Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science [Paperback]

Halton Arp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1998

Arp's book is a frontal assault on the standard model of the universe, replete with anecdotes and illustrations, including 8 pages of colour plates.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book lays down a lifetime of seeing the world differently, looking at alternative explanations for a complex, beautiful universe. -- Sky & Telescope, June 1999

About the Author

Halton Arp graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1949 and earned a Ph.D. from Caltech in 1953 (also cum laude). His first postdoctoral position was as an assistant to Edwin Hubble. He worked as a staff astronomer at Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar for 29 years before moving to Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics in Munich. Arp's observations of quasars and galaxies are world-renowned. He is the author of the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (1963: a collectors' item), Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies (1987), as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals. He has been awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society and the Newcomb Cleveland award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and served as president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific from 1980 to 1983. In 1984, he received the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 306 pages
• Publisher: C. Roy Keys Inc (August 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0968368905
• ISBN-13: 978-0968368909
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #615,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and extremely disturbing, October 1, 2003

By 

Eric B. Norris (Santa Clara, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (Paperback)

If Dr. Arp's earlier book, "Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies" put a few pinpricks into the Big Bang and Redshift-Distance Relation theories, this book blows open a hole so large you could drive a Mack truck through it. Dr. Arp shows us a number of galaxies that appear to be associated with quasars or other extremely compact, radio-emitting objects that have grossly different redshifts. If these objects are indeed related then the inconsistent redshifts mean the accepted distances for these objects are bogus, to use a scientific term. Dr. Arp states in the preface that if you are math-impaired you will still be able to follow the book easily because the eye-popping evidence is all in the pictures. And so it is.

What is so disturbing is the effect on Halton Arp's career this decades-long search for the truth has wrought. In the earlier book one of the appendices is the letter from CalTech throwing him off the 200-inch Hale telescope on Mt. Palomar. In this book he describes how difficult or impossible it has been for him to publish his research. Dr. Arp is no crackpot claiming aliens are making crop circles or the Bermuda Triangle is swallowing up ships--he received his Ph.D with honors from CalTech itself, and created the Catalog of Peculiar Galaxies (using of course the same 200-inch Hale telescope he was later denied). In the later part of the book Dr. Arp also catalogs several other scientific theories, such as continental drift, which were heresy at the time they were published but later became universally accepted. He discusses the sometimes stifiling atmosphere of academia, and how it impedes the investigation of new ideas. Finally, Dr. Arp offers some intriguing ideas on just where those quasars and other active objects came from in the first place.

This book is a page-turner, and you don't need to understand calculus or anything else to read it. A basic understanding of statistics would help but is not necessary.

My only gripe is that the paper used is so thin the illustrations can be seen somewhat on the opposite side of the page.

If you have any interest in astronomy or cosmology I would say this book is a must read.

48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be ready to give up the Big Bang, September 27, 2000

By 

D. Sinclair - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (Paperback)

Arp argues convincingly that the holy grail of cosmology, the hubble flow, exists only in the minds of astronomers. There are abundant examples of high-redshift quasars which are physically connected to low-redshift galaxies. There is convincing evidence that redshift is quantized, which is inexplicable in the conventional picture where redshift is caused by recession speed. Big bang cosmology has been overthrown, and the evidence against it is getting stronger with new observations.

Mainstream astronomy, unfortunately, does not want to recognize this evidence. Scientists who have built whole careers on a flawed theory are not ready to admit that they have been totally, completely wrong. Instead, they have chosen a much easier way to deal with this unpleasant evidence, one that has been succesfully employed in many other fields of science: they suppress, ignore & ridicule, while they keep adding epicycles to their ever more complicated theory of the big bang.

Arp's account of the utterly unscientific behavior of the scientific establishment is sobering. It reveals once more how the great human endeavor of science, which should be an unbiased and objective search for the truth, has been corrupted by the vested interests of individuals and academic institutions, blind belief in authority and by herd mentality, and thus turned into something that is eerily reminiscent of the medieval Catholic Church. Then, as today, observations and new theories were suppresed by those in power for contradicting what was considered the truth.

Although this book is a bit technical in nature, it is accessible to any layperson with some basic knowledge of astronomy. If that describes you, or if you are interested in great case material for a study of the sociology of science, I can unconditionally recommend it.

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cosmology for the new millenium, March 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (Paperback)

Dr Arp's new book, like the one before it (Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies -Interstellar Media. 1988) further supports his claim that the redshifted light from distant quasars and galaxies is not the result recessional velocity in an expanding universe. Building on the evidence set out in the earlier book, Dr Arp discusses more recent evidence, from x-ray satellites, that show further examples of quasars/galaxy associations which question the validity of the currently popular 'big bang' expanding universe theory.

In the new book, Dr Arp also discusses the prejudice and institutionalised pressures that can be excerted by the science establishment in an effort to preserve established paradigms and belief systems and discourage the dissident and unorthodox view. Arp is well qualified to discuss this issue, having personally experienced an almost 'Galilian' attempt by the establishment to suppress his reasearch over the past 25 years.

SEEING RED is as much a damning report on the professional dishonesty and hypocrisy that permeates the very foundations of modern cosmology's 'Ivory Tower', as it is a catalogue of further evidence that may prove be the catalyst that affords a changed and radically new way of looking at the universe in the new millenium.