(Left to Right) Chip Arp, Toney Burkhart & John Dobson
I believe the observational evidence has become overwhelming, and the Big Bang has in reality been toppled. There is now a need to communicate the new observations, the connection between objects and the new insights into the workings of the universe--all the primary obligations of academic science, which has generally tried to suppress or ignore such dissident information....
At this point, I believe we must look for salvation from the non-specialists, amateurs and interdisciplinary thinkers--those who form judgements on the general thrust of the evidence, those who are skeptical about any explanations, particularly official ones, and above all are tolerant of other people's theories. - Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (1998)
His early work made Arp one of the leading young astronomers of his generation. During 29 years on the staff at Mt. Palomar, he became a master of photographic techniques and a connoisseur of cosmic peculiarities. In about 1983 he received an unsigned letter from the telescope allocation committee at Mt. Palomar denying him any further telescope time for his unorthodox projects. After all appeals failed, he took early retirement and moved to Germany, where he has recently been expanding his research into X-ray astronomy. His continuing efforts have won the support of a handful of other professionals, but have been largely ignored (or derided) by the mainstream.
Arp's cosmological views have come a long way in the last decade. His cosmos is a steady-state universe, with no Big Bang and no expansion, and with the intermittent creation of new matter. Redshift is not velocity related but an inherent property of matter that decreases with age. The basic cosmological unit is composed of an old parent galaxy of low redshift, accompanied by smaller and younger companions with redshift excesses, and surrounded by newly-created quasars of high redshift. Both companions and quasars have been ejected by the parent galaxy, much like the knots in the jets which are often also observed.
