December 30, Hubble Day 2013: Look to the stars for our future


[Today is actually the day!  You may fly your flag if you choose.  This is the traditional Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub Hubble Day post.]

Lift a glass of champagne today in tribute to Edwin Hubble and his great discovery. Not sure what to call it — Hubble Day, Looking Up Day, Endless Possibilities Day — whatever, this is the anniversary of Edwin Hubble’s announcement that he had discovered the universe is much, much larger than anyone had imagined, containing far more stars than anyone had dared guess.

It’s a big universe out there.

Ultraviolet image of the Andromeda Galaxy, first known to be a galaxy by Edwin Hubble on December 30, 1924 - Galaxy Evolution Explorer image courtesy NASA

Ultraviolet image of the Andromeda Galaxy, first known to be a galaxy by Edwin Hubble on December 30, 1924 – Galaxy Evolution Explorer image courtesy NASA

So, today is a good day to celebrate the universe in all it’s glory – December 30.

On December 30, 1924, Edwin Hubble announced he’d discovered other galaxies in distant space. Though it may not have been so clear at the time, it meant that, as a galaxy, we are not alone in the universe (whether we are alone as intelligent life is a separate question). It also meant that the universe is much, much bigger than most people had dared to imagine.

I keep trying to get people to celebrate.

In 2008 for Hubble Day, Wired picked up on the story (with a gracious link to 2007’s post here at the Bathtub). Wired includes several links to even more information, a good source of information. See Wired’s 2009 post here.

Hubble was the guy who showed us the universe is not only bigger than we imagined, it’s probably much bigger and much more fantastic than we can imagine. Hubble is the guy who opened our imaginations to the vastness of all creation.

How does one celebrate Hubble Day? Here are some suggestions:

  • Easier than Christmas cards: Send a thank-you note to your junior high school science teacher, or whoever it was who inspired your interest in science. Mrs. Hedburg, Mrs. Andrews, Elizabeth K. Driggs, Herbert Gilbert, Mr. Willis, and Stephen McNeal, thank you.
  • Rearrange your Christmas/Hanukkah/Eid/KWANZAA lights in the shape of the Andromeda Galaxy — or in the shape of any of the great photos from the Hubble Telescope (Andromeda Galaxy pictured above; Hubble images here)

    A few of the images from the Hubble Telescope

    A few of the images from the Hubble Telescope

  • Go visit your local science museum; take your kids along – borrow somebody else’s kids if you have to (take them along, too); this year, in Dallas, you can visit the Perot Museum of Nature and Science — it’s a doozy
  • Spend two hours in your local library, just looking through the books on astronomy and the universe
  • Write a letter to your senators and congressman; tell them space exploration takes a minuscule portion of our federal budget, but it makes us dream big; tell them we need to dream big, and so they’d better make sure NASA is funded well.  While you’re at it, put in a plug for funding Big Bird and the rest of public broadcasting, too.  Science education in this nation more and more becomes the science shows on NPR and PBS, watched by kids who learned to read and think by watching Big Bird.
  • Anybody got a good recipe for a cocktail called “The Hubble?” “The Andromeda?” Put it in the comments, please.  “The Hubble” should have bubbles in it, don’t you think?  What was it the good monk said?  He was working to make great wine, but goofed somewhere, and charged the wine with another dose of yeast.  When he uncorked the very first bottle of what would come to be called champagne, Benedictine Monk Dom Pierre Perignon said “I am drinking stars!”  Only in French.  In any case, a Hubble cocktail should have bubbles, some of Perignon’s stars.

The encore post, from 2007:

December 30, 1924, Edwin Hubble announced the results of his observations of distant objects in space.

PBS

Edwin Hubble

In 1924, he announced the discovery of a Cepheid, or variable star, in the Andromeda Nebulae. Since the work of Henrietta Leavitt had made it possible to calculate the distance to Cepheids, he calculated that this Cepheid was much further away than anyone had thought and that therefore the nebulae was not a gaseous cloud inside our galaxy, like so many nebulae, but in fact, a galaxy of stars just like the Milky Way. Only much further away. Until now, people believed that the only thing existing outside the Milky Way were the Magellanic Clouds. The Universe was much bigger than had been previously presumed.

Later Hubble noted that the universe demonstrates a “red-shift phenomenon.” The universe is expanding. This led to the idea of an initial expansion event, and the theory eventually known as Big Bang.

Hubble’s life offered several surprises, and firsts:

Hubble was a tall, elegant, athletic, man who at age 30 had an undergraduate degree in astronomy and mathematics, a legal degree as a Rhodes scholar, followed by a PhD in astronomy. He was an attorney in Kentucky (joined its bar in 1913), and had served in WWI, rising to the rank of major. He was bored with law and decided to go back to his studies in astronomy.

In 1919 he began to work at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, where he would work for the rest of his life. . . .
Hubble wanted to classify the galaxies according to their content, distance, shape, and brightness patterns, and in his observations he made another momentous discovery: By observing redshifts in the light wavelengths emitted by the galaxies, he saw that galaxies were moving away from each other at a rate constant to the distance between them (Hubble’s Law). The further away they were, the faster they receded. This led to the calculation of the point where the expansion began, and confirmation of the big bang theory. Hubble calculated it to be about 2 billion years ago, but more recent estimates have revised that to 20 billion years ago.

An active anti-fascist, Hubble wanted to joined the armed forces again during World War II, but was convinced he could contribute more as a scientist on the homefront. When the 200-inch telescope was completed on Mt. Palomar, Hubble was given the honor of first use. He died in 1953.

“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.”

That news on December 30, 1924, didn’t make the first page of the New York Times. The Times carried a small note on February 25, 1925, that Hubble won a $1,000 prize from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.

(Does anyone have a suitable citation for that video? Where did it come from? Who produced it? Is there more somewhere?)

Happy Hubble Day! Look up!

Resources:

Hubble Space Telescope - NASA image

Hubble Space Telescope, working homage to Edwin Hubble – NASA image

Even More Resources:

63 Responses to December 30, Hubble Day 2013: Look to the stars for our future

  1. […] almost every state.  Bastille Day gets a celebration even in Oak Cliff, Texas.  I’ve pushed Hubble Day, and Feynman Day; this weekend I’ll encourage people to celebrate James Madison’s […]

    Like

  2. Black Flag® says:

    Oh, Ed, your mind is gone.

    I comment on them, which is “posting” too.

    Like

  3. Ed Darrell says:

    I keep forgetting you write my posts for me.

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  4. Gee, as I said in my first post…

    “But that is science-at-work, and Hubble certainly was a great scientist.”

    Like

  5. Ed Darrell says:

    In the 1920s, most people, including most astronomers, did not know that there were many more than our Milky Way galaxy, and especially, Hubble pointed out that the there were more than just a few galaxies, but thousands upon thousands.

    Any way it’s sliced, Hubble’s revelations were a major shift in thinking about the universe.

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  6. “We have better tools today. We can measure more accurately.”

    Yeah, we can.
    And that shows Hubble’s “Law” ain’t a law – it is proposition, and nothing more.

    We already knew we lived in a “large Universe”. There was no profound revelation to this whatsoever.

    “Confusing cepheid measures and red shift measures might be understood in reading this explanation. Go check out the full article.”

    There is no confusion. As already provided, objects together have different redshifts, thus redshift cannot determine “distance”.

    As -again- provided, if you cannot discern the difference between “this means that” and “this doesn’t mean that”, you cannot make any claim whatsoever about “that”.

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  7. Ed Darrell says:

    Hmm. Here’s a newer paper from PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), which notes the problems, difficulties and later-found errors in Hubble’s work, but which also explains why his work remains a part of the foundation of modern cosmology (that is, Big Bang is not falsified).

    “Hubble’s diagram and cosmic expansion,” Robert P. Kirshner, 8–13, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2536799100

    Quoting from the abstract:

    Edwin Hubble’s classic article on the expanding universe appeared in PNAS in 1929 [Hubble, E. P. (1929) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 15, 168–173]. The chief result, that a galaxy’s distance is proportional to its redshift, is so well known and so deeply embedded into the language of astronomy through the Hubble diagram, the Hubble constant, Hubble’s Law, and the Hubble time, that the article itself is rarely referenced. Even though Hubble’s distances have a large systematic error, Hubble’s velocities come chiefly from Vesto Melvin Slipher, and the interpretation in terms of the de Sitter effect is out of the mainstream of modern cosmology, this article opened the way to investigation of the expanding, evolving, and accelerating universe that engages today’s burgeoning field of cosmology.

    The publication of Edwin Hubble’s 1929 article “A relation between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae” marked a turning point in understanding the universe. In this brief report, Hubble laid out the evidence for one of the great discoveries in 20th century science: the expanding universe. Hubble showed that galaxies recede from us in all directions and more distant ones recede more rapidly in proportion to their distance. His graph of velocity against distance (Fig. 1) is the original Hubble diagram; the equation that describes the linear fit, velocity = Ho × distance, is Hubble’s Law; the slope of that line is the Hubble constant, Ho; and 1/Ho is the Hubble time. Although there were hints of cosmic expansion in earlier work, this is the publication that convinced the scientific community that we live in an expanding universe. Because the result is so important and needs such constant reference, astronomers have created eponymous Hubble entities to use Hubble’s astonishing discovery without a reference to the original publication in PNAS (1).†

    And:

    Today, >70 years later, exquisite observations of the cosmic microwave background (2), measurement of light elements synthesized in the first few minutes of the universe (3), and modern versions of Hubble’s Law form a firm triangular foundation for modern cosmology. We now have confidence that a geometrically flat universe has been expanding for the past 14 billion yr, growing in contrast through the action of gravity from a hot and smooth Big Bang to the lumpy and varied universe of galaxies, stars, planets, and people we see around us. Observations have forced us to accept a dark and exotic universe that is ≈30% dark matter with only 4% of the universe made of familiar protons and neutrons. Of that small fraction of familiar material, most is not visible. Like a dusting of snow on a mountain ridge, luminous matter reveals the presence of unseen objects.

    Extensions of Hubble’s work with today’s technology have developed vast new arenas for exploration: extensive mapping using Hubble’s Law shows the arrangement of matter in the universe, and, by looking further back in time than Hubble could, we now see beyond the nearby linear expansion of Hubble’s Law to trace how cosmic expansion has changed over the vast span of time since the Big Bang. The big surprise is that recent observations show cosmic expansion has been speeding up over the last 5 billion yr. This acceleration suggests that the other 70% of the universe is composed of a “dark energy” whose properties we only dimly grasp but that must have a negative pressure to make cosmic expansion speed up over time (4–9). Future extension of the Hubble diagram to even larger distances and more precise distances where the effects of acceleration set in are the route to illuminating this mystery.

    Hubble applied the fundamental discoveries of Henrietta Leavitt concerning bright Cepheid variable stars. Leavitt showed that Cepheids can be sorted in luminosity by observing their vibration periods: the slow ones are the intrinsically bright ones. By measuring the period of pulsation, an observer can determine the star’s intrinsic brightness. Then, measuring the apparent brightness supplies enough information to infer the distance.

    Hubble used the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson to search for these “standard candles” and found Cepheids in the fuzzy Andromeda Nebula, M31. From the faint appearance of those Cepheids, Hubble deduced that M31 and the other “extra-galactic nebulae” are not part of our own Milky Way galaxy, but “island universes” equivalent to the Milky Way: vast systems of billions of stars separated from one another by millions of light years. This finding was in 1924, and if he had done nothing more than to show that the Milky Way is not the universe, Hubble would have been an important figure in the history of astronomy. But 5 yr later in his PNAS article, Hubble was able to show something even more astonishing by plotting the velocities of galaxies against their distances.

    And:

    Hubble’s essential contribution was a consistent set of distances to galaxies that allowed him to glimpse the underlying relation between distance and velocity. Although his distances had serious errors due to confusing two types of Cepheids, and blurring bright gas clouds with bright stars, in 1929, Hubble was able to sort nearby galaxies from distant ones well enough not to miss the connection between distance and velocity.

    The other axis of the Hubble diagram (subtly mislabeled in the original) shows not only that we live in a spacious universe populated by billions of galaxies like the Milky Way, but also that the galaxies are embedded in an expanding fabric of space and time. The Hubble diagram plots velocity against distance. Astronomers measure the velocity of a galaxy from its spectrum by taking the light from a galaxy’s image at the focus of a telescope and passing it through a slit and a prism to create a dispersed rainbow, subtly marked by dark lines. These absorption lines are produced by atoms in the atmospheres of stars. Atoms absorb light at specific wavelengths, matching the energy jumps for electron orbits dictated by quantum mechanics. Radial velocities show up as shifts in the wavelengths of the lines from the galaxy compared with the spectra of the same atoms at rest in the observatory: blueshifts for objects approaching us and redshifts for objects receding. The fractional shift of the wavelength, Δλ/λ, is 1 + z, where z is the redshift. This result can be expressed as a velocity, cz, where c is the speed of light, 300,000 km/s.

    We have better tools today. We can measure more accurately.

    But despite his crude tools, Hubble was correct in his discovery that we live in a giant universe, which appears to be constantly expanding (with little hope of ever contracting, it now appears), and that there are billions of galaxies out there.

    Confusing cepheid measures and red shift measures might be understood in reading this explanation. Go check out the full article.

    My champagne for Hubble Day was great. Black Flag’s seems to have gone warm and flat. Celebrate when you can, is my motto.

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  8. Geezus, Ed.

    Then I point back to my original post here.

    Hubble’s “Law” AIN’T A LAW

    It is a DECLARATION or PROPOSITION, nothing more.

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  9. Ed Darrell says:

    So, in other words, Hubble didn’t say what you claim he said. You’re interpreting, or misinterpreting, a fourth-hand account — and you don’t really know what Hubble “claimed” at all.

    Notice carefully that I didn’t say Hubble claimed to have developed a perfect, foolproof method for measuring anything. Nor can I find evidence he did, now that I go looking to see if you’re right.

    And now, when I ask you, you refer back your misinterpretation of what I wrote!

    Misinterpreting what I write is understandable. I’m not always perfectly clear and my sentences are rarely idiot-proofed. At least you’re honest enough to tell us you haven’t looked at what Hubble wrote.

    Thanks.

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  10. Geezus, Ed.

    “Hubble’s law is the name for the observation in physical cosmology that: (1) objects observed in deep space (extragalactic space, ~10 megaparsecs or more) are found to have a Doppler shift interpretable as relative velocity away from the Earth; and (2) that this Doppler-shift-measured velocity, of various galaxies receding from the Earth, is approximately proportional to their distance from the Earth for galaxies up to a few hundred megaparsecs away. [1][2] This is normally interpreted as a direct, physical observation of the expansion of the spatial volume of the observable universe”

    Read your own post above – you said it!

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  11. Ed Darrell says:

    Ed, I make no such assumption. Hubble states red shift correlates distance, and it does not as examples abound showing such.

    Can you cite, and quote for us, exactly what Hubble said in that claim?

    Thanks.

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  12. Hubble didn’t ignore them. You assume that all galaxies and large stellar objects must be going in exactly the same direction in order for his observations to be useful, or correct.

    Ed, I make no such assumption. Hubble states red shift correlates distance, and it does not as examples abound showing such.

    It’s not a false assumption, Ed, IT IS A FACT.

    Arp assembled a catalog of different measures? Using Hubble’s work?

    Hubble’s work? No his own, cataloging red shift galactic objects that did not show Hubble’s “law”.

    Einstein was right, it takes one falsification to disprove a theory. Arp’s work is not that falsification, doesn’t even come close.

    Of course it does, except to mentally blind zealots. You make a claim, it is refuted, you blubber about how such refutations do not refute your claim.

    Bet you believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming too, right?

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  13. Ed Darrell says:

    Hubble didn’t ignore them. You assume that all galaxies and large stellar objects must be going in exactly the same direction in order for his observations to be useful, or correct.

    But that’s a false assumption.

    Arp assembled a catalog of different measures? Using Hubble’s work?

    Einstein was right, it takes one falsification to disprove a theory. Arp’s work is not that falsification, doesn’t even come close.

    I’ve provided at least a half-dozen links to explain the science. You could read real stuff, from real scientists, using the real data.

    In 14 billion years, a lot can happen to change the direction of an object, including a galaxy, in a universe. Time needs to be calculated in, too.

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  14. Damn, Ed – put on your reading glasses.

    In 1929 when Hubble wrote his paper, 5 of 24 of his extra galactic nebulae had blue shifts but he ignored it and just graphed his way through it.

    Reference:
    A Source Book in Astronomy, 1900-1950 (Source Books in the History of the Sciences) by Harlow Shapley
    ISBN 0-671-82185-8
    Library of Congress Catalgo Card Number 60-13294

    Halton Arp assembled a “Catalog of Discrepant Redshift Associations” that describes anomalous structure or physical links among objects with radically different redshifts.

    Ed, as Einstein said, all it takes one to disprove the theory – and there is a catalog full of them.

    But I guess you not be “scientific” this is lost upon your thinking, right?

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  15. Ed Darrell says:

    But, Ed, I already posted where it has been, in fact, falsified.

    I missed that falsification part — after you told me I’m Queen of Roumania, I’ve been inundated with the duties of ruling.

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  16. Black Flag® says:

    But, Ed, I already posted where it has been, in fact, falsified.

    Remember the Catalog? The thing that you so easily ignored because it contradicts your -once again- specious claim?

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  17. Ed Darrell says:

    But, it’s not Porlock’s simple mind it betrays.

    And, simple minds are usually honest minds.

    We’re not interested in your opinion of whether LeMaitre’s equations should be called a “law” or not; we’re interested in your explanations for how, you claim, red shift should be falsified by other measures.

    Electrons are free. Take all the space you need.

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  18. Black Flag® says:

    Your pompous attitude betrays a simple mind.

    If you actually had a sense of comprehension of my posts, it was to dispute Hubble’s “LAW”.

    It ain’t a Law, it is not Universal, it is not proven.

    It is a proposition, nothing more.

    Like

  19. Porlock Junior says:

    Still patronizingly explaining the stuff that has been known for years (many years, if one is no longer young) to anyone who has considered the matter.

    Actually, I thought of mentioning the Cepheids by way of contrast to the *very short-range* measurements by parallax, but didn’t want to make my post long with stuff that’s well known and not really germane to the question. Which, if you recall, was how parallax values can possibly falsify calculations of intergalactic distances.

    So, now you are free to tell us how you compare parallax values, necessarily smaller than the size of this galaxy, with those from Cepheids, which — as I suppose you know — became the first-ever standard for intergalactic distances in the 1920s, leading to Hubble’s observations that eventually got the humorous “Big Bang” designation. Go ahead, lay it on us; if your highly sophisticated technical exposition is too terse for someone to follow, one can always ask for an expansion. Which will be more satisfying than asking for information and getting irrelevancies.

    OTOH, this has become tedious, and when you post your next non-response, you will perhaps be able to consider yourself the Winner, since there’s no point in making serious responses to this sort of blather; and mere debating-points responses are a rudeness to the host and to the common weal, which I’m trying to forgo.

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  20. Black Flag® says:

    “Extragalactic Distance Measures

    The trick to determining the distance to a galaxy is to find in that galaxy a standard candle, an object that has a known luminosity. If such a class of objects can be found, and if it can be calibrated, preferably by measuring the parallax of one such object within our own galaxy, we can calculate the distance to the galaxy by measuring the brightness of the object and applying the inverse square law.

    The primary standard candle in astronomy is the Cepheid variable, a star with a luminosity that is set by its pulsation period. A second important standard candle is the type 1a supernova, which has a peak luminosity that can be used as a standard candle.”

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  21. Porlock Junior says:

    Nonsense. Of course annual parallax has been used for nearly 200 years now, to measure distances to nearby stars. Duh. At first it was useful for the very nearest ones, and recently it has extended as far as 1,600 light years; coming up, 10,000 light years and more. (Numbers here from Wikipedia; if you have better data, tell us.) Which will not measure the distance to the nearest galaxies, or for that matter across this one.

    When you’ve finished telling us what everyone already knows, will you tell us what you think you mean by comparing Hubble’s figures to parallax measurements? That, after all, was what my posting was seeking in the first place.

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  22. Black Flag® says:

    Well, sir, that is kinda how we did it before Hubble – news to you it seems.

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  23. Porlock Junior says:

    “Hubble wanted to classify the galaxies according to their content, distance, shape, and brightness patterns,…”

    Ah, so. A stamp collector, in the famous witticism by Rutherford.
    https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford
    A truly great physicist, but also capable of being a frabjous ass when he got philosophical.

    “… and in his observations he[Hubble] made another momentous discovery”
    Indeed. Nice stamp Hubble found there.

    In fact, Rutherford once said something so silly that another physicist, then obscure, went out and thought up the nuclear chain reaction in response. Leo Szilard wrote of it in a memoir published as Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts. All that is irrelevant, but maybe September 12 would be a good day to memorialize, in honor — dubious honor, maybe — of that discovery.

    But I’m now going to think of Hubble Day as Stamp Collecting Day.

    Like

  24. Porlock Junior says:

    Oh boy! Threadjacked from the very start by our favorite discussion-suppressing troll. (I wouldn’t suggest studying John Wilkins’s Evolving Thoughts’ commenting policy and then emulating it, because after all, it’s not my blog and not my place to suggest how to run it.)

    A reading of the very first comment makes one realize what fun it would be to learn how to use parallax to measure the distance to things that are supposedly a billion light years away, thereby disproving that huge distance; but alas, a quick string search (with due allowance for misspelling) shows no more mention of it in the long thread. Waht a disappointment. You’d almost think there was really nothing behind the claim.

    However, this is beside the point. There was one thing in the original posting that I found amusing, which I’ll now describe separately.

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  25. Black Flag® says:

    One more time, it does.

    Of course I know what red-shift means, it is YOU who is applying mere conjuncture to its value, sir, not I.

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  26. Ed Darrell says:

    One more time, gravity does not affect red shift.

    I can only explain this over again. Would you read how these measurements are made, please? I don’t think you understand what is “red shifted,” and consequently you can’t understand how silly that claim is.

    Like

  27. Black Flag® says:

    As I said repeatedly, Hubble’s Law ain’t a law then.
    It is a proposition – a speculation, nothing more.

    You continue to show this.

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  28. Black Flag® says:

    Velocity remains same, but its red-shift does not withiin a gravitational field.

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  29. Black Flag® says:

    No, a bright, fast moving object behind or in front will mask the true distance to other, dimmer objects

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  30. Black Flag® says:

    Again, merely speculation that velocity=distance

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  31. Ed Darrell says:

    The point, Ed, is that Hubble’s “not law” states red-shift dictates distance.

    Red shift indicates velocity. Velocity often correlates with distances. So red shift can be used as a reliable indicator of distance.

    Notice the difference between the words “indicate” and “dictate.”

    Go back and read those links I’ve provided. You might understand this yet, but you’re going to have to disabuse yourself of some bad stuff you picked up somewhere else.

    Like

  32. Ed Darrell says:

    So you admit gravity affects light.
    A change in direction affects its angular velocity.
    Velocity impacts red-shift.

    Velocity of light is constant in a vacuum, unaffected by gravity. Gravity bends light. Light velocity remains the same.

    Bent light still shows the same red shift, the same spectra signatures of the glowing stuff in any object, no matter how distant.

    Like

  33. Ed Darrell says:

    Luminosity absolute effects red-shift. That which is bright emits more. It however does not mean that more is accurate.

    No, luminosity does not affect red shift. How brightly hydrogen glows does not affect the fact that it is hydrogen glowing; no matter how bright, or dim, it is still hydrogen, and the spectra show that. Hubble’s great realization was that the spectra patterns remain the same, even when the light is shifted to the red end of the spectrum by the receding object (or towards the blue end, if it’s coming toward us).

    Luminosity, or brightness, does not affect either the spectrum lines, nor color shift due to velocity.

    Like

  34. Ed Darrell says:

    Red shift tells us velocity; generally, that’s an indication of distance, but not always. Notice the blue shift phenomena. Notice it’s a big, big universe.

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  35. Black Flag® says:

    The point, Ed, is that Hubble’s “not law” states red-shift dictates distance.

    Yet, red-shift shows that it doesn’t dictate distance.
    You claim “well, mostly it does”. Fine.

    So how do you know, looking at such-and-such galaxy far far away that its red-shift does dictate distance … or not? What separates the “this isn’t” and “this is”?

    Nothing but a declaration.

    There is no methodology that separates the two conditions. You are stuck in the “I dunna know”.

    Hence, WE DO NOT KNOW.

    Like

  36. Black Flag® says:

    So you admit gravity affects light.
    A change in direction affects its angular velocity.
    Velocity impacts red-shift.

    Like

  37. Black Flag® says:

    Luminosity absolute effects red-shift. That which is bright emits more. It however does not mean that more is accurate.

    Like

  38. Black Flag® says:

    I didn’t say the “Big Bang” was wrong or right.

    It is a proposition, nothing more.

    Like

  39. Black Flag® says:

    I didn’t say the “Big Bang” was wrong or right.

    It is a proposition, nothing more.

    Like

  40. Black Flag® says:

    You are a genius at contradicting yourself.

    First, you posit that red-shift dictates distance.
    Then, you state that red-shift doesn’t dictate distance.

    hohohoho

    Like

  41. Ed Darrell says:

    Luminosity doesn’t affect the light spectra. If there’s a little hydrogen emitting light, or a lot of it, the spectrum of emissions is exactly the same.

    Light bends around large, very dense objects (like Ted Cruz). Yeah, we know.

    What’s your point?

    Like

  42. Ed Darrell says:

    If two objects are in the same spot in space, but their red shifts are different THERE IS SOMETHING MORE GOING ON then what Hubble said.

    Neither Hubble nor Lemaitre suggested two objects “in the same spot” must have the same velocity, nor the same red shift. Where in the world do you get this crazy stuff?

    That’s my point, Ed, Hubble’s Law ain’t a law. Law’s don’t work differently here then there. His was a proposition based on some observation – a Ptolemaic view of the Universe.

    It’s a silly, pointless point, then, isn’t it. Hubble didn’t propose the equation; “laws” in science don’t have the fixed connotation you claim. Hubble’s numbers show the variations you claim, and he didn’t ignore them at all (look at the charts).

    So what’s your point?

    Your claim that Big Bang is wrong simply doesn’t withstand cursory scrutiny. You don’t seem to have a grasp on what you’re claiming, let alone how it could possibly contradict any part of Big Bang.

    Hubble observed the red shift, and he observed, accurately, that we have lots of other galaxies to accompany us in the universe.

    Still true. Still accurate. Still pointing the way to Big Bang.

    Like

  43. Black Flag® says:

    Gravity effects light so size is kinda important.

    Luminosity is a measure of energy production, which has many correlating features that effect light.

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  44. Black Flag® says:

    Ed, of course it is a serious departure.

    If two objects are in the same spot in space, but their red shifts are different THERE IS SOMETHING MORE GOING ON then what Hubble said.

    That’s my point, Ed, Hubble’s Law ain’t a law. Law’s don’t work differently here then there. His was a proposition based on some observation – a Ptolemaic view of the Universe.

    Like

  45. Ed Darrell says:

    5, 6. The point is that Hubble’s calculation absolutely depends on such conditions since size and luminosity both effect light’s “Doppler” effect, yet are not part of Hubble’s calculation.

    How could size or brightness possibly affect redshift? Please explain. The red shift is observed in the spectra of the light, which is dependent on the composition of the stars, not their brightness nor mass.

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  46. Ed Darrell says:

    Having a few objects receding faster, while 50 billion recede as Hubble’s numbers suggest they should, isn’t a serious departure from Hubble’s findings.

    Quasars do not call Hubble’s observations of receding galaxies into question in any way, nor do they offer shred of opposition to the expanding universe view.

    Like

  47. Black Flag® says:

    Halton Arp assembled a “Catalog of Discrepant Redshift Associations” that describes anomalous structure or physical links among objects with radically different redshifts.

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  48. Black Flag® says:

    NGC 7603, for instance, a distorted spiral galaxy with a single arm, is joined by that arm to a smaller companion with a much higher redshift. Within the bright material of the arm are two other objects, each with redshifts different from the galaxy pair.

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  49. Black Flag® says:

    Harlow Shapley was a major astronomers on the level of Hubble. He was credited with period luminosity law or cepheid variable star measurement method. He compiled a source book on astronomy. One of the articles was Hubble’s paper from 1929 which I believe is on page 330. You may be able to view it with Google book review but you should use the content drop down to go right to that page as you are allowed to review only so many pages. The local library may have the book.

    Like

  50. Black Flag® says:

    In 1929 when Hubble wrote his paper, 5 of 24 of his extra galactic nebulae had blue shifts but he ignored it and just graphed his way through it.

    Reference:
    A Source Book in Astronomy, 1900-1950 (Source Books in the History of the Sciences) by Harlow Shapley
    ISBN 0-671-82185-8
    Library of Congress Catalgo Card Number 60-13294

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  51. Black Flag® says:

    Quasi-stellar objects, better known as quasars. They have extremely large redshifts, implying that they are located near the farthest edge of the observable Universe.

    Some astronomers soon found that many quasars are associated with spiral galaxies (like M82) and appear to be near the galaxy instead of billions of light-years distant. Based on other data, such as quasars’ anomalous apparent brightness when compared with their redshifts, Hubble’s expanding Universe theory was called into question.

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  52. Black Flag® says:

    1. Of course there is, as already posted.
    Everything is not moving away and many galaxies are closer then what Hubble calculations make them to be.

    The Big Bang is also merely popular conjuncture. You do not quite understand the difference between a proposition, fact and Universal law, do you?

    2. It isn’t silly – it is fundamental to Hubble’s theory

    3. It isn’t silly – again, you provide no answer other than repeating the same proposition over and over again. Repetition does not manufacture proof.

    4. All galaxies are red or blue shifted. If what you claimed earlier and later in your missive is true, there should be some that are stopped.

    5, 6. The point is that Hubble’s calculation absolutely depends on such conditions since size and luminosity both effect light’s “Doppler” effect, yet are not part of Hubble’s calculation.

    7. Of course it does. The claim is that all matter is expanding away from each other. If there are galaxies that are not, such a claim is false.

    8.No. Here you are utterly wrong. Black holes absolutely must follow the recessional motion. What you mistaken is you think it is a concept of a baseball being thrown when it is like a surface of a balloon expanding. In the latter, put two ink dots side by side and blow up the balloon – over time the dots separate. THAT IS THE BIG BANG THEORY, and hence, black holes absolutely do and must demonstrate this.

    9.No. Again you do not understand deeply the topic. Hubble’s calculation has no time, yet all motion is distance OVER time.

    10.No. Again you are making up stories to fit your made up conclusion. Very non-scientific.

    11. It means that -according to Hubble’s Law- nothing else can produce or effect doppler effect in light waves. If there are other things that can, then Hubble’s Law cannot be true – how would you know this galaxy is producing doppler-shift based on velocity, and that one based on gravity – as if light carries a sales tag declaring its creation.

    12. No. After that time, there are numerous inconsistencies found. Technology has advanced since 1924, Ed.

    You are the creationist, Ed, not me.
    You have no concept of self-ordering mechanisms … just check your politics for a close up example.

    Like

  53. Ed Darrell says:

    You don’t even know what league you are dabbling in.

    No kidding. I didn’t know there were bushes that far out in space.

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  54. Ed Darrell says:

    Thirdly, everything is not flying away from each other. A direct example is Andromeda galaxy is heading toward us, not away from us.

    See my answer to your 12 questions, especially the sections on blue-shift.

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  55. Ed Darrell says:

    Can you point us to any galaxy whose distance is significantly different from what Hubble calculated? I mean, other than galaxies discovered only recently by the Hubble telescope?

    How about any discovered by the Hubble telescope? Other than the well-known blue-shifted galaxies, I’m not sure what you think should be there that isn’t consistent with Hubble’s observations, nor can I find anything that really matches your criteria of suggesting serious problems with Hubble’s work.

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  56. Ed Darrell says:

    Not sure why you think the universe must dance to your tune, and not its own. Your questions, BF, don’t always seem grounded in reality. But let’s see if you can see why I say that.

    Were Hubble’s law right, it should, at least, satisfy the following twelve conditions

    Can you offer a reason that the observation that the galaxies are, most of them, speeding away from us and each other, must “satisfy conditions?”

    Your conditions apply equally to an observation that the sky is blue. If your conditions are not met, however, the sky doesn’t change color.

    1- Giving a concrete proof, not propositional, that all the galaxies began their expanding, translational travel at the same instant.

    There is no contrary evidence. I sense that you don’t quite understand how this whole Big Bang thing worked, and that you think the galaxies sprang into existence whole, rather like Venus on the half-shell.

    See the Hot Big Bang explanations from NASA. So far as our detectors have shown, the universe, including time, all started at one particular singularity, about 14 billion years or so ago. For at least a couple hundred thousand years after the initial expansion, the energy of the universe was so hot that not even sub-atomic particles could form. Eventually the expansion helped cool energy enough it could form particles, and then hydrogen atoms and molecules.

    Exactly how gravity behaved in that time is one great, gnawing mystery; but after matter formed, gravity pulled it into clumps.

    And from there, the universe we see now was off and running, and expanding.

    Here, take a look at NASA’s Universe 101: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_theory.html

    See especially the tests by which Big Bang has been proved: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_tests.html

    2- Giving a concrete proof, not propositional, that all the galaxies began their expanding travel from at the same distance from the Earth.

    That’s silly. Through a brief but significant part of the universe’s life, matter expanded as it does now, but galaxies didn’t exist. Stars, black holes and galaxies formed at different times, at different distances from each other (because of the different times). You’re asking for a proof of phenomena that have not been observed, but which would also be unexpected in Big Bang theory.

    You might as well say, “Give concrete proof that water is NOT wet, or it’s not water.”

    3- Giving a concrete proof, not propositional, that all the galaxies began their expanding, translational travel while they were positioned stationary.

    Again, that’s silly. At no point since big bang has there not been expansion. The stars and the black holes and the galaxies arose while rushing away from each other. At no point were they ever stationary.

    4- To prove that all the galaxies didn’t suffer any stopping whatever its cause.

    Are you asking these questions solely to be silly?

    Big Bang does not posit that no events occurred after Big Bang. There are any number of things that could alter the direction and velocity of a given chunk of matter, or a plantet, or a star, or a solar system, or a galaxy.

    In fact, there are about a hundred galaxies know that are blue-shifted, which means they are coming toward us, not rushing away. How does that happen? Cornell’s astronomers explain:

    Why are there blue shifted galaxies?

    Q: I have heard that there are galaxies which are not red shifted relative to earth, but are blue shifted. In the mapping projects of the heavens are there any ways to predict what percentage of galaxies are blue shifted, and what percentage are red shifted?

    A: Almost all galaxies are redshifted because of the Hubble expansion of the universe. Only a handful of the most nearby galaxies are blue-shifted. You see, in addition to the apparent motion imparted to galaxies due to universal expansion, individual galaxies also have their own intrinsic, what we call “peculiar” motions. This is not because they are peculiar, as in strange, but rather because each galaxy is in motion irrespective of the universe’s expansion, and each galaxy has its own unique velocity.

    Generally, that velocity is some hundreds of kilometers per second. In regions close enough to our own galaxy where the Hubble expansion results in less outward expansion than this, the galaxies’ peculiar velocities (if they are large enough and sufficiently towards us) can overcome that expansion, resulting in a blue-shift.

    There are in all about 100 known galaxies with blueshifts out of the billions of galaxies in the observable universe. Most of these blue-shifted galaxies are in our own local group, and are all in orbit about each other. Most are also dwarf galaxies which you’ve probably never heard of, although the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is in there. A list of these galaxies can be found at this link.

    This will present the galaxies, their positions on the sky, and their velocities (all negative, meaning blue-shifted) in the column “z or km/s.”

    January 1999, Dave Kornreich (more by Dave Kornreich)

    I suspect you could have a good time chasing down your questions at that site.

    Also:

    Explanation of Andromeda’s blue shift: http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=21929

    Another explanation of blue shift at PhysLink: http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae384.cfm

    Ultimately, this was part of the evidence that Einstein assumed would be there that led him to disavow quantum non-locality (or whatever they call it . . . this isn’t my field and the term is escaping me at the moment); Bohr and his team argued that quanta spin could be determined by looking at one formerly linked quantum even though the two were now divided by the entire universe. Einstein thought that silly, that other causes could intervene; Bohr’s numbers stood up. Einstein famously said he wouldn’t believe it, because he couldn’t believe that God shoots dice with the universe in such a manner. John Stewart Bell refined Bohr’s numbers in the 1960s, and found Bohr was right.

    But while that applies to the tiny dimensions of quantum mechanics, it is not so for larger bodies, like asteroids, plants, stars and galaxies.

    The short answer to your question is that some things have intervened to knock a few galaxies off of their expansion course, sometimes something so minor as locality. So we know some objects in the universe go rather opposite the direction of expansion.

    We can’t prove there are no blue shift galaxies as you demand, because that hypothesis was never posed by Big Bang, and had it been, we have observed blue-shifted galaxies that falsify it.

    5- To prove that all galaxies began their cosmological travel while having the same luminosity.

    Again, that’s rather silly. What makes you think all galaxies would have exactly the same size, exactly the same size of black holes, and exactly the same luminosity?

    Simply not a part of Big Bang theory, and not what we’d expect, nor is it what we observe.

    I am curious why you think this would obtain. It’s like expecting all oak trees to be exactly the same size, with exactly the same number of leaves. It’s an assumption contrary to nature.

    6- To prove that all the galaxies began their travel while having the same density.

    Galaxies formed at different times, in different sizes, and different densities. What would make anyone think the would all be the same, in density or any other measure of mass or energy?

    7- To prove that there are no blueshift-showing galaxies.

    See above. That’s not something Big Bang would predict, and we have observed many blue-shifted galaxies.

    Those observations do not falsify Big Ban in any way.

    8- To prove that the recent distance of any galaxy is purely a result of recession. In other words, to prove that any galaxy as a whole doesn’t experience any translational motion save the recessional one.

    Big Bang doesn’t predict that. There are lots of things that might affect the motion of a galaxy, including being slingshotted around a black hole or larger galaxy, or smaller one, collisions, etc.

    What would make one think Big Bang prevents things from moving in different directions once the initial expansion was over (or before)?

    9- To prove that the rate of the expansion of any galaxy is time independent.

    Distance dependent, which affects time dependency. Almost all galaxies can be rather neatly plotted on a line, with speed and distance increasing in an almost linear fashion. See the charts in links above.

    10- To prove that the galaxies of equal masses are still at the same distance.

    Galaxies of equal masses may have been created at different times, and so would be at different distances. Galaxies of equal masses created at the same time may have been created at different distances to begin with. Galaxies of equal masses may have been operated on by other objects, other black holes or galaxies, and so their distances might have been altered by directional changes, or mass changes.

    What would make one think that galaxies would be of equal masses, or that galaxies of roughly equal masses would all occur at exactly the same moment?

    Time happens, you know.

    11- To prove that there is no any other shift affecting the Doppler shift.

    What in the hell is that supposed to mean? I dated a woman who had a stunning emerald green shift, once. Would that affect the Doppler shift for you?

    Gravity, collisions . . . there are all sorts of things out there to affect a galaxy’s speed and direction. Out of billions and billions of galaxies, we have a tiny, minuscule amount that are so affected.

    12- Showing that it could be applied to all the galaxies irrespective of their distance from the Earth.

    That’s what Hubble did in 1924.

    There are no evidence for proving any condition of the twelve.

    Check out the links I’ve offered here. You can find a bunch more with Google, if you wish.

    By the way, do you consider yourself a young Earth creationist, or some other kind of creationist?

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  57. Black Flag® says:

    It’s not a law, it a proposition – quite far from being declared a “Universal law”

    Second, it fails. By direct measure, we know the distance to some galaxies and they are orders of magnitude closer than Hubble’s calculation says.

    Thirdly, everything is not flying away from each other. A direct example is Andromeda galaxy is heading toward us, not away from us.

    It’s best analogy would be it is Ptolemaic view of the Universe – offers to explain some things, but other things that should be explained the same way cannot be made to do so.

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  58. Ed Darrell says:

    Hubble’s observations confirmed LeMaitre’s proposal — it’s called “Hubble’s Law,” but it’s really simply an observation: Farther objects in space show a greater red shift the father their distance (there’s a neat relationship, but that’s not relevant to this discussion).

    Demanding as BF does that “Hubble’s Law” must make all sorts of predictions, including the winner of today’s third race at Hialeah, is out of bounds.

    I think I linked above, but one may want to get acquainted with what Hubble actually did:

    1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law
    2. Explanation from a Cornell U class: http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro2201/hubbles_law.htm
    3. Stephen Hawking’s Universe at PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/strange/html/hubble.html

    By the late 1920s, Edwin Hubble had been taking spectra and measuring distances to a large number of galaxies. From each spectrum he learned the galaxy’s redshift, which told him how fast it was moving away from Earth, then he compared that with the object’s distance. What he found set the stage for much of 20th-century cosmology: the farther away the galaxy, the faster it receded. This relation—that a galaxy’s speed is directly proportional to its distance—became known as Hubble’s Law. It was observational proof that we live in an expanding universe, and it helped lay the foundation for the big-bang theory of the universe’s origin.

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  59. Black Flag® says:

    Were Hubble’s law right, it should, at least, satisfy the following twelve conditions:

    1- Giving a concrete proof, not propositional, that all the galaxies began their expanding, translational travel at the same instant.
    2- Giving a concrete proof, not propositional, that all the galaxies began their expanding travel from at the same distance from the Earth.
    3- Giving a concrete proof, not propositional, that all the galaxies began their expanding, translational travel while they were positioned stationary.
    4- To prove that all the galaxies didn’t suffer any stopping whatever its cause.
    5- To prove that all galaxies began their cosmological travel while having the same luminosity.
    6- To prove that all the galaxies began their travel while having the same density.
    7- To prove that there are no blueshift-showing galaxies.
    8- To prove that the recent distance of any galaxy is purely a result of recession. In other words, to prove that any galaxy as a whole doesn’t experience any translational motion save the recessional one.
    9- To prove that the rate of the expansion of any galaxy is time independent.
    10- To prove that the galaxies of equal masses are still at the same distance.
    11- To prove that there is no any other shift affecting the Doppler shift.
    12- Showing that it could be applied to all the galaxies irrespective of their distance from the Earth.

    There are no evidence for proving any condition of the twelve

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  60. Black Flag® says:

    Ah, no.

    Hubble’s Law is absolutely nothing like the law of gravity at all.

    And this isn’t a “debate”, it is a matter of science and fact.
    You don’t even know what league you are dabbling in.

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  61. Ed Darrell says:

    Hubble’s observations are in serious dispute the same way the existence of gravity is in serious dispute.

    Had you been a college debater, I’m sure you could have been a champion of the squirrel leagues.

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  62. Black Flag® says:

    Hubble’s theory is in serious dispute. It does not fit observed fact.

    Via paralax, we can calculate distances to many galaxies that are shown to be massively closer then what Hubble’s Red shift calculation asserts.

    The jury on the matter is at best “a hung jury”, and probably over the next few years we will find that Hubble’s “law” is out-right wrong.

    But that is science-at-work, and Hubble certainly was a great scientist.

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