Halton Arp
Halton Arp | |
---|---|
Intrinsic redshift Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies | |
Awards | Newcomb Cleveland Prize (1960) Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy (1960) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Astronomy |
Institutions | Palomar Observatory Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics |
Doctoral advisor | Walter Baade |
Doctoral students | Susan Kayser |
Website | www |
Halton Christian "Chip" Arp (March 21, 1927 – December 28, 2013) was an American
Arp was also known as a critic of the
Biography
Arp was born on March 21, 1927, in New York City. He was married three times, has four daughters, including comic artist Andrice Arp, and five grandchildren.[2][3]
His
He died in Munich, Germany on December 28, 2013.[3] He was an atheist.[4]
Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies
Arp compiled a catalog of unusual galaxies titled Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which was first published in 1966.[6][7] Arp's motivation for the project was his realization that astronomers understood little about how galaxies change over time. This atlas was intended to provide images that would give astronomers data from which they could study the evolution of galaxies. Arp later used the galaxies of the atlas as arguments for his views in the debate on quasi-stellar objects (QSOs).
Astronomers now recognize Arp's atlas as an excellent compilation of
Quasars and redshifts
During the 1950s bright radio sources, now known as
In 1966, Arp published the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which contained photographs of 338 nearby galaxies that did not fall into any of the classic categories of galaxy shapes. His goal was to produce a selection that modellers could use in order to test theories of galactic formation. By testing against the collection, one could quickly see how well a particular theory stood up. One group of these, numbers 1 through 101, were otherwise conventional galaxies that appeared to have small companion objects of unknown origin. In 1967 Arp noted that several of these objects appeared on the list of quasars. In some photographs a quasar is in the foreground of known galaxies, and in others there appeared to be matter bridging the two objects, implying they are very close in space. If they are, and the redshifts were due to Hubble expansion, then both objects should have similar redshifts. The galaxies had much smaller redshifts than the quasars. Arp also noted that quasars were not evenly spread over the sky, but tended to be more commonly found in positions of small angular separation from certain galaxies. This being the case, they might be in some way related to the galaxies. Arp argued that the redshift was not due to Hubble expansion or physical movement of the objects, but must have a non-
Since the 1960s,
Arp never wavered from his stand against the Big Bang, and until shortly before his death in 2013, he continued to publish articles[14][15] stating his contrary view in both popular and scientific literature, frequently collaborating with Geoffrey Burbidge (until Burbidge's death in 2010) and Margaret Burbidge.[16] He explained his reasons for believing that the Big Bang theory is wrong, citing his research into quasars or quasi-stellar objects (QSOs). Instead, Arp supported the redshift quantization theory as an explanation of the redshifts of galaxies.[17]
As more recent experiments have expanded the amount of collected data by orders of magnitude Arp's theories can now be scrutinized further. For instance a recent study by Tang and Zhang about the periodicity of redshifts (a hypothesis articulated by Arp) stated that:
- "... the publicly available data from the intrinsic redshift models, [...] and find there is no evidence for a periodicity at the predicted frequency in log(1+z), or at any other frequency."[18]
However, a follow-up study by Bell and McDiarmid[19] shows that Arp's hypothesis about the periodicity in red-shifts cannot be discarded easily. The authors argue that
- "The Tang and Zhang (2005) analysis could thus have missed, or misidentified, many of the parent galaxies, which could explain why the pairs they found differed little from what would be expected for a random distribution. In spite of this, although it was not pointed out by these authors, their pairs did show a slight excess near the expected value of 200 kpc….In fact, most of the conclusions reached by Tang and Zhang (2005) appear to have resulted because they have assumed that many of the values [that they have used] are much more accurate than they really are. …[we found by examining 46400 quasars from Sloan Digital Sky Survey that] the locations of the peaks in the redshift distribution are in agreement with the preferred redshifts predicted by the intrinsic redshift equation"[19]
Honors and awards
In 1960, Arp was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society, a prize "normally awarded annually for a significant contribution to observational or theoretical astronomy during the five years preceding the award."[20]
In the same year, Arp was awarded the Newcomb Cleveland Prize for his address, "The Stellar Content of Galaxies", read before a joint session of the American Astronomical Society and AAAS Section D.[21]
In 1984, he was awarded the
Books
- Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (1966)
- The Redshift Controversy (1973, with George B. Field and John N. Bahcall)
- Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies (1987)
- Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (1998)
- Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations (2003)
- A Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations with Barry F. Madore (1987)
See also
- Cosmology
- Non-standard cosmology
- Intrinsic redshifts
- Redshift quantization
- Le Sage's theory of gravitation
References
- ^ ISBN 0-9683689-0-5
- ^ Alissa J. Arp and Andrice Arp, daughters
- ^ a b c Overbye, Dennis (January 6, 2014). "Halton C. Arp, Astronomer, Dies at 86; Sought to Challenge Big Bang Theory". The New York Times.
- ^ http://www.create.ab.ca/epitaph-for-a-maverick-astronomer/. (n.d.)."Halton Arp, the atheist Steady State astronomer, has died"
- ^ "The polar ring of Arp 230". Retrieved June 25, 2015.
- doi:10.1086/190147.
- ^ H. Arp (1966). "Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies", California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California (online version, including Arp's original tabular data)
- S2CID 4186361.
- PMID 17800993.
- S2CID 17991896.
- ISSN 0035-8711.
- S2CID 17416668.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - S2CID 13887166.
- ^ H.C. Arp official website:articles
- S2CID 120250681.
- ^ "Smithsonian/NASA ADS Custom Query Form". Results for "Arp, H". Retrieved September 3, 2006.
- S2CID 119819755.
- S2CID 119052857.
- ^ S2CID 17057129.
- ^ Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy Archived April 4, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ About the AAAS: History & Archives Archived September 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Juan Miguel Campanario and Brian Martin, "Challenging dominant physics paradigms Archived April 9, 2009, at the Wayback Machine" (2004) Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 18, no. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 421–438.[unreliable source?]
Further reading
- Halton Arp (1989). Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies. ISBN 978-0-521-36314-3.
- Halton Arp, Seeing Red, Aperion (1998) ISBN 0-9683689-0-5
- Halton Arp, Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations, Aperion (2003) ISBN 0-9683689-9-9
- G. Burbidge, E.M. Burbidge, H.C. Arp, W.M. Napier: Ultraluminous X-ray Sources, High Redshift QSOs and Active Galaxies. Preprint
- J. Kanipe, D. Webb The Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, A Chronicle and Observer's Guide, Willmann-Bell Inc. (2006) ISBN 978-0-943396-76-7
External links
- Halton Arp's Website
- Oral History interview transcript with Halton Arp on 29 July 1975, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
- Publications by Halton C. Arp at the Scientific Commons repository Archived May 22, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies
- Halton Arp directory page at the IAU from 2011