Halton Arp and the "Redshift Controversy"

Halton Arp is a distinguished observational astronomer who continues to argue against the basic ideas of the Big Bang. His arguments are largely based on observations which purport to show a physical connection between high redshift objects (usually quasars) and galaxies with much lower redshift. He has written several popular books describing his views, the arguments of which are described by some of his admirers here and here. One of the dangerous features of the web is that unorthodox views often get much more exposure than they deserve, and there is a lot of pro-Arp material on the web, generally depicting him as the victim of a great conspiracy of scientists, for example here and here. In some cases, things get quite bizarre - for example this essay that argues that the Big Bang and also Black Holes are false propaganda designed to further American imperial hegemony. Money quote: "Like a black hole, the American empire is an all-powerful entity that crushes other peoples... and then absorbs those crushed peoples into itself."

By contrast, there isn't really much that reflects the view of almost all scientists that Arp's ideas are by now completely untenable. There's a sober-minded but somewhat dated assessment here , but this doesn't really capture the disdain which most astronomers feel towards Arp's contentions. So here is a short list of some of the reasons why most of us don't think Arp's work is worth bothering about. In fact, most astronomers think about Arp mostly as an example of "pathological science", a concept which is discussed in this essay by Nicholas Turro, a professor of chemistry at Columbia University. It's not that the astronomical community isn't searching for some fundamentally new ideas; the people in charge of this organization, for example, are among the most distinguished young astrophysicists in the world. But just about no-one thinks that Arp's views can have any validity.