Talk:Intrinsic redshift

What is this article about? "Intrinsic redshift" implies (to me) a redshift associated with a particular object, as opposed to mechanisms that apply to all sources in the neighborhood. In that sense, the gravitational redshift is intrinsic, tired light is not, and scattering may or may not be, depending on the location of the scattering medium. The alleged synonyms each have their own problems. I don't understand Reboul's table at all. In short, I am deeply unhappy with the content of the article, and question whether it should exist at all. --Art Carlson 11:41, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is a problem with definitions. The article is about published redshift theories that are not Cosmological, Doppler, and Gravitational, of which there are many. I have seen all manner of loose terms, such as:

"Non-Cosmological", which could mean also Doppler or Gravitational, but in fact means none of these.
Intrinsic, which as you say, could mean Gravitational, but does not.
Anomalous, which could just mean "unusual".

So what term do we use to lump together all redshift theories that are not Cosmological, Doppler, and Gravitational? I chose "Intrinsic redshift" out of several possibilities, all of which are not precise. I hoped that the article definition would clarify the term.

Reboul's table obviously needs clarification, but esentially, he categorised intrinsic redshift theories. The first column of his table refers to the object in which a redshift was measured, the second column, the type of study, and the last column, the category of theory.

Should the article exist? Definitely. It shows that other theories are considered (or have been considered) for explaining redshift. I'm not claiming that any of these are correct. But as Reboul found, several hundred peer-reviewed papers to 1981 have at least discussed other theories.

--Iantresman 13:00, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If the article is called "intrinsic" redshift, it should have at least one reference to an article or book that calls it as such. Ian, you say that you saw it somewhere; please include the reference.

Oh, and it is generally believed that Doppler is the only (or at least the main) cause of Cosmological redshift. Obviously, "Cosmological redshift" is a redshift, it can't be a cause of redshift! Harald88 13:50, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PS I just read an article commenting on Wolf redshift, and I agree with Art that "intrinsic" is a misnomer, just as for tired light. IMO it would make more sense to call it "List of redshift mechanisms", as appendix to the article "Redshift". Harald88 15:05, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In response to Harald88. In that case, how about calling the article: "Redshift theories (alternative)"? And then additionally, it would make sense to try and distinguish and described (though many of these do not involve alternative theories):

Redshift term	Examples papers using term
Redshift term	in title	in abstract
Intrinsic redshift	Show (5)	Show (48)
Non-cosmological redshift	Show (7)	Show (16)
Non-velocity redshifts or Non-Doppler Redshift	Show (7) Show (4)	Show (7) Show (12)
Anomalous Redshift or Discordant redshifts	Show (24) Show (25)	Show (58) Show (52)

Indeed, I felt that this subject should be mentioned in the main redshift article, but Joshua doesn't seem to accept that this stuff is discussed anywhere (let alone in peer reviewed articles), so perhaps just a link would suffice. --Iantresman 16:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article for deletion

Original request | Your comment

This article has to go. Claiming that it is based on an obscure clearinghouse paper published in the 1980s doesn't cut it as a rationale for including the article. The article is Original Research and a POV-fork and will go. Please see the AfD page. Thanks, --ScienceApologist 15:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Claiming the article is based on one reference is false (you completely ignored the other 30+ references).

The other references refer to some that aren't even about the subject (some are about helioseismology for example). --ScienceApologist 14:47, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Claiming the article is based on "an obscure clearinghouse paper" is false. The article you refer to appeared in "Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series" [1]

It is definitely obscure. Look at how many papers cite it. --ScienceApologist 14:47, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Claiming that the article is original research is false; Wikipedia says "the only way to show that you are not doing original research is to cite sources who discuss material that is directly related to the article", and this is done.
Claiming that this article is a point-of-view fork, is false; Wikipedia says this is "creating a new article about a certain subject that is already treated". The article on redshift does not include the majority of material in this article. The main redshift article is about Cosmological, Doppler and Gravitation redshifts; this article is about theories which have been published in peer reviewed journals that propose non-Cosmological, non-Doppler and non-Gravitation redshifts. See the difference?

Except your article is so shoddy it lists some observations as theories. This really represents some terrible POV-pushing. --ScienceApologist 14:47, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

--Iantresman 16:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have time for prolonged bickering about this topic. There is research published in professional astronomical journals that discusses the topic of intrinsic redshifts. Ian has linked to those articles. That alone is enough to justify the existence of this article. As for the writing of the article - that is something that can progress. I don't think it is unfair to make sure that the article states that the hypothesis of intrinsic redshifts is a speculative, minority view. However, there is a use in having this article as a reference to what an "intrinsic redshift" might be.

One of the difficulties is that there are a lot of different controversial redshift mechanisms and some of them may be "intrinsic" and some of them are not. For clarity it should be understood that the Hubble relation defines the cosmological redshift. Expansion of the universe is the accepted mechanism for cosmological redshift. Tired light mechanisms provide another attempt to explain cosmological redshift.

Intrinsic redshift specifically refers to variations in the observed redshift of individual objects (galaxies, quasars ... ) that vary from object to object such that two objects at the same distance might have vastly different redshifts. Note that "intrinsic redshifts" - if real - may be superposed upon the cosmological redshift. So properly speaking, anything that attempts to explain all of the observed redshift as cosmological (expansion, tired light) belongs in the main "Redshift" article - or an article titled "cosmological redshift". Any redshift mechanisms that are superposed upon the cosmological redshift defined by the Hubble relation would properly belong in the "intrinsic redshift" article.

I see no reason to provide any edits to the article until this issue of its existence is resolved. --DavidRussell 18:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Need of a comparison of the proposed mechanisms

The article would be good if it were completed by a comparison of the proposed redshift mechanisms; the author should indicate, for each proposal, by yes or no (table ?), which of the following conditions for a Doppler-like effec tby a light-matter interaction, are fulfilled:

-1 Space coherence to avoid a blurring of the images

-2 An incident wave must be transformed into a single emerging wave to avoid a blurring of the spectra; if the infinitesimal process is a scattering, the incident and scattered waves must interfere into a single wave having the same linewidth.

-3 The relative frequency shift must be, at least approximately, constant. The lack of constance of the observed relative frequency shifts is usually considered as due to a variation of the fine structure constant.

-4 Is it a pure consequence of well known physics, in particular spectroscopy and thermodynamics ?

-5 Is the effect non-Doppler ? The theory must fail if it is applied to a continuous wave, therefore it must contain a parameter measuring the time-incoherence of the light.

JMO 07:55, 4 January 2006 (UTC) Jacques Moret-Bailly[reply]

I don't see the rationale for including this criteria. While they aren't in principle problematic, we already discuss them well on the redshift article. --ScienceApologist 23:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Joshua's article re-write

Joshua, I do not accept your withdrawal of the Article for Deletion under those terms. As Art Carson and Harald88 first commented in Talk (see their comments above), "there is a problem with definitions". I AGREED with them both, and as a result of our discussion, made some changes. You've steam-rollered over those discussions, and ignored everybody.

The article was clearly far broader than just "intrinsic redshift", as indicated by the definition, existing comments, and note of suggested article title change.

Where's the information on "Non-cosmological redshifts", or "Plasma redshift", or "Neutrino redshift", or that such theories often result in redshift with distorted spectra, or a timeline of alternative theories? --Iantresman 17:36, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ian, let me add, that Joshua's re-write is not an article about intrinsic redshifts - its about Halton Arp. I could very easily write a NPOV article on intrinsic redshifts, but I don't have the time right now. A true article about intrinsic redshifts should include examples from the published research that have led to the intrinsic redshift hypothesis. Those are points that could be added to this article, but I suspect that any attempt to do that would be met with resistance. --DavidRussell 19:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lantresman, AFAIK (but now I can't see how to verify it), there was pretty much a concensus to rename the article. I propose to stick to that, and to copy the (old) contents of the page to the new-name article, eventually merging in some possible improvements by ScienceApologist (a method typical for Wikipedia but unheard of by him). It may be a good idea to check first, should it be called alternative mechanisms or more general? Anything that is covered elsewhere only takes one or two lines, as a link, so it doesn't really matter for space. Generally I prefer neutral titles, but apparently you don't think so. Harald88 18:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I agreed with that [2], but thought it would be easier to just rename the page, rather than delete it, rewrite it, and move the content elsewhere. However, my criticsm is that Joshua did not consult with the other editors first, and made no attempt to retain or reuse any of the earlier text. That's not how an editing team works together. --Iantresman 18:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The old content was extremely problematic. It included references to Google searches and a grocery list of articles that served no other purpose than to show that Ian knows how to use search engines. Let's try to write decent encyclopedia articles rather than rubbish. --ScienceApologist 18:19, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you should give other people time to work on improving the article. You nominated it for deletion within 24 hours. That sets a very bad tone and undermines your credibility as a fair minded contributor. There is justification for including an intrinsic redshifts article on Wikipedia. As I emphasized in my original comments, it is important to make sure that the article emphasizes the intrinsic redshift hypothesis has very little support in the astronomical community -but with that said the reasons for proposing intrinsic redshifts should be given fair treatment. --DavidRussell 19:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Joshua, since your User page is currently protected [3], I'm posting this warning template here.

I consider your edits, without discussion, to be vandalism.

Please stop removing content from Wikipedia; it is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you..

"Plasma redshift" doesn't exist. It is a figment that I haven't seen mentioned in the literature. If it is separate from scattering and is part of plasma cosmology, include it there. Otherwise it is already dealt with on the redshift page.

"Non-cosmological redshift" is a catch-all term that isn't descriptive and doesn't deserve and article on Wikipedia. There are lots of non-cosmological redshifts, and they are all dealt with in the redshift article.

"Neutrino redshift" could have a page of its own. That I do not necessarily object to.

--ScienceApologist 18:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"accept general concensus"?

1. A scientist can't "accept" concensus for he/she is part of the contributors to an eventual concensus. Only a layman or stranger to the field can "accept" concensus of such experts. Thus that is nonsense, as if scienctists are part of some kind of fanatic sect.

I disagree. Scientists can reject ideas based on their own designs. Scientific consensus points this out. --ScienceApologist

That's what I say. A scientist doesn't need anyone else to tell what to think. And if they all think alike it's called consensus and a good sign. It's in sects and totalitary states that adherents must think like the crowd; that is anti-scientific. Harald88 00:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

2. I wonder who determined such a claimed concensus, and how. If it can't be supported by something good, it's just POV pushing. Harald88 20:43, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the article linked above. --ScienceApologist 23:02, 4 January 2006

(UTC)

, where, under which header? Harald88 00:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consultation Part II

I'm quite content for there to be an article on "Intrinsic redshift", but that still leaves room for another article. This is not a re-interpretation of redshift. It does not deny the existing information on the redshift article. I envisage it covering:

(a) Explanations of the following terms, regardless of whether the phenomena actually exist, since they are used in the literature (see table above). We all have a rough understanding of what the terms mean, and we have an obligation to convey that meaning to other people

Non-cosmological redshift

This is already covered in the redshift article. Please do not create thie neologism article based on your own original research. --ScienceApologist

Non-velocity redshifts (Non-Doppler Redshift)

This is already covered in the redshift article. Please do not create thie neologism article based on your own original research. --ScienceApologist

Anomalous redshift (Discordant redshifts)

This is only used in the context of quasar controversies and Arp. The "discordant" idea is that quasars are associated with nearer objects. This can be handled on this page. --ScienceApologist 23:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Intrinsic redshift

We have this page. --ScienceApologist 23:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quantized redshift

A separate concept that has been shown to be nonexistent by a recent paper. This does not rise for a need for a separate article. --ScienceApologist 23:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(b) Summary of other redshift theories, again regardless of whether they are accepted or not. There are Wiki articles on Flat earth, Phlogiston, N-rays, etc. If the Simkin effect has been proposed as causing redshift, and as Joshua says, this is due to atmospheric polution, then we say so. And even if Joshua hasn't heard of "plasma redshift", nor can find it in the literature, then he leaves it to those of us who have.

No, you cannot just create articles that are non-notable. --ScienceApologist 23:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(c) There is plenty of scope here for context, reason for the theories, evidence for, evidence against, implications.

We could include these on article that already exist such as Halton Arp's page or non-standard cosmology page. You refuse to admit this or even simply address this point. --ScienceApologist 23:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(d) JMO above suggested the "Need of a comparison of the proposed mechanisms" which would be useful too.

The vast majority of this information is not included anywhere in Wikipedia.

I disagree with this. The redshift article provides plenty of context. --ScienceApologist

1. I propose the article name: "Redshift theories (alternative)". Any others?

I object in principle to this kind of article. --ScienceApologist 23:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

2. I propose that I include my original text as a starting point.

Your original text was fraught with errors and was original research, points you haven't come to terms with or admitted. I propose you nominate a neutral author if you are intent on creating this. --ScienceApologist 23:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

--Iantresman 21:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I already made explained why I am against this article called "intrinsic redshift". Either call it "Redshift theories (alternative)", or "Comprehensive list of Redshift theories", to make it a useful index (except if uch an index already exists, but I have the impression that all is cluttered around in different articles). Harald88 00:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]