Redshifts Revisited

Modern cosmology is dominated by the Doppler interpretation of cosmological redshifts (Section 6.6.1) and the assumed expansion of the universe. It is therefore of interest that several alternative explanations of redshifting have been proposed. These proposals are essentially of two types, predicting redshifts that are either distance dependent, or not. Of those already discussed in these pages chronometric redshifts (7.3) are distance related while chemical shifts (5.1.2) are not. Observed redshifts are most likely due to more than just one of the factors discussed below. Not surprisingly, anomalies, like discordant redshifts observed from physically connected objects, are frequently observed. 

A comprehesive review (Reboul, 1981) of 772 reports, dealing with anomalous redshifts published before 1980, provides an interesting insight into an ongoing redshift controversy. A total of 216 of these were found to be explained adequately by standard cosmology while 33 more were explained with bias and in 8 cases there were not sufficient data for useful comment. 

These anomalies are rarely addressed, if not ignored altogether, in the cosmological literature, but they certainly show that no single model is likely to explain all observed redshifts. The Doppler interpretation, in particular. 

To perform a regression analysis on a set of data points (xi,yi),i = 1 — n, it is assumed that the x values are fixed and by least-squares fit find the best values of m and b that describe the linear relationship  

This is done by minimizing the squared vertical distances between the data points and the regression line. The best values of m and b are calculated as 

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