Authors: J. Marvin Herndon
Ours is a time of unparalleled richness in astronomical observations, but understanding seems to be absent throughout broad areas of astrophysics. Among some groups of astrophysicists there appears to be measured degrees of consensus, as indicated by the prevalence of so-called "standard models", but in science consensus is nonsense; science is a logical process, not a democratic process, and logical connections in many instances seem to be lacking. So the question astrophysicists should ask is this: "What's wrong with astrophysics?" Finding out what's wrong is not only the necessary precursor to righting what's wrong, but will open the way to new advances in astrophysics. Toward that end, one may question the basic assumptions upon which astrophysics is founded, as well as question the approaches astrophysicists currently employ. Here I describe one methodology and provide specific examples, the details of which are set forth elsewhere [1-3]. In doing so, I place into a logical sequence seemingly unrelated astronomical observations, including certain Hubble Space Telescope images, so that causal relationships become evident and understanding becomes possible; as a consequence, profound new implications follow, for example bearing on the origin of diverse galactic structures and the origin of the heavy elements.
Comments: recovered from sciprint.org
[v1] 2 Apr 2008
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