Halton Arp

Infobox Scientist
name = Halton Arp
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caption = Halton Arp in London, Oct 2000
birth_date = March 21 1927
birth_place = New York City
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nationality = American
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field = astronomy
work_institutions = Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
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known_for = Intrinsic redshift
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Halton Christian Arp (aka "Chip") is an American astronomer. He is known for his 1966 "Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies", which (it was later realized) catalogues many examples of interacting and merging galaxies. Arp is also known as a critic of the Big Bang and for advocating a non-standard cosmology incorporating intrinsic redshift.

Career

Arp was born March 21 1927 in New York City. His bachelor's degree was awarded by Harvard (1949), and his Ph.D. from Caltech (1953). Afterwards he became a Fellow of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1953, performing research at the Mount Wilson Observatory and Palomar Observatory. Arp became a Research Assistant at Indiana University in 1955 and subsequently in 1957 became a staff member at Palomar Observatory, where he worked for 29 years. In 1983 he joined the staff of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany.

Quasars and redshifts

Arp's hypothesis is that quasars or quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) are local objects ejected from the core of active galactic nuclei (AGN). The theory was originally proposed in the 1960s as an alternative to Maarten Schmidt's explanation for QSOs, which stated that they were very distant galaxies that appeared to be highly redshifted because of the expansion of the universe.cite journal
author=Schmidt Maarten
title=3C 273: a star-like object with large red-shift
journal=Nature
year=1963
volume=197
pages=1040–1040
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1963Natur.197.1040S | doi=10.1038/1971040a0] Arp argues that in some photographs a QSO is in the foreground of (or otherwise connected to) galaxies that according to the Hubble's law interpretation of redshift are significantly closer to earth than the QSO. He also claims that quasars are not evenly spread over the sky but tend to be more commonly found in positions of small angular separation from certain galaxies. The implication of the hypothesis of local QSOs is that most of the observed redshift of these QSOs must have a non-cosmological or "intrinsic" origin. Arp has suggested that the QSO emission may instead be ejecta from active galactic nuclei. Nearby galaxies with both strong radio emission and peculiar morphologies, particularly M87 and Centaurus A, appeared to support Arp's hypothesis.cite journal
author=H. Arp
title=Peculiar Galaxies and Radio Sources
journal=Astrophysical Journal
year=1967
volume=148
pages=321–366
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1967ApJ...148..321A | doi=10.1086/149159] In his books, Arp has provided his reasons for believing that the Big Bang theory itself is wrong, citing his research into QSOs. Instead, Arp supports the redshift quantization theory as an explanation of the redshifts of galaxies. [Arp, Halton, " [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1987JApA....8..241A&db_key=AST&data_type=HTML&format=&high=4521318e0202978 Additional members of the Local Group of galaxies and quantized redshifts within the two nearest groups] " (1987) "Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy" (ISSN 0250-6335), vol. 8, Sept. 1987, p. 241-255.]

Critics

Since Arp originally proposed his theories in the 1960s, however, telescopes and astronomical instrumentation have advanced greatly; the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, multiple 8-10 meter telescopes (such as those at Keck Observatory) have become operational, and detectors such as CCDs are now more widely employed. These new telescopes and new instrumentation have been utilized to examine QSOs further. QSOs are now generally accepted to be very distant galaxies with high redshifts. Moreover, many imaging surveys, most notably the Hubble Deep Field, have found many high-redshift objects that are not QSOs but that appear to be "normal" galaxies like those found nearby.cite journal
author=S. P. Driver, A. Fernandez-Soto, W. J. Couch, S. C. Odewahn, R. A. Windhorst, S. Phillips, K. Lanzetta, A. Yahil
title=Morphological Number Counts and Redshift Distributions to I<26 from the Hubble Deep Field: Implications for the Evolution of Ellipticals, Spirals, and Irregulars
journal=Astrophysical Journal
year=1998
volume=496
pages=L93–L96
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1998ApJ...496L..93D
doi=10.1086/311257] Moreover, the spectra of the high-redshift galaxies, as seen from X-ray to radio wavelengths, match the spectra of nearby galaxies (particularly galaxies with high levels of star formation activity but also galaxies with normal or extinguished star formation activity) when corrected for redshift effects.cite journal
author=W. J. Couch, R. S. Ellis, J. Godwin, D. Carter
title=Spectral energy distributions for galaxies in high redshift clusters. I - Methods and application to three clusters with Z = 0.22-0.31
journal=Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
year=1983
volume=205
pages=1287–1312
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983MNRAS.205.1287C] cite journal
author=Postman, L. M. Lubin, J. B. Oke
title=A Study of Nine High-Redshift Clusters of Galaxies. II. Photometry, Spectra, and Ages of Clusters 0023+0423 and 1604+4304
journal=Astronomical Journal
year=1998
volume=116
pages=560–583
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1998AJ....116..560P | doi=10.1086/300463] cite journal
author=R. S. Priddey, R. G. McMahon
title=The far-infrared-submillimetre spectral energy distribution of high-redshift quasars
journal=Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
year=2001
volume=324
pages=L17–L22
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001MNRAS.324L..17P | doi=10.1046/j.1365-8711.2001.04548.x]

Nonetheless, Arp has not wavered from his stand against the Big Bang and still publishes articles stating his contrary view in both popular and scientific literature, frequently collaborating with Geoffrey Burbidge and Margaret Burbidge.cite web
title=Smithsonian/NASA ADS Custom Query Form
work=Results for "Arp, H"
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html
accessdate=2006-09-03 ]

The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies

Arp has compiled a catalog of unusual galaxies titled "Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies", which was first published in 1966cite journal
author=H. Arp
title=Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies
journal=Astrophysical Journal Supplement
year=1966
volume=14
pages=1–20
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1966ApJS...14....1A | doi=10.1086/190147] . Arp realized that astronomers understood little about how galaxies change over time, which led him to work on this project. 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 atlas as evidence in his debate on QSOs.

Astronomers today recognize that Arp developed an excellent atlas of interacting and merging galaxies. Many objects in the atlas are primarily referred to by their Arp number. Many of these objects (particularly Arp 220) are also used as spectral templates for studying high-redshift galaxies.

Notable 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." [ [http://www.aas.org/grants/awards.html Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy] ]

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. [About the AAAS: [http://archives.aaas.org/people.php?p_id=453 History & Archives] ]

In 1984, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award. [Juan Miguel Campanario and Brian Martin, " [http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/04jse.html Challenging dominant physics paradigms] " (2004) "Journal of Scientific Exploration", vol. 18, no. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 421-438.]

ee also

* Main : Controversial book (Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies)
* List of astronomical topics : Quasar
* Cosmology : Non-standard cosmology, Intrinsic redshifts, Redshift quantization, Le Sage's theory of gravitation, Big Bang
* Other : Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy

Further reading

* Halton Arp, "Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies", Interstellar Media (May 1, 1987) ISBN 0-941325-00-8
* Halton Arp, "Seeing Red", Aperion (August, 1998) ISBN 0-9683689-0-5
* Halton Arp, "Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations", Aperion (September 1, 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." [http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0605140 Preprint]
*Dewey B. Larson, "The Universe of Motion", North Pacific Publishers (1984) ISBN 0-913138-11-8

External links

* [http://www.haltonarp.com/ Halton Arp's Website]
* Apeiron, [http://redshift.vif.com/ journal web site] . (Arp is editorial board member)
* [http://en.scientificcommons.org/h_arp Publications by Halton C. Arp at the Scientific Commons repository]
* [http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/frames.html "Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies"]
* [http://members.aol.com/arpgalaxy/ Arp's Catalog of Peculiar Galaxies website]
* [http://metaresearch.org/publications/books/SeeingRed-Arp.asp Detailed review of "Seeing Red" by Tom Van Flandern]
* [http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2007/06/a_stellar_heresy.html Electric Politics interview with Halton C. Arp (podcast)]
* [http://www.astraeamagazine.com/template1_txt.php?id=24 Astraea Magazine interview with Halton C. Arp (podcast)]
* [http://www.willbell.com/HANDBOOK/Downloads/ArpPreface.pdf Preface to "The Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies"]
* [http://www.willbell.com/HANDBOOK/Downloads/ArpAuthor'sNote.pdf Author's Notes to "The Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies"]

References