmologist. I do not know if Peratt, had he been able to view the SDSS image in 1991, would have identified this formation as a diocotron instability or not. I won't put words in his mouth either way, and I, too, do not favor alternative histories. He didn't have it, and worked with what he had then.

Visually there is a noticeable similarity between the carbon witness plate images made in the lab (shown in the book) and these images. I have learned to beware similitude, however, understanding a little of the principles of camouflage and how the eye works regarding pattern-matching, edge detection, etc.

If anyone wants (since we can't readily upload non-web-linked images here) a copy of my 4-image comparison sheet, write me at jajnq@aol.com and I'll attach and return it.

Nereid, regarding cosmic distance estimates to stars and galaxies. I've read pros and cons about redshifts, and about both Arp's and Hubble's doubts about this and that, and the "if this, then..." arguments. I have read a lot about methodologies of constructing the "distance ladder" so that progressively farther distances can be ascertained with some degree of accuracy (not to be confused with precision). Figuring the distance to something that is so far away that we will never go there in our lifetimes to check the results takes a lot of ingenuity and assumptions. As you pointed out above, if any one of those fails, the whole house of cards is supposed to come down.

Astronomers have built too large a house of cards here to fail, in a sense, because papers which raise doubts (including quotations from Hubble concerning his reservations) or discuss "intrinsic" red shift, or report changes of mass in Cepheid variables, or report on anomalies in supernova light curves or otherwise try to raise what could be valid objections to ideas about distance and Universe expansion, etc. have NOT brought down the Standard Model in cosmology. Distances to stars in the updated Hipparcos catalog are only accurate out to about 400 light years, beyond which there may be 50% or more variance, using trigonometric parallax methods. That's not very far. Neither a single falsification or a string of anomalous or contrary observations to standard theory are likely to "bring it down". It has a lot of good stuff going for it, since astronomers and physicists are pretty good at what they do.

But if (and I always stress the "if") the distance gauges are not accurate and we are not getting those signatures at the observed intensities from the inferred distances, then a lot of our ideas about the diameters of stars and their absolute magnitudes and the relationships between red shifts (which I am certain exist) would all be changed up. If the observed values of radiation and ergs per second and other inferred measures are wrong, then how can they support theory? If galaxies at the edge of the observed Universe are not at the distance we think they are, then is not the Universe some other age than we think it is? Besides, we don't know whether or not, if we went to the vicinity of one of those "farthest, oldest" galaxies, we could look out a similar distance away again, and see more of the same at an equally distant horizon with the same CMB. I am in the same boat as anyone. I simply do not know.

Not knowing makes me a little uneasy.

Oh, yes; thanks for the link to the SDSS imager. Good tool if you know where you want to look!

Jim

[Nereid]

(continued)

The simulations do produce high redshift objects described here:

Fig. 13(a) illustrates double sources for which no central "object" of any kind is present, while Fig. 13(b)-(c) illustrates sources in which large-red-shift QSO's have formed at or near the geometric center between filaments. Fig. 14 shows the isophotes of double sources for which the central object is identified as galactic in nature; usually having a large red shift, and being elliptical or peculiar in morphology. This variety of source represents a later stage in temporal evolution and is accompanied by somewhat richer isophotal patterns because of the action of the inductive field in the confined plasma.

Peratt's simulations therefore are in support of Halton Arp's observations of high redshift QSO's embedded within low redshift galaxies.

I've started to track down the 15 objects in Fig. 13; they tell a fascinating tale!

First, the four in 13(a), "QSOs without an optically identifiable object between radio lobes"

Peratt was unlucky with the second one (3C427.1); an optically identifiable object between the radio lobes was found, in 1985; it has a redshift of 0.572. Two more were reported, in 1991, 3C69 and 3C86A (the former has a redshift of 0.458, the latter's is not determined yet). Three of the four are located in the Zone of Avoidance, a region of the sky ~<5 degrees from the galactic plane, where distant objects are often highly obscured in the optical waveband.

The remaining 11 (ten actually, I haven't tracked down "4C18" yet):

All are listed in several catalogues, and their classifications are all over the map! Of course, they are all 'radio sources', and as you'd expect from their morphology, FR II ones. Many are x-ray sources, and some gamma-ray too; several have been identified, and imaged, in the IR; and so on. Some are classified as galaxies, some QSOs, some as AGNs, some as Seyferts, ... This rather strongly makes the point I mentioned in an earlier post:

What's the relevance to Cygnus A? Well, it's a classic AGN, almost the archetype FR II source. In terms of its 'radio morphology' there's little to distinguish it from any classical FR II quasar, e.g. 3C 47. And, as an AGN, it must either have the same, essentially indeterminate (indeterminable?), intrinsic redshift as any quasar, or there must be a way to cleanly distinguish Cygnus A as an AGN from those (quasar) AGNs which have intrinsic redshift ... and do so by observational signatures alone.

Since SDSS' CAS gives an easy way to get lots of good, consistent data on objects it imaged (and some nice eye candy too), here are three:
3C288.1 (SDSS J134213.26+602142.9), a QSO with a redshift of 0.964
3C336 (SDSS J162439.08+234512.1), a QSO/AGN/galaxy/Sy1.2 (a "1.2 Seyfert") with a redshift of 0.927
3C323.1 (SDSS J154743.53+205216.6), a QSO/AGN/Sy1.2 with a redshift of 0.2643.

3C323.1 has been the target of quite a few dedicated observations, and has "notes" on it in nearly a dozen papers; here is part of one, from Crawford and Vanderriest (2000):

3C 323.1 is one of the nearest radio-loud quasars, and is located on the outskirts of the compact cluster of galaxies Z1545.1+2104 (Oemler, Gunn & Oke 1972; Hintzen & Scott 1978; Yee & Green 1984). It is associated with a steep-spectrum triple radio source which is straight and symmetric over a ~360 kpc diameter (Bogers et al. 1994). The quasar lies in a luminous elliptical host galaxy (Neugebauer, Matthews & Armus 1995; Bahcall et al. 1997), with several continuum companions. The dominant companion is a compact galaxy located 2.7 arcsec approximately west at a similar redshift to the quasar (Neugebauer et al. 1995; Canalizo & Stockton 1997); there are two other objects in the field, one at 19 arcsec east and one further north (e.g. McLeod & Rieke 1994; Hes et al. 1996). Hutchings, Johnson & Pyke (1988) find continuum condensations 1.3 arcsec north-west and 3 arcsec south, after subtraction of the quasar light. 3C 323.1 has long been known to show an asymmetric emission-line region, extended approximately from south-east to west across the quasar core (SM87; Hes et al. 1996).

More to come, but it may be a good time to ask solrey what he meant by "in support of Halton Arp's observations of high redshift QSO's embedded within low redshift galaxies", at least in regard to the Fig. 3. objects. For example do you think, solrey, that the radio lobes (and connecting jet(s), if any) are low redshift galaxies? If not, what features in the images are you referring to?

(to be continued)

[Aristarchus]

The biggest question in my mind is why the galaxy forms a plane so thin relative to the distances between galaxies. What makes one form where it does and then you have to go millions of light years to the next one?

If I understand correctly what you're stating above, without having an observational view of the entire scope of the universe, or a much larger picture of it than we have today, it may well indeed mean that this might remain unresolved for quite awhile. Peratt looks at the local phenomena taking place within galaxies and the distances between.

The Evidence for Electric in Cosmic Plasma

With the advent of three-dimensional electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations, investigations of Birkeland current have become possible in plasmas not accessible to in situ measurement; i.e., in plasmas having the dimensions of galaxies or systems of galaxies. The necessity for a three-dimensional electromagnetic approach derives from the fact that the evolution of magnetized plasmas involves complex geometries, intense self-fields, nonlinearities, and explicit time-dependence. Moreover, synchrotron radiation and double layers are discrete particle phenomena and cannot be studied using magnetofluid models of plasma. The importance of applying electromagnetism and plasma physics to the problem of radio galaxy, galaxy, and star formation derives from the fact that the universe is largely matter in its plasma state; i.e., a plasma universe. The motion of this plasma in local regions can lead to pinches and can ultimately condense states of matter. Where double layers form, strong electric fields can accelerate particles to high energies. The intensity and patterns of synchrotron radiation observed in the model simulations are in excellent agreement with those observed from double radio galaxies.

Lastly this paper has treated the special case of the radiation seen by an observer when the observer happens to be located in the directed pattern of a synchrotron source. Many sources with this orientation can be expected in various regions of the sky from the “spaghetti” ground spectrum caused by an extremely large number of synchrotron radiating filaments, when the observer is not in the directed beam, is treated in a separate paper[18].

The problem regarding large redshifts of quasars has not been addressed in this paper. However, it is noteworthy that the geometry depicted in Fig. 2 is identical to that used by Bocko et al. to demonstrate a redshift in the directed beam via the Wolf effect [19].

Electric Space: Evolution of the Plasma Universe

3. Galactic Dimensional Birkeland Currents

Extrapolating the size and strength of magnetospheric currents to interstellar space leads to the suggestion that confined flows in interstellar clouds assists in their formation (Alfven, 1981).

As a natural extension of the size hierarchy in cosmic plasmas, the existence of galactic dimension Birkeland currents of filaments was hypothesized (Alfven & Falthammar, 1963; Peratt, 1986a).

A galactic dimensioned Birkeland current model, the width of a typical filament may be taken to be kpc
(= 1021m),

separated from neighboring filaments by a similar distance. Since current filaments in laboratory plasmas generally have a width/length ratio in the range

10-2 – 10-5 ,

typical 35 kpc wide filament may have an overall length between 35 Mpc and 3.5 Gpc with an average length of 350 Mpc. The circuit, of course, is closed over this distance (Peratt, 1990).

4. The Large Scale Structure of the Plasma Universe

Surface currents, delineating plasma regions of different magnetization, temperature, density, and chemical composition give space a cellular structure (Alfven & Falthammar, 1963). As current-carrying sheet beams collect into filaments, the morphology of the surface currents is filamentary.

For the case of tenuous cosmic plasmas, the thermokinetic pressure is often negligible and hence the magnetic field is force-free. Under the influence of the electromagnetic fields the charged particles drift with the velocity

v = (E X B) /E2

The overall plasma flow is inwards and matter is accumulated in the filaments which, because of their qualitative field line pattern, are called “magnetic ropes”. Magnetic ropes should therefore tend to coincide with material filaments that have a higher density than surroundings. The cosmic magnetic ropes of current filaments are not observable themselves, but the associated filaments of condensed matter can be observed by the radiation they emit and absorb.

It is because of the convection and neutralization of plasma into radiatively cooled current filaments (due to synchrotron losses) that matter in the plasma universe should often display a filamentary morphology.

[Nereid]

(continued)

The simulations do produce high redshift objects described here:

Fig. 13(a) illustrates double sources for which no central "object" of any kind is present, while Fig. 13(b)-(c) illustrates sources in which large-red-shift QSO's have formed at or near the geometric center between filaments. Fig. 14 shows the isophotes of double sources for which the central object is identified as galactic in nature; usually having a large red shift, and being elliptical or peculiar in morphology. This variety of source represents a later stage in temporal evolution and is accompanied by somewhat richer isophotal patterns because of the action of the inductive field in the confined plasma.

Peratt's simulations therefore are in support of Halton Arp's observations of high redshift QSO's embedded within low redshift galaxies.

The Fig. 14 objects (I've tracked down all but one, "3C298.2"; note that there are only 20 objects in Fig. 14, not 21).

Again, the classifications/use of terms is all over the map; a dozen or so are classified as galaxies, but there are several QSOs, and AGNs. All the objects are FR II (as you'd expect), but there are some other classifications too, such as BLRG (broad line region galaxy), and flat spectrum radio source. As with the objects in Fig. 13, several have been identified as x-ray sources, IR sources, even gamma-ray sources.

Even Peratt's use of the term 'QSO' is, apparently, a bit inconsistent; the text - which solrey quotes - seems somewhat at odds with the Figure captions (13: "Fifteen QSO's with and without and optically identifiable object between radio lobes"; 14: "Twenty-one QSO's having a galactic object situated midway between radio lobes").

But perhaps the most interesting is the range of reported redshifts; the Fig. 13 objects range in redshift from 0.188 to 1.184 (mean 0.622), for Fig. 14 0.0556 to 1.194 (mean 0.348). 3C295 may serve as a good example of how different, yet similar, these "midway between radio lobes" objects are (it was also observed by SDSS: SDSS J141120.53+521210.1). There are some 352 references to this object in the literature (according to NED); here is a note on it in a 1978 paper (Kristian et al. (1978)):

Positions were measured on a 48-inch plate, on which the radio galaxy could not be measured directly because its image is blended with those of its companions. A transfer was made to a 200-inch plate by using three galaxies as secondary standards. The resulting uncertainty is estimated to be 1-2 arcsec. The position thus obtained places the brightest galaxy within 1 arcsec of the center of the 5 arcsec double source, using the very accurate radio positions of Pooley, G.G., and Henbest, S.N. (1974) MNRAS, 169, 477. and unambiguously specifies it as the radio source. The source is still sometimes referred to as a case of "colliding" or "interacting" galaxies, dating back to its very early discovery. Optically, however, it now appears similar to many other run-of-the-mill radio galaxies in that it is the brightest member of a cluster and has several close companions (as also do many nonradio bright cluster galaxies). Its absolute magnitude and colors are like those of other bright cluster galaxies at similar redshifts. Its main distinction is that it is intrinsically one of the radio-brightest optically identified sources in the sky at about 10**46 ergs/s, integrated between 10**7 and 10**11 Hz proper frequency.

Note that the reported redshifts of half the objects in Fig. 13 are less than that of 3C295 (0.464).

(to be continued)

[Nereid]

I have downloaded 4 different images of NGC 4346 (none from Hubble or NRAO or ESA that I could find, unfortunately), that odd galaxy pointed out by Peratt as displaying a diocotron instability. I had to reverse (flip L-R) one image because it had the west side on the left, which is the opposite of telescope image coonvention. Then I converted them to the same image dimensions after cropping them to as near the same area of sky and galaxy as possible. Then I used some sharpening and brightness and contrast adjustments in Photoshop Elements to get their general appearances as close and consistent with one another as I could. Only the SDSS image was in color; the other 3 were in B&W and I have no data from which to obtain film sensitivities at other than optical wavelengths, which can influence exposure and sharpness considerably.

A few things you might like to keep in mind when doing image processing with astronomical images.

As I explained elsewhere, astronomy is quantitative, and a very great deal of effort goes into ensuring the quantitative integrity of the observational data. Astronomers have their own file format for things like images and spectra, called FITS (Flexible Image Transport System - read more about it here); among other things it ensures that meta-data about an image or spectrum - potentially quite a lot of such data - goes along with the image.

Astronomical images often - almost always these days - have a huge dynamic range, in terms of the brightness levels of their pixels, certainly far beyond that which the human eye can handle (and distinguish); and a great deal of effort goes into trying to make the 'transfer function' between brightness and pixel value linear (much easier with CCDs than with glass plates with photographic emulsion). Among other things this means that .jpg and .gif image files - which are very common on the internet - will display only a small fraction of the actual data in an astronomical image. Also, applications like PhotoShop do not, generally, preserve a key aspect of astronomical images ... the flux (or luminosity, or brightness). Incidentally, there is a free conversion/import tool, to make bringing FITS into PhotoShop, FITS Liberator.

Fortunately, there are several good - and free! - software packages which can not only read astronomers' FITS images, but also permit image processing which preserves flux, and can export into .jpg format; for example DS9 and IRIS.

SDSS has undergone a major upgrade; read about it here. The Navigate and Explore features now work off DR8 (Data Release 8), and have been improved. Among other things, if you click on FITS, under PhotoObj or SpecObj in Explore, you can get the actual astronomical data (i.e. the FITS files; the Documentation tab takes you to a detailed explanation).

(to be continued)

[Nereid]

why on Earth (or indeed anywhere else) would redshift need to come into play in a galaxy simulation? I mean, it's not as though the galaxy depends on its distance from Earth for its rotation rate (to any significant degree), and I doubt anyone modeling similar phenomena would need to plug in the "how far is it from Earth?" figure.

In researching the question of how, in the EU paradigm, one determines whether an astronomical object is a quasar (or not), I came across this, from the Aug 08, 2005 Quasars in Infrared are Still Nearby TPOD:

If the quasars are not at the farthest reaches of the universe, their energy output is much less than the math indicates

But if (and I always stress the "if") the distance gauges are not accurate and we are not getting those signatures at the observed intensities from the inferred distances, [...]

And applying that same "if" to Peratt's simulation (well, to its application to "galactic-dimensioned (50 kpc in width) Birkeland filaments") seems to lead to inconsistencies, or at least a situation where nothing can be determined ... or does it?

If the observed values of radiation and ergs per second and other inferred measures are wrong, then how can they support theory?

Dave Smith is right, in one sense.

Estimating the values of some physical quantities in/of some astronomical objects may be possible, without knowing anything (much) about the distance to them (other than the fact that they are >1 kpc distant).

For example, maybe Table I parameters such as "Galactic magnetic field" or "Average energy per electron" come from methods and calculations that do not include distance, even indirectly?

(to be continued)

[Nereid]

One last post for today (brings my total up to four).

From Table I in Paper I, the "Galactic magnetic field, B, G" parameter; I think the "Hargrave and Ryle (1974)" source is "Observations of Cygnus A with the 5-km radio telescope".

Estimates of the (galactic) magnetic field are given in their Table II, in section 5; the values are consistent with what's in Peratt's Table I. It's not entirely clear (to me at least) how, in detail, these estimates were derived, but they seem to depend on the estimated energy emitted in the form of synchrotron radiation, observed here on Earth as radio. Of course, an estimated distance is necessary for such a calculation, and the authors say this earlier in the paper:

The details of the source components are summarized in Table 1, where the angular measures have been converted into physical scales on the assumption of an Einstein-de Sitter world model with a value of Hubble's constant of 50 km s-1 Mpc -1.

In Secton VI, "DOUBLE RADIO SOURCES", sub-section D, "Radiated Power and Isophotal Morphologies of Strong Sources", Peratt writes:

The total power emitted in synchrotron radiation is L = 2.1 x 7.1 x 1050 J/1.28 x 1014 s = 1.16 x 1037 W, which is to be compared with the radio luminosity of Cygnus A of 1.6-4.4 x 1037 W (Table I).

Estimates of "the radio luminosity of Cygnus A" depend, of course, on estimates of the distance to Cyg A.

[Nereid]

To the degree that large scale knots and kinks (in galaxies, nebulae, nova remnants and the like) reflect the lab scale electron beam patterns etched onto carbon witness plates or exciting a fluorescent screen(Peratt's figure 1.20), it may not be completely erroneous to posit that those instabilities seen in telescopes do seem to imitate the much scaled down plasma beams in the lab.

Re-reading Jim's post brought a question that's been floating around my head, for some time, now, into focus; namely, where's the spectroscopy?

Peratt's model certainly makes explicit use of electromagnetic radiation - he uses the observed radio luminosity from several radio galaxies to fix some of the key parameters in it, for example - but beyond some apparent identification of synchrotron radiation as the cause of the spectal slope observed in some such objects ('apparent' because Peratt does not seem to make this link explicit), and 21cm maps in Section VII B of Paper II, I can't see much use is made of the clues to physical processes that surely lurk in the spectra. I touched on this in an earlier response in this thread, but I'm curious about the broader question too. Here are some examples:

* what can the estimated SED (spectral energy distribution) of an object tell about the (plasma) physical processes that cause it? For example, from gammas to radio, what is the SED expected of the "clashing cymbals"?

* how can (optical) spectra be used to test hypotheses concerning star formation? For example, the time scale for star formation is laid out in Paper II; how consistent are the stellar components of galaxies (including "radioquasars", "radioquiet QSOs", and "Seyfert spirals") with star formation hypotheses (derived from the model), as estimated from their spectra?

This means that if the electromagnetic tug acted on only a small part it will not simply rip it out and leave the rest of it behind; the tug will very gently move the centre of gravity much more slowly than the rest of the Sun will move to balance itself out.
[...]
I think it's worth noting that this force on the Sun is only 0.1% of that exerted gravitationally by Jupiter, which is observational evidence that the EM-driven tug of the Sun will not disrupt it in any way.

Let me see if I've understood this correctly ... if you could somehow measure it sufficiently precisely and accurately, the motion (velocity, acceleration) of the solar system's barycentre (with respect to the centre of the Milky Way galaxy) would (could?) enable you to test various hypotheses concerning 'electromagnetic tugs' on the Sun?

Would they not need to be inconsistent at only astronomical scales to be falsified, showing that they do not scale as proposed? If his simulations are wrong it may simply be a fault with the simulation rather than a fault with the theory, which would be indicated by being wrong at laboratory scales too.

Of course you'd have to look at the model in some detail to learn where it went wrong (assuming an 'astronomical scale' inconsistency; the lab-scale results are, presumably, not inconsistent). Perhaps the easiest place to start would be the assumption of galactic-scale field-aligned currents.

[seb]

This means that if the electromagnetic tug acted on only a small part it will not simply rip it out and leave the rest of it behind; the tug will very gently move the centre of gravity much more slowly than the rest of the Sun will move to balance itself out.
[...]
I think it's worth noting that this force on the Sun is only 0.1% of that exerted gravitationally by Jupiter, which is observational evidence that the EM-driven tug of the Sun will not disrupt it in any way.

Let me see if I've understood this correctly ... if you could somehow measure it sufficiently precisely and accurately, the motion (velocity, acceleration) of the solar system's barycentre (with respect to the centre of the Milky Way galaxy) would (could?) enable you to test various hypotheses concerning 'electromagnetic tugs' on the Sun?

I don't think that measuring the position of the barycentre itself would help much, because it is the explanation for why the barycentre is where it is that needs to be found.

If you could measure the distribution of mass in the Sun, divided according to charge (including dipoles of neutral particles/atoms), and you drew a line tangential to the Sun's movement around the galactic core, then I would expect to see a very subtle imbalance in the distribution either side of that line. Suitably charged particles should be slightly leading the motion. Unfortunately it's not a measurement that can be easily taken, so it's likely to remain speculation.

Probably the only way to decide whether it's probable is to measure the various fields and decide on the best explanation for them, which may or may not then imply that the Sun's orbit is dominated by electricity instead of dark matter.

[Goldminer]

If, indeed, "red shift is not an indicator of distance for QUASARs" (whether in bold large type or not), then do we need to throw Peratt's two 1986 papers (and all the later ones he published, based on these two), plus much of his lengthy book, into the round file?

If not, why not?

No, we don't throw anything out. We keep it all, for the same reason the courthouse keeps all of the proceedings of court cases. When the Big Bang is finally laid to rest, we won't forget it, it will be used to demonstrate how one must keep an open but skeptical mind about everything. Anthony Peratt's work, Halton Arp's work, Tom Van Flandern, All the EU-PC [keep guessing that I mean the European Union, silly girl] and many others are showing the way, in spite of those who smugly proclaim:

So what does this mean? Well, there are a few explanations, with varying ranges of likelihood. For example, it could mean that the universe is not expanding ... but this would contradict a wealth of other cosmological information, [Goldminer: as if such wealth is not subject to scrutiny!] so is fairly unlikely (although some people who prefer the steady state theory, and some are still out there, may jump on this finding to oppose the big bang model of cosmology).

As if those who "are still out there" are a dying breed!

For example there is Pierre-Marie Robitaille's article, here which you so quickly announced as a fail, and which you have so far failed to demonstrate why; because if it is not a fail, makes basically all your posts non-conversations, as you say, doesn't it?

.

[jjohnson]

Okay, I'm reading about FITS and have downloaded the version 3 of FITS Liberator to try out, once I get the drift of the FITS data layouts. Not a trite issue, time or concentration-wise. I'm too old to be taking this up...>whi-i-ine<

I am aware that massaging files with Photoshop Elements is a sort of silly or useless thing to do from the quantitative data standpoint, but I was not trying to do that so much as see if the newer images as published on the net showed better resolution and/or gave the lie to Peratt's work with now-ancient imagery. Mostly I was trying to get the galaxy images cropped to about the same field and then to the same scale, so I could look at four images and see what visual differences they represented. I don't care if they overlap in terms of spectrum a little here and there - it it's outside the visible spectrum but excites colloidal silver some (old photographic plates can do this) it just shifts more info into the visual print - I'm not into measuring IR values off astronomical images just yet!

I think it's bad record-keeping to throw out old papers by anyone. Sometimes to move forward takes a re-read of older literature, in a variety of fields. Past mistakes are sure to be repeated if we don't or can't maintain awareness of their causes and resolution, if any. I still re-read Feynman's books because I've forgotten so much. (There's not much call in architectural acoustics for using little clocks to time the phasing of electromagnetic waves to see how they interfere over multiple paths.) But for understanding how interferometers work at detecting and teasing out amazing pieces of information, it's not a bad analogy. He was a great teacher, and an humble man (sometimes) to boot. He was never shy about saying, "we honestly don't know". I hope we humans never lose sight of that simple truism about so much of what we investigate.

Jim

[Nereid]

yet we still haven't agreed upon any common ground

This is a very good point, flyingcloud!

Let's see where we are, with a very simple question, one that should be quite easily answered, objectively: do at least some of the parameter values in Table of Peratt's Paper I depend upon the Hubble redshift-distance relationship?

Nereid, regarding cosmic distance estimates to stars and galaxies. I've read pros and cons about redshifts, and about both Arp's and Hubble's doubts about this and that, and the "if this, then..." arguments. I have read a lot about methodologies of constructing the "distance ladder" so that progressively farther distances can be ascertained with some degree of accuracy (not to be confused with precision). Figuring the distance to something that is so far away that we will never go there in our lifetimes to check the results takes a lot of ingenuity and assumptions. As you pointed out above, if any one of those fails, the whole house of cards is supposed to come down.

Indeed, which is one reason why such an enormous amount of effort has been put in to checking everything a bazillion times (perhaps davesmith_au might call it pedantry gone wild?), and, especially, into finding ways to estimate distance independently. As far as I know, for galaxies more than a few Mpc distant there's really only a couple of methods that skip past most rungs on the distance ladder, and only one that is direct (i.e. makes no assumptions whatsoever re any intermediate rungs). The good news is that, as far as I know, the overall consistency is astonishingly good, to the ~10% level (in some overall, statistical, sense).

Astronomers have built too large a house of cards here to fail, in a sense, because papers which raise doubts (including quotations from Hubble concerning his reservations) or discuss "intrinsic" red shift, or report changes of mass in Cepheid variables, or report on anomalies in supernova light curves or otherwise try to raise what could be valid objections to ideas about distance and Universe expansion, etc. have NOT brought down the Standard Model in cosmology.

Well, one person's opinion, concerning their reservations does not make for very good science, does it? No matter who that person is.

"Intrinsic" redshift is something I'm sure I'll be involved in lengthy discussions of, here in this forum, before too long. However, for now I'd like to focus, in this thread, on Peratt's model. For the other points, well, I'm not familiar with "changes of mass in Cepheid variables" (and don't know how that'd be relevant anyway), and I've read no reports of "anomalies in supernova light curves" that seem to have much relevance either.

Not knowing makes me a little uneasy.

A central question must then be something like how - even in principle - can you (or anyone) know?

Peratt looks at the local phenomena taking place within galaxies and the distances between.

The Evidence for Electric in Cosmic Plasma
[...]
Electric Space: Evolution of the Plasma Universe

Thanks for these Aristarchus. As far as I can tell, there's nothing in either paper that differs from what's in Paper I or II (or Peratt's book).

Specifically, the scaling from simulation/model/lab to cosmic dimensions is done using the Hubble redshift-distance relationship.