Dr. Halton C Arp and the Fundamental Assumption.

A fundamental assumption is a tiny little idea that is so basic that it affects the very way we interpret physical evidence. The word fundamental means it is foundational. You can only have one fundamental assumption at a time. You cannot examine your fundamental assumption until you back away from it. You cannot test it while you are standing on it. It affects your entire way of thinking. The modern fundamental assumption is so simple and basic that it is the primary rule or principle that scientists use in their investigations. All scientists accept the fundamental assumption as true. In their minds it is a tautology - a statement that is necessarily true in every way. This little assumption is the dogma of science. A dogma is something that is accepted as authoritatively true.

Scientists often claim that they base their theories on objective evidence and therefore science is the exact opposite of faith. Unfortunately that is not true. The scientific way of thinking rests entirely upon an authoritative dogma, an article of faith about the fundamental nature of material things. Scientific experiments and mathematical theories never test this dogma. They use it to construct experiments, theories and complex mathematical models. When scientists examine the universe, they automatically disbelieve any evidence that conflicts with their dogma. Scientists are usually not aware of their dogma. They often construct extremely complex mathematical ideas about earth-history and beginnings. Many of these ideas cannot be negated. Such things as cosmological redshift, theories of gravity, a big bang, dark energy, dark matter, the age of the universe and “redshift as a measure of distance” all rest on the dogma of science. Aristotle claimed that the most basic ideas must be accepted without proof. Subsequent ideas may be proven, but they are supported by the fundamental assumption which remains unprovable.

The scientific system is based on ideas that are accepted “a priori.” This web page is intended to get you, the reader, to question and test your assumptions. Aristotle invented the modern fundamental assumption. It is such a tiny little idea that no one ever questions it today. I refer to it as “Aristotle’s Conjecture.” It is because he invented this idea, that Aristotle became the father of science. That doesn’t mean he thought like modern scientists. It just means he finally “solved” the monumental problem about the nature of physical change that had been debated for centuries. Aristotle’s little assumption our minds captive. We find it extremely difficult to think outside of the logical box that Aristotle invented. Experiments never test Aristotle’s Conjecture. They only reinforce its dogmatic system of thought.

Halton Arp is perhaps the greatest living astronomer today. Why do I say that? Arp questions the very nature of change at the most fundamental level. In the universe, questioning your assumptions is often more important than doing “normal science.” According to Thomas S Kuhn, scientific laws and theories limit the acceptable solutions that are available to scientists. Scientific revolutions cannot happen until someone sees a different relationship between the bits of physical evidence. The new way of organizing and seeing the evidence eventually overthrows all the old theories. The scientists who have been doing “normal science” do everything in their power to ignore or undermine the new way of organizing the evidence. Arp sees relationships between objects separated by degrees in the sky. He also understands how crucial assumptions are to the whole business of science. As predicted by Kuhn, the “big bangers” have acted to suppress and ignore the connections Arp documents between objects with different redshifts.

Arp spent years actively photographing and cataloging strange galaxies with the 200-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson. Edwin Hubble himself assisted in the design of this telescope. Many astronomers teach classes or work on mathematical models of the universe. Arp was a hands-on astronomer who spent years actually photographing strange galaxies. Arp published The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies in 1966.

Edwin Hubble began his studies of nearby galaxies using the 100-inch telescope also located on Mount Wilson. He discovered a Cepheid variable star in the Andromeda galaxy with a period of 31 days. Using the period of the Cepheid, Hubble estimated the distance to the Andromeda galaxy at almost a million light years. Hubble discovered that the redshift of his galaxies had a linear relationship to his estimate of their distance. He concluded that the farther away a galaxy is - the faster it is moving away from us. The Hubble relationship is universally used by astronomers to measure the distance to the “island universes.”

The redshift of a distant object is a measure of the difference in wavelength of stellar light in comparison to the spectrum from a laboratory sample. Redshift is believed to have several causes including relative motion. The “cosmological redshift” is the idea that space and time have stretched out while the light was in transit. Light got tired because the road kept getting longer during its journey. The wavelength of light has stretched out because space and time stretched out. The cosmological redshift cannot be negated. It is merely a hypothesis that cannot be substantiated. All but a few close by galaxies are redshifted.

Arp photographed and documented 339 strange galaxies in his catalog. This catalog was published about the time that quasars were discovered. Quasars have high redshifts and also are incredibly luminous. They emit energy in different bands which is why the term quasar was coined - a quasi-stellar radio source. Quasars change rapidly which means they are compact objects perhaps around the size of the solar system.

Arp discovered that many active galaxies were associated with quasars. These quasars had higher redshifts than the galaxies that they were linked to. When Arp saw long strings of quasars along with jets and streams of gas all pointing in the same direction, he began to associate them. He claims that quasars were ejected from a “parent” galaxy and that they are relatively close by. In Arp’s view, the redshift of quasars and clusters of micro galaxies is mostly an intrinsic property of their matter. He proposes that active galaxies eject compact blue matter in opposing jets from their nuclei. The ejected matter evolves into high redshift quasars which in turn spread out into miniature galaxies. Arp also documents how the redshifts of quasars are statistically quantized. The redshift of quasars has certain preferential values in all directions of the sky. How could objects in different directions have preferred values of redshift like the electron energies in an atom? Doesn’t this violate the cosmological principle that the earth is not in a privileged position?

Arp describes in his books how long strings of quasars are associated with the faint Abell clusters. He has a site with abstracts at http://www.haltonarp.com   The reader may be interested in reading his paper on long strings (several degrees) of quasars, Markarian galaxies and Abell clusters that appear to have been ejected from M101. If these objects are really associated, the universe could not have been formed by a big bang. The reader is encouraged to read Halton Arp’s books, Seeing Red and Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies. These books are understandable to a person who has done some basic reading in astronomy. It is not necessary to do differential equations to look at his evidence and understand what he is saying.

The Virgo cluster contains about two thousand galaxies. A deep plot of the Virgo cluster that uses redshift as a measure of distance has long fingers pointing straight back at the earth. To Arp these plots are the consequence of not understanding that redshift is an inherent property of evolving matter. The voids do not really exist except in the mathematics of those who use the redshift as a measure of distance. At the apex of the “void” are large parent galaxies that have ejected material whose redshift changes as it spreads out. Gas streams, bow shocks and the quantization of redshift all indicate that active galaxies have ejected material that changes as it evolves into miniature galaxies.

This redshift plot is of a thin slice that covers almost 180 degrees in of the sky. Notice the long fingers of empty space that point right back to the earth from all directions.

Arp’s evidence suggests the universe needs to be interpreted in a completely different way. The universe has spread out or stretched out and is continuing to do so. This stretching out is not like a balloon expanding or a big bang. Large galaxies have ejected matter which has evolved and expanded into clusters of tiny galaxies. The universe is something like a forest of bamboo. Large isolated bamboo trees have sent out shoots that have populated the areas around them. Cosmological bamboo shoots change radically as they grow. The shoots can never grow as large as the parent. Their matter can also never achieve the nature of the parent. Astronomers have gotten used to seeing the large parent bamboo as close-by and the tiny shoots that crop up around them as far-away in the background. Arp tells us to look at the statistical associations and the links that are visible at many frequencies. The universe is not made up of isolated “island universes.” Galaxies are associated with material around them that was ejected. Even the Milky Way galaxy has a long stream of neutral hydrogen linking us to the Magellanic miniature galaxies. The universe is populated with galaxies that are surrounded by quasars and other objects that were ejected and are actively changing.

Think about physical things that change. Redshifts that change over time means there is fundamental change going on. You can think of fundamental change as change that affects atoms and consequently everything that is made of atoms. What is it about primordial atoms that was different? Did time run slower? Was mass somehow lower? Was the energy level of the quanta lower in primordial atoms? Has gravity somehow changed? None of these questions is fundamental enough. Here is a better questions, “How can matter change?” Aristotle invented the modern answer to the problem of change. He did not base his conjecture on evidence but on necessity. If his basic idea is false, the quest for a mathematical solution to the cosmos is a futile enterprise.

One of the most interesting things about galactic nuclei is that they are seen to eject long straight jets of blue material that does not exhibit an identifiable spectrum. Most astronomers believe that galaxies have black holes at their cores that contain the mass of thousands of suns. The fact that the jets move at high speed and in straight lines is extremely important. If a black hole is at the center of a galaxy then it should be exerting a huge amount of gravity. Gravity should force the ejecta to curve and go into orbit around the galactic core. Some have suggested that electric and magnetic fields propel the jets. There is certainly evidence of such fields in the polarization of this light. In my opinion, the “electric universe” is another attempt to prevent anyone from questioning the fundamental assumption.

Aristotle’s Conjecture is the fundamental assumption. It is his little idea that allows science to have a logical basis. It is also his little idea that allows higher mathematics to “work.” What was the idea that Aristotle invented that so constrains the modern mind that it cannot accept the evidence of the universe in its simplicity? What does "change" mean when it comes to physical reality?

It is instructive to go back to the ages before Aristotle. No one in that age could ever ask the kinds of questions we ask today. No one before the Greek philosophers could think the way we do. They could never have been scientists. Why not? They believed in change. They believed that their ancestors lived on an earth that was remarkably different from the present earth. Some of the oceans had formed since the golden age of their ancestors. Everything on earth had changed, the mountains, the seas, the seasons, the planets, the length of life and even the size of the earth. All the pagan literature and the Bible agree that things were remarkably different in the early ages of the earth. They all said that the early ancestors lived extremely long lives. Children matured slowly in that era. Hesiod says a child played on his mothers knee til he was 100 years old. Hesiod said age did not affect our ancestors like it does us. He even predicted that the end of the earth would come when children were born with graying temples. Ovid’s pagan poem Metamorphoses documents the ages when everything on earth changed. There existed in that era a different fundamental assumption about the nature of material things. It also is very simple. It is diametrically opposed to Aristotle’s Conjecture.

Ancient peoples could never have been scientists because they believed the very opposite of science - they believed that everything changes. They could never have invented higher mathematics because there was no such thing as an independent variable. Everything was a sea of continuous and interlinked fundamental change. The pagan religions longed for the past. Their myths were the opposite of progress. They longed to experience the golden age of their ancestors when everything was better. At the new year festivals they re-enacted the stories of the battles of the planet gods and longed to experience the primordial world. Hesiod said it would be better to be dead than live in the age of iron - the inferior age he lived in.

The Greek philosophers invented the fundamental assumption of the Western world. It was a most difficult thing to invent. They argued looking for the arche, the fundamental assumption, for centuries. What was the big problem? They grew up in a world where everyone believed in change - a great fluxion of change that affected everything. The early philosophers sought to find something that did not change. Some said it was water or air. Some invented atoms. Parmenides even said that there was no such thing as change because if things really changed philosophers could never solve the mysteries of the cosmos. Plato even separated the cosmos into Forms (unchanging things in a realm of Ideas) and the physical realm where things could change, decay and regenerate. Aristotle, after reviewing the position of the other philosophers, stated the assumption. We simply must believe that something in all physical substance does not change. It was to be taken as an unproven universal assumption. It was not important to understand what it was that did not change. We simply had to assume that at some level there was a realm of changelessness.

Aristotle became the founder of science. He invented logic - which was not possible before he invented the fundamental assumption. (If everything in the universe was continuously changing at some fundamental level, the rules of logic make no sense.) Aristotle's Conjecture affects everything epistemic. It affects experiments, mathematics and science.

When scientists measure time, mass, light, gravity or charge they must assume the assumption before the experiment will work. There is no way to compare a second from last year with one from this year. Properties of matter such as mass or inertia are the result of a complete reliance on Aristotle's conjecture. Measurements in the realm of atoms have a circular nature since they are based on the fundamental assumption. They always assume that at some level material things do not change. What if all the fundamentals change together? What if there exists a relationship in all matter that changes together without any element having an independent and invariant nature? Such change could not be detected by the finest instruments or the most precise mathematics.  Yet such a universe should look much like Aprp's explanations.

Aristotle’s Conjecture is so fundamental that it affects almost everything you have learned in the Western system. It affects history, science, government, society, geology, astronomy and even ideas about progress. If you are interested in the truth about the universe, you should test your little assumption. You should ask yourself what is the universe telling us. Think about it.

The evidence that Halton Arp documents is telling us something very simple. Arp’s evidence strikes at the most important question you can ever ask about physical substance. How does physical substance change? The universe is shouting that Aristotle was wrong and his conjecture is false.