From: Iain Strachan (iain.strachan@eudoramail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 15 2000 - 12:24:52 EDT
On Wed, 14 Aug 2002 11:52:38 John W Burgeson wrote:
>The Acts & Facts IMPACT #350, just published, and viewable on the ICR
>website, is an article by D. R. Humphries which argues that the universe
>has a center, and that our home galaxy is near it. The term
>"Galactocentric" is used.
>
>Humphries argues that "new evidence" shows that the red shifts occur, not
>randomly, but in evenly spaced numerical groups. These groups imply that
>galaxies themselves are distributed in evenly spaced distances (shells)
>around our home galaxy; the shell distances are 3.1, 6.2, 9.3, 12.4
>...light years.
>
>We, ourselves, Humphries writes, are within 100,000 light years of the
>center. Of course, he then argues that the odds of being so close (100K
>out of 40B) are 1 in a quadrillion, so therefore God exists and has given
>us "prime real estate."
>
>Humphries give no citations to the scientific literature in his claim --
>he does refer to a soon-to-be-coming (from him) monograph or (possibly)
>book. It will appear on the ICR web site "soon."
>
>Any comments? It appears that while the ID people are "proving God
>scientifically" by considering the very small, ICR is going the other
>direction.
>
>John Burgeson (Burgy)
>
>http://www.burgy.50megs.com
> (science/theology, quantum mechanics, baseball, ethics,
> humor, cars, philosophy, ethics etc.)
>
This appears to be an idea that has been around for quite a time. A
Google search on "Quantization of Red Shift" produces quite a number
of creationist hits, but also the following; which doesn't appear to
be by a creationist (at least I've not really had time to check).
http://home.achilles.net/~jtalbot/V1976b/index.html
The paper is:
THE RED SHIFT HYPOTHESIS FOR QUASARS :
IS THE EARTH THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE ?
(Varshni,Y.P.: 1976, Astrophys.Space Sci., 43, 3.)
I have a colleague who is a Young Earth Creationist, and a subscriber
to the TJ (in which Humphries' paper is published). He may be able
to shed more light on this when he returns from holiday in a couple
of weeks time. He is a keen amateur astronomer, and is in general
skeptical of Humphreys' "Starlight and Time" cosmology, which he says
doesn't explain the observational data. However, the branching into
quantized red shift seems a different departure.
I'd also add that the phrase "prime real estate" used by Humphreys in
this article also cropped up in a Scientific American article a few
months back about the possibility of life occurring elsewhere in the
Galaxy. The thrust of the article was that intelligent life may be
much rarer than we might suppose, because there is only a very narrow
radial band from the centre of the galaxy were the metallicity
(amount of elements heavier than helium?) of the stars is at the
right level to support life. The article stated that the earth was
in the middle of "prime real estate".
--- Iain.Strachan@eudoramail.com is a free email account I use for posting to public forums. To contact me personally, please write to:iain.g.d.strachan AT ntlworld DOT com
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