The heavens declare a different story!

John G. Hartnett


Observational evidence from the cosmos is not as we have been led to believe. Have we been sold another great lie? The first one was biological evolution; this one is the ‘Copernican or cosmological principle’. The general picture described in the secular newspapers and popular press is one that supports the big bang. The universe is described as an apparently infinite volume such that on the very largest scales the galaxies are distributed randomly throughout.

After all, this is the basis of the assumption that underpins the big bang conjecture itself. That unproven and unprovable assumption is the cosmological principle. It essentially states that the universe is both homogeneous (no matter where we view it from it always looks the same) and isotropic (it looks identical in whichever direction we look) and that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. Without these assumptions, the Friedmann-Lemaître solutions of the general relativity equations are invalid. It is upon these assumptions that all big bang cosmology hangs.

Richard Feynman succinctly describes the problem of the cosmological principle on page 166 of his book:


Stephen Hawking seems to be giving a different impression. He says in his newer version2 of an old book (pp. 154–155):

“This [big bang] picture of the universe that started off very hot and cooled as it expanded is in agreement with all the observational evidence we have today. Nevertheless it leaves a number of important questions unanswered … (2) Why is the universe so uniform on a large scale? Why does it look the same at all points of space and in all directions?”

He gives us the idea that the universe is uniform in all directions. Note, he adds on ‘a large scale’ because on every other smaller scale than large (by definition) it is not uniform. Also he uses a ploy of having the reader focus on a question that need not be answered if he knew the real state of observational astronomy.

Hawking continues with another unanswered question (p. 156):

“(4) Despite the fact that the universe is so uniform and homogeneous on a large scale, it contains local irregularities, such as stars and galaxies. These are thought to have developed from small differences in the density of the early universe from one region to another. What was the origin of these density fluctuations?”

He is saying the origin of stars and galaxies is totally unknown. Later in this paper, we shall see from observational astronomy this is not the case; the truth is clear for all to see. But to explain their origin in the big bang conjecture, Hawking asks why did (assuming it did—i.e. begging the question) the universe have small density fluctuations that evolved into galaxies and stars. Then he goes on to say (p. 157) “The general theory of relativity, on its own, cannot explain these features or answer these questions.” In other words, he doesn’t know and he cannot explain how the stars and galaxies formed.

Astronomical observations

Figure 1. Schematic drawing of commonly observed pairing of ejected quasars (QSO) from an active galactic nucleus. The objects at the ends of the line are quasars, which are usually measured with about the same redshift and fall within θ = ± 20° of the minor axis or the line drawn perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy.

Actual observations describe a universe that is quite different indeed. There is an enormous amount of structure on all scales, in galaxies, in clusters and in superclusters (clusters of clusters). In his books3,4 Halton Arp describes a very different universe than we have been led to believe. The main points are reviewed in J. Creation 14(3), 2000.5,6 On this basis the true picture of the universe is one where galaxies are seen to give birth to (or eject) quasars that in turn transform into galaxies that in turn give birth to more quasars and so on, as the process is repeated. Usually the quasars are ejected in pairs in opposite precisely aligned directions perpendicular to the plane of an active Seyfert type galaxy (see Figure 1, also Fig. 1-1, p. 10 in Seeing Red4).

Arp cites many examples of quasars found aligned within ± 20° of the minor axis of the active nucleus of a galaxy. The minor axis is perpendicular to the plane of rotation of the galaxy. Many examples are known of intense X-ray and gamma ray emitting material being ejected along this alignment. Usually the alignment of quasars, blue stellar objects (BSO, which are really quasars) and BL Lac objects (lower-redshift quasar-like, similar-spectrum objects) through the centre of the parent galaxy is unerringly precise.

 The quasar pairs often have redshifts that are very similar and also often tend to represent ejection velocities of opposite sign about ± 0.1c. The values of the redshifts commonly match the Karlsson7 predicted quantized peak values z = 0.061, 0.30, 0.60, 0.96, 1.41, 1.96, etc. These are the telltale signs of the creation process by ejection from parent galaxies.

The question has never been answered as to what ‘quasars’ or quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) are. Big bang cosmology has always insisted that they are extremely distant, extremely luminous galactic centres. And the only reason we can’t see the surrounding stars is that they are too far away.8 This interpretation has problems with the physics because of the unprecedented magnitude of the luminosity and the luminosity variations that are observed on timescales of days or weeks.9

Figure 2. Schematic of the evolution of the ejected quasars into normal galaxies after Arp (Fig. 9–3 p. 239 of Ref.4). Click for larger image

In big bang cosmology, the observed redshifts of all extragalactic objects in the sky are mostly due to the expansion of the universe causing the wavelengths of the photons to be stretched in flight through the vast distances of the cosmos. This is the basis of the Hubble redshift-distance relation. Arp shows convincing evidence that quasar redshifts represent something else. Within clusters of galaxies he also shows the existence of an excess redshift relative to the large, central-dominant, usually elliptical galaxy. In some cases excess redshifts cz > 36,000 km/s have been measured.10 

Such data showing galaxies that are physically close to quasars or other galaxies strongly indicate that the quasars are not at enormous cosmological distances and that not all redshifts are due to the expansion of the universe, described by the Hubble relation. In some cases galaxies are physically connected by filaments of stars, gas and dust, and quasars have been observed in X-ray images with connections back to galaxies. Arp also presents a strong case for low-luminosity clusters of X-ray galaxies, e.g. Abell clusters, being born by ejection from active galactic nuclei.

The process is for multiple births of galaxies in hierarchical structures, spatially and temporally; something like a fireworks display where many explosions eject small glowing centres that then explode to liberate more glowing centres.11 On top of this, due to the forces of gravity, these galaxies of stars form whirlpools in space, some in spirals some highly distorted and peculiar. The galaxies then form into clusters and these clusters into superclusters.

 And the superclusters viewed from earth appear to form into gigantic spiral structures. (Note in Figure 3, reproduced from Arp’s book Fig. 6-12, p. 152, there is a general S-shaped or spiral pattern visible. The bottom part of the S is not all visible.) It is like a signature that is repeated throughout the cosmos, structure within structure and galaxies born from the dense hearts of active galaxies. Arp describes what he sees as the evolution or aging of the ejected quasars into new galaxies (see Figure 2). The ellipticals were the original (created) galaxies. They tend to be very large and often are associated with groups of spirals, like M31 (the most massive in our local group) and M81 in the next major group.

Arp mentions in particular two major clusters, Virgo and Fornax, one in the northern sky and the other in the southern. See the large spiral structure in the Fornax supercluster shown in Figure 3. He says of these:

“I am tempted to say that if there is a creator (and if so I would not presume to attribute anthropomorphic properties to it [shows his bias]) we might expect to hear: ‘Look you dummies, I showed you the Virgo Cluster and you did not believe it so I will show you another one just like it and if you still don’t believe it—well let’s just forget the whole thing’.”

It is amazing how he comes so close; the observations are pointing him to the obvious conclusion, but he turns to the New Age instead!

The ejection-of-quasars-from-galaxies interpretation is vigorously rejected by the big bang community. Obviously this is because it utterly demolishes their key assumption of the genesis of all matter at the big bang. It also calls into question many redshift-distances determined by quasar redshifts. In the section ‘Alternatives to the big bang’ on page 393 of his book,12 Joseph Silk criticises the (Quasi) Steady State model of Sir Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge and Jayant Narlikar (HBN) with some particular observations but admits, “Only by disputing the interpretation of quasar redshifts as a cosmological distance indicator can this conclusion be avoided” [my emphasis added]. This is, in fact, the main thrust of Arp’s observations! They cast enormous doubt on the distribution of galaxies in the universe and the interpretation of big bang expansion models.

Stephen Hawking has recently written a book13 that apparently alleges to be the ‘The theory of everything’. On page 22 he says: “The only reasonable explanation [is] … that the galaxies were moving away from us, and the frequency of the light waves from them was being reduced, or red-shifted, by the Doppler effect.” The use of ‘reasonable’ implies that anyone who has good reason to believe otherwise must be one of those crackpots. Also Hawking knows that it isn’t really Doppler shift in the big bang model, but space expanding causing light waves to stretch. 

On page 23 of this book, he speaks of Hubble’s discovery writing, “… the galaxies all appeared red-shifted. Every single one was moving away from us.” Was it too much for him to tell the truth? He must know that the galaxy M31 in Andromeda and a few others in the Virgo cluster have blueshifts and are interpreted as moving towards us. Cosmologically speaking, these are in our backyard, so Hubble would have seen them in 1929. So how can you trust anything else Hawking says?14 Such is typical of the blind adherent defending his cherished belief.

Arp’s position is to call into question all so-called ‘velocity related’ redshifts, except for very small intrinsic motions of galaxies and up to about 0.1c velocities for ejected quasars. He instead assigns a large intrinsic redshift not only to quasars but also to galaxies. HBN are more conservative and though they accept Arp’s interpretation on the redshift of quasars they also accept that the galaxies have a cosmological expansion component. Arp’s interpretation of quasar redshifts, in any case, reduces the distance scale of the most ‘distant’ quasars by a factor of about 100 and their luminosities by a factor of 10,000. A lower luminosity for quasars then resolves the paradox regarding their unbelievable large luminosities.


But are we really seeing the creation of new galaxies? In my opinion, yes! But it all happened on Day 4 during creation Week. We are looking back into the past, millions or billions of years of astronomical time, but only thousands of years of earth time, to Creation Week and soon after (see A new cosmology: solution to the starlight travel time problem). We are seeing the creation of the cosmos under the agency of God. ‘The heaven declare the glory of God and the [night sky] shows His handiwork’. (Psalm 19:1) Depending on the exact extent of the time dilation factor, we may be seeing creation as it is happening.

Figure 3. Schematic of the Fornax supercluster showing spiral structure, after Arp (Fig. 6–12 on p. 152 of Ref.4). Galaxy magnitude: • ≤ 17.0, □ < 10.9.

The process of quasars being ejected from the centre of active galactic nuclei is a creatio ex nihilo event, well beyond our physics to describe, though HBN and Arp have attempted to do so.4,15,16,17,18, HBN describe a creation C-field, which generates matter and anti-matter, the matter being in the form of super-energetic Planck particles that split into billions of lower energy but still very energetic particles. 

Arp, Narlikar and Das describe a variable mass hypothesis, where new matter forms from the æther (vacuum energy) in the centre of galaxies, coming into existence with extremely high energy but zero inertial mass. This inertial mass then accumulates with time due to the gravitational attraction of all other matter in the universe (like Mach’s principle). 

The energy levels of the newly formed atoms are dependent on this accumulating mass and therefore the wavelengths of the emitted photons appear very redshifted. Neither of these descriptions have any basis in experimental physics.

Arp even admits ‘… it is often objected that pair creation of electrons and positrons from photons in terrestrial laboratories does not produce low-mass electrons’19 and he doesn’t provide a satisfactory answer to this objection. 

Nor do they describe a mechanism by which stars and galaxies form from the plasma (energetic particles) formed in the quasars. To be fair though, their model offers more insight into the process than the big bang.


The universe is significantly different to what we are led to believe, not isotropic and not smooth in terms of the distribution of galaxies. The physical processes outside our galaxy are significantly different to what we see inside. Certainly it appears that our galaxy is special20 and that the laws of physics operating at creation21 were different in the cosmos than they are today on earth. These processes may describe the mechanism whereby God ‘stretched out the heavens’ during Day 4 of Creation Week, while creating the heavenly bodies.

Other explanations for the intrinsic redshifts may need to be sought. Arp22 and many others23 have observed large quantized redshifts in quasars, particularly those where a link could be shown to active galactic nuclei. Arp applies the variable mass hypothesis to describe the intrinsic redshift of these objects but fails to find a model to provide a mechanism for quantization. However the quantization of redshifts of these QSOs and the field galaxies in general24 strongly suggests explanations other than those of the big bang conjecture.

Another important point that should be made here is that we are all observers viewing the same light from the cosmos. We can only interpret it within the available science we have at our disposal, but we must not lose sight of what we may really be looking at. The account in Genesis gives us the clues and with biblical glasses we can see more clearly. The astronomical observations published by Arp, aside from any interpretations he may present,25 look like clear evidence of the creation of galaxies from the active nuclei of other galaxies. Matter is clearly being ejected. Based on an enormous accumulation of observational astronomical data collected over thirty years, the distribution of the galaxies in the universe appears to be anything but random. The very process by which the galaxies were created on Day 4 of Creation Week may be visible in these observations. This is potentially the most exciting discovery for creationist cosmology since Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, which began the re-emergence of reason over dogma.

References and notes

  2. Hawking, S.W., The Illustrated A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, New York, 1996. Return to text
  3. Arp, H., Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, Interstellar Media, Cambridge University Press, Berkeley, 1987. Return to text
  5. Oard, M.J., Doppler Toppler?, J. Creation 14(3):39–45, 2000. Return to text
  6. Worraker, B.J. and McIntosh, A.C., A different view of the universe, J. Creation 14(3):46–50, 2000. Return to text
  7. Karlsson, K.G., On the existence of significant peaks in the quasar redshift distribution, Astron. Astrophys. 58(1-2):237–240, 1977. Return to text
  8. In many cases the surrounding stars can be seen and this is a problem for the big bang cosmologist who expects the QSOs to be so distant that the surrounding stars could not be seen. A good example is 3C48, which is pictured on p. 56 of Ref. 4. Return to text
  9. Hartnett, J.G., Different but still the same, J. Creation 16(1):29–35, 2002. Return to text
  10. Redshifts (z) are often described in terms of a velocity by taking the product with the speed of light (c). This is true for redshift values z << 1. For higher redshift values we must use the relativistic relation v = c {(1+z)^2 -1}/{(1+z)^2+1}. Return to text
  11. The actual process of the creation in this model may be the direct creative power of God. Arp assigns to it a natural process as he believes in the Quasi-Steady State model of Hoyle, Burbidge and Narlikar. Return to text
  12. Silk, J., The Big Bang, W.H. Freeman and Co., New York, 2000. Return to text
  13. Hawking, S.W., The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, New Millenium Press, Beverly Hill, 2002. Return to text
  14. In another book (The Universe in a Nutshell, Bantam Press, 2001) Hawking says on p. 75: “To their great surprise, they had found that nearly all galaxies are moving away.” Here he implicitly recognises the existence of a few blueshifted galaxies, though he still explains redshifts in terms of recession velocities rather than the expansion of space—the two effects are of course observationally indistinguishable at modest distances. Return to text
  16. Narlikar, J.V., Two Astrophysical Applications of Conformal Gravity, Ann. Phys. 107:325, 1977. Return to text
  17. Narlikar, J.V. and Das, P.K., Anomalous redshifts of quasi-stellar objects, Astrophys. J. 240:401–414, September 1980. Return to text
  18. Narlikar, J.V. and Arp, H., Flat spacetime cosmology: a unified framework for extragalactic redshifts, Astrophys. J. 405:51–56, march 1993. Return to text
  19. Arp, Ref. 4, p. 234. Return to text
  20. It was created with a divine purpose, to house earth and living created beings. It is not a violently disrupted galaxy. Return to text
  21. God had to suspend the usual natural law in order to create. Return to text
  22. Arp, H., Bi, H.G., Chu, Y. and Zhu, X., Periodicity of quasar redshift, Astron. Astrophys. 239(1-2):33–49, 1990. Return to text
  23. Burbidge, G. and Napier, W.M., The distribution of redshifts in new samples of quasi-stellar objects, Astron. J. 121:21–30, 2001 | doi:10.1086/318018. Return to text
  24. Tifft, W., Discrete states of redshift and galaxy dynamics, Astrophys. J. 206:38-56, May 1976. Return to text
  25. I reject his Quasi-Steady State Creation model as unphysical and mostly conjecture. Return to text

Helpful Resources

Reader’s comments

Dr. David S.
John -- Brilliant summary. I read Arp's 1998 book, "Seeing Red," many years ago, which makes a compelling case. Also interesting are his personal anecdotes about academic persecution, especially denial of funding and restrictions on telescope time. The commitment of the 'establishment' knows no mathematical or physical bounds . . . consider the fine-tuning arguments associated with the Big Bang, which are also embraced by old-Earth, Genesis deniers. Fine tuning should not be promoted as an argument that God used a Big Bang scheme, but rather as a nail in the coffin for Big Bang ideas. One oft-neglected fine tuning argument: The existence of 10^22 stars in clever orbits should not provoke one to search for "fluctuations," but rather see creative design at the very beginning. Evolutionist Roger Penrose estimated that the odds against a universe organized anything like ours is 1 in 10^(10^123), because there are far more likely ways for matter to arrange itself randomly -- like into one or several gigantic black holes. That number may be the biggest ever calculated in the history of science, and it ought to lead the honest scientist to Genesis. Stars don't form easily by natural processes, galaxy formation is utterly mysterious, and organization into orbits? Preposterous! Think about the engineering involved in launching a satellite into a near-circular low-Earth orbit. Planetary and stellar orbits are likewise engineered . . . I do look forward to studying astronomy after the Lord returns -- we'll finally get to figure it all out!
Gerald D.
I have a simple question.

Are there only red shifts observed, or are there blue shifts observed as well?

In my mind this is a 'really' interesting issue.

If there are only red shifts, than one can assume that everything is moving away from your point, or was moved away (i.e. stretched). A red shift only observation could only occur from the perspective near the center point in a circle or sphere. Any point too far off the center would show some objects (rarely) on a slight vector towards you (therefore a blue shift). Particularly those objects on the same radii as you, but coming from a different origin point and on a different initial trajectory (unless everything is radiating out of the centre point on the same trajectory). It maybe that a blue shift would take a longer time to observe because it represents an object accelerating away. In which case the lack of blue shift observations indicates the earth is younger than xMA because there haven't been any blue shifts observed yet.
John Hartnett
A blue shift represents motion towards the receiver, the observer, if it is due to the Doppler effect. By the same mechanism, a redshift represents motion away. But the point of Arp's work is that there are alternate possible interpretations for the redshift of quasars and active galaxies. These are neither due to cosmological expansion nor due to Doppler motion. And only the radial component of any speed induced redshift can be measured spectroscopically. Any tangential component cannot be seen.

There are a few galaxies with blue-shifted light but they are close by, in the local cluster, and the blue shift can be explained as local motion towards our position in space in the Galaxy, resulting from the Doppler effect. The Andromeda galaxy (M31) is such a blue-shifted galaxy with about 100 km/s radial speed towards us.
Israel S.
If I could turn Figures 1 and 2 into a painting, I would entitle it "Fourth Day Caught on Camera".

I always had a hard time understanding what was so awe-inspiring about taking billions of years to form from dust accreting into stars etc. Why are the secularists so amazed at such a dull idea? If I could live for 13.5 billion years, and if the Big Bang cosmology were true, I would get utterly BORED from waiting for the stars and galaxies to finish forming, and just give up on stargazing.

Meanwhile, watching a chain reaction of galaxies giving birth to "galactic seeds" (quasars) that bloom, and repeat the process eventually forming these amazing spirals, and knowing how massive each of these things is... over the course of a SINGLE afternoon of star gazing (assuming I had the ability to see them happen at the time)... Now THAT, would be an awe-inspiring experience.

To witness the hand of our Creator at work. Poor self-blinded Arp never gave the truth a chance even when it was staring him in the face. Of course I wouldn't be surprised if he wound up on the receiving end of that statement of his. "You saw it in the Virgo Cluster, and several others, and yet you still didn't believe. You really are a dummy."

For the heavens declare the Glory of the LORD.

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