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Using Absorption Lines

The correct interpretation of an absorption line is critical.

It appears there are mistakes with this.

An absorption line occurs when a) there is an atom between the light source and the observer and b) when that wavelength exactly matches the wavelength needed for an electron to change to a higher energy state. This wavelength that can be absorbed is defined for each particular element where each has its own defined electron shells and energy states.
This wavelength absorption can occur anywhere along the path of the light.

In other words, this is an event that could happen anywhere between  the start and end points for that wavelength of light.

It is quite illogical to assume such an event will always occur at only one point or the other.

This post is a follow up to my post on 4/14 about Hubble's Law.

Hubble's Law is based on this illogical assumption. Red shifts in the hydrogen absorption line are assumed to indicate that velocity applies to all distant galaxies with this red shift.

on 4/10 I posted about a theory predicting the neutral hydrogen atoms in intergalactic space would cause a hydrogen absorption line with a red shift. The amount of red shift depends on the length of the presence of these hydrogen atoms along the path. This theory explains the proportional relationship of red shift to distance.

I suspect this conclusion by those scientists could be debated. After all there might be no practical way to test a specific behavior of intergalactic space.

How this observed red shift for hydrogen occurs is only part of the problem.
Hubble's Law is still based on an illogical assumption.

Absorption lines always have an ambiguous location by their nature.

This ambiguity must be accounted for in any 'law' definition.


This post resulted in this comment:

 If you were one of "those" scientists what would you suggest, David, to account for the ambiguity? Not being a smartass, but offer something practical as you said we need

My response:

All these distant galaxies need something else that might provide velocity information like an unrelated absorption line, not hydrogen, or perhaps an emission line. These must not arise in intergalactic space to track only the galaxy.



In my post about quasars I mentioned the known problem with BL LAC objects. These AGN objects look identical to a quasar except the BL LAC has no hydrogen emission lines but the quasars do.
Cosmologists simply must accept we have no velocity data for that BL LAC object. However the BL LAC objects are usually in the vicinity of quasars and a central Seyfert so we can guess at its location.

To be honest I cannot give you an acceptable work around if the spectrum offers no other lines.
If we cannot trust the hydrogen red shift for a reliable indicator and there is no alternative then we must accept we can't know how the galaxy is moving.


I added this subsequent comment:

I should have added:
all stars emit broad spectrum light, like white to us.
All Emission and absorption lines are always due to elements between that emission and us.
I accept this is an inherent problem for cosmologists to know how anything is moving.


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