Show Me How The Big Bang Theory Is Not A Leap Of Faith

DaveC:

Thanks for posting the graph. I was thinking about doing the same thing myself. If Kermos struggles with numbers and sets, maybe he's a visual learner and that will help him. I somehow doubt it will make any difference, though. He has a strange tendency to not understand things that he would rather not be true. Funny, that.

Also, one other thing strikes me from your graph. If we were to draw a straight line of best fit using the four data points there, we'd conclude that the temperature of the CMBR decreased between 1941 and 1965*, which again runs obviously contrary to Kermos's brainless claims about the data.

* Not that I think the apparent decrease from that data is real. That's why it's important to understand error bars and why they are there (which Kermos clearly does not). Besides that, there are only four data points here, and of course we have a lot better data these days than we did in 1941 or 1965. Nor would we expect, from theory, to see a measurable decrease in the space of those 24 years.
 
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To save some time, I have found a few papers that implicitly refute the Burbidge/Arp contention that the AGN (or QSO or quasar) near NGC7319 is physically associated with that galaxy, although none of them take the Burbidge/Arp paper apart piece by piece. (More on the why of that, below.)

Kermos can go look for himself if he is interested to know the truth.

For instance:
Koss, M, et. al (2011) Host Galaxy Properties of the Swift BAT Ultra Hard X-Ray Selected Active Galactic Nucleus, The Astrophysical Journal 739(2), 57.

Here, the quasar is catalogued as a background source in a mainstream AGN survey. There are many similar studies showing the consensus position that the AGN in question is a typical background galaxy unrelated to NGC7319, which happens to be in the foreground. Moreover, Burbidge/Arp's hypothesis that galaxies can "eject" AGNs is a fringe idea that has been soundly rejected by the astronomical community of scientists.

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A little more history on this:

Prior to the Burbidge/Arp paper, the ROSAT x-ray data hinted at extended hot gas from NGC7319 with possible signs of shock waves in the gas. Burbidge/Arp interpreted this data to indicate that the background AGN was physically influencing the gas in NGC7319. The problem was that the ROSAT x-ray data had limited resolution, leaving room for non-standard interpretations of the data set.

Apparently, Arp and Burbidge had something of a history of making "non-standard interpretations" of astrophysical data, which ought to give any skeptically-minded person some pause for thought about possible bias and/or hidden agendas on the part of Arp and/or Burbidge and/or their co-authors.

The previous (2003) paper by Trinchieri et al., Stephan's Quintet: The X-ray Anatomy of a Multiple Galaxy Collision found that part or all of the shock wave since in the gas was best explained by high-velocity galaxy NGC7318b plowing into the pre-existing intra-group gaseous medium.

High-resolution Hubble Space Telescope data has greatly increased our ability to resolve the details of Stephan's Quintet since the 2004 Burbidge/Arp paper was published. The HST data shows:
  • resolved stars in NGC7320 at a distance consistent with its low redshift, confirming it is a foreground galaxy.
  • Tidal tails and debris linking the other galaxies in the Quintet, consistent with past galactic collisions and typical gas stripping.
  • Regions of hydrogen II and young star clusters in the tidal material and shocked region that imply gas compression and heating due to intergalactic collisions.
  • Spectroscopic studies of the NGC7319 quasar (AGN or QSO) show redshift of z=2.114, which is what we would expect for a distant and unrelated background source shining through the disc of NGC7139 itself.
  • The HST data resolves the structure of NGC7319 around where the AGN appears to be, but the structure shows no signs of a physically-embedded second galactic nucleus (i.e. the AGN is not embedded in galaxy NGC7319, just to be clear).
  • The AGN is not seen to cause any disruption within galaxy NGC7319 itself.

Subsequent work involving observations in the infrared and UV (e.g. Spitzer IR, GALEX UV) shows trace dust, shocked gas and star formation in the tidal debris and shock front, also confirming that the shock is from the passage of NGC7318b, which is driving both heating of the gas and star formation in the intragroup medium

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Modern interpretation of Stephan's Quintet:

Several collisions have occurred or are occurring in Stephan's Quintet. It is thought that, earlier, NGC 7319 was disrupted by collision with an earlier intruder galaxy and that what we see today is the result of the collision of NGC7318b with the intergroup gas left following prior interactions.

There is consensus that NGC7320 is a foreground galaxy and that the other four galaxies in the Quintet are all at approximately the same distance from Earth.

X-ray data strongly supports standard gravitational dynamics and hot gas physics. Burbidge/Arp's exotic red-shift physics is not required to explain what is seen in Stephan's Quintet.

Taking all available data together (including Chandra, HST and recent James Webb Space Telescope data), Stephan's Quintet appears to be a fine example of a textbook multi-galaxy collision, with well-understood shock waves in the intragroup gas medium and a layered foreground-background structure. In fact, this system is sometimes used as a teaching tool for astronomy students, because it nicely shows regular compact group evolution, shocks in galaxy-intergalactic medium interactions and triggered star formation that often results from such interactions.

On the other hand, Stephan's Quintet is not considered to be evidence for the existence of non-cosmological red-shifts, as the Burbidge/Arp paper asserted it might. The physical processes at work in the Quintet are all more than adequately accounted for by regular gravitational dynamics, the hydrodynamics of gas and regular radiative processes that are confirmed by multi-spectral studies (x-ray, optical, IR and UV).

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I should end by noting that, as far as I am aware, no astronomers have published a peer-reviewed paper that explicitly debunks the Burbidge/Arp paper point-by-point. The reason they haven't is that the astronomical data and knowledge we have about Stephan's Quintet has progressed so far since 2004 that the Burbidge/Arp paper is no longer of any relevance or interest to working astronomers. There are no outstanding matters in the Burbidge/Arp paper that require specific attention. Stephan's Quintet is so well studied and understood in 2026 that the Burbidge/Arp paper is reduced to a mere historical footnote.

Burbidge, Arp and their co-authors speculated back in 2004. There is nothing inherently unreasonable about that. They worked with the data they had at the time. In the 20+ years since then, better data has been gathered and it has been shown that Burbidge/Arp's speculations from 2004 were incorrect.

Science has moved on. Creationists, of course, have not. Because they never do.
 
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James R said:
Also, one other thing strikes me from your graph. If we were to draw a straight line of best fit using the four data points there, we'd conclude that the temperature of the CMBR decreased between 1941 and 1965*, which again runs obviously contrary to Kermos's brainless claims about the data.
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The x-axis does not represent time. The graph is simply four independent measurements plotted on the same y-axis. I did not plot them by date of measurement. In fact, I shuffled them.

I did that to drive home the point you are making: kermos seems to think that the four measurements are representing an objective change in the CMBR temp over time. That is an unwarranted inference.

As you say, nobody thinks the universe cooled by 1 K over the course of a few decades. (If it were true, we'd better get our affairs in order, as the universe has only a few more decades left before it freezes solid!)
 
DaveC426913 said:
The x-axis does not represent time. The graph is simply four independent measurements plotted on the same y-axis. I did not plot them by date of measurement. In fact, I shuffled them.
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Oops. My bad.

I made a graph that does plot the measurements as temperature vs time. Here it is:

1777090348008.png
I fitted a straight line to the data points. The best fit (dotted line) shows a small positive gradient, consistent with a temperature increase over time. But that best fit ignores the error bars and just uses the mean data points.

The dashed line (drawn between the two orange points on the error bars) shows an equally-valid alternative line through the data points, using the error bars. That one shows a small negative gradient, consistent with a temperature decrease over time.

The point here is that the data here is not good enough to tell us whether the CMBR temperature actually increased, decreased or remained constant between 1941 and 1965. As I noted before, the data is perfectly consistent with the temperature remaining constant over that period.

Also worth mentioning (though clearly this will fly over Kermos's head) is the R^2 value on the best fit (given with the equation of the best-fit line through the data points, based on least-squares statistics). The value R^2 is a measure of how well a straight line fits the data points. The R^2 value can vary between 0 and 1. If R^2 was equal to 1, we'd see all four data points lying exactly on the line of best fit, indicating a perfect linear correlation. Data that shows a clear linear relationship typically has an R^2 value of 0.8 or greater. The data here, on the other hand, has R^2=0.59, which indicates that the hypothesis that the best-fit line indicates a real linear trend in the data is not well supported by the data itself.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Am I being too optimistic to think that Kermos has in fact left the building?
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I think it's more likely that he requires lots of time to digest the new posts. And bear in mind that he hasn't caught up with all the older ones, yet.

Also, he probably has to take time to consult with his creationist mentors, who I'm guessing are the real brains behind his operation. He doesn't give many signs of being an independent thinker. It might take those guys some time to write a new script for Kermos to present on sciforums.

I expect he'll be back, probably repeating the same tired, debunked arguments he keeps making endlessly.
 
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