Qinopio

I've recently been informed by a YEC about the quantization of redshifts, and the inference that stars are arranged in "shells" around our general location. It means that we're in a special spot in the universe, therefore God made us special here, etc. I've done a little searching on the topic and this page talks about one theory that this Barry Setterfield guy uses to explain it. I believe he's been mentioned on the boards before but I've never seen a real analysis of his work.

Is there an explanation for this? Does this mean we've got spheres of stars around us? Is it all hogwash? Why or why not?

Xeluan

I dug up some info on this a few weeks ago. Recent studies have more or less put to death the idea of quantization of redshifts. I have the references at home alas so can't give anymore than that. IIRC, the surveys used a larger sample size and the quantization disappeared. I'll post some information later tonight that may help

Russell Humphreys is another creationist who has used quantization of redshifts as "evidence" for his ideas.

Edited to add I found a few things:

http://tinyurl.com/c6kg for some good info from google.

Also:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/f...ection-16.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0208117

Lobstrosity

Wow, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Kudos for that. No, that claim is utter hogwash--have they not learned anything from the tremendously embarrassing failure of geocentrism? First off, we're no where near what could be considered the center of our solar system. Nothing comes close to going around us. On top of this, we're no where near the center of our galaxy. We're off to the side somewhere in one of the boringly-normal spiral arms orbiting the galactic center from a distance of about 25,000 light years (so our sun is not at some fixed location in space). If anything, creationists could claim that other galaxies are arranged in spherical shells around our galaxy, implying that our galaxy is at some special location in space, but this says nothing about the significance of Earth. Maybe the truly special planet is around one of the other 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.

Also, look at this redshift data and tell me whether you see any quantization apparent at this resolution.

Qinopio

Lobstrosity, that's what they're claiming. That the Milky Way is in a relatively small (cosmically speaking) area in which all redshifts appear to be quantized. Go elsewhere and this effect diminishes.

Coragyps

Like Xeluan said: the illusion of quantized redshifts was from data from a couple of "pencil-beam" redshift surveys. More recent, much more complete surveys have debunked the idea. I don't have the references, but I think it even showed up on the S&S forum here a year or so ago.

Shadow Wraith

:banghead:

I'm sick of those damn cretinists trying to use Halton Arp's work to prove their point (misrepresenting it in the process) when it does nothing of the sort.

Qinopio, I'm going to send you an email in a little while about this subject. I'll be sending it via the contact form on your webpage.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

What's even better is that somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy, Creationists of the Xitoa Sect are using "quantized red shifts" to support the claim that their galaxy is the center of the universe, as the Works of Xitoa clearly states in Zi'trek 4:46.

These people really should understand WHY we see redshifts--everything that is not closely gravitationally attracted is going away from everything else at a rate proportional to the distance between them--sort of like a bunch of marks on a ballon that gets blown up. From any one's prespective, it is the center of exansion--however, the reality is that the center is elsewhere.

ps418

Bump to make sure that everyone saw that you added this link (No Periodicities in 2dF Redshift Survey Data).

Patrick

Qinopio

Ah, thanks. I've also heard about galaxies whose arms have significantly different redshifts from one another (I believe the figure was 72 km/s difference). Does anyone know how that comes about?

[Shadow, I got your e-mail and skimmed it, I'll reply when I've read it all]

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

If it's rotating about it's axis and it's moving away from us. That way, there are arms that are moving away from us, and there are some moving towards us. The whole of the galaxy is moving away from us. Thus all the light is redshifted, but some is redshifted more than others.