An Alternative Appraisal of Astronomical Fundamentals
"Stand up and be counted, you're a star" (JT Good Shabbos 17 May) referred to the Hubble Space Telescope and the distance to the stars. One of the Hubble's discoveries that surprised scientists is the crystal-clear sharpness of all its images, even those supposedly from billions of light-years away. That there is no blurring, distortion or diminution in clarity at all regardless of distance, together with many other evidences, has led to doubts in the validity of the use of the Red Shift as a 'cosmic yardstick' in the Big Bang theory: "That the universe began to develop spontaneously some 15 billion years ago as a result of a colossal explosion of some primordial mass is simply preposterous - this is not chochmah [wisdom], but rather it is shtus [foolishness]"! ('Rav Schwab on Prayer', p.444, Artscroll 2001). "Modern Cosmology is so likely to be wrong, that I propose to ignore it!" (Jewish cosmologist Sir Hermann Bondi).
In his famous "Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies" (1987) and "Seeing Red" (1998), the world-renowned astronomer Halton Arp gives compelling evidence that galaxies are not at the cosmological distances alleged for them, which has implications for the claims of evolutionists about the age and diameter of the universe. For this Arp was of course excoriated by the Scientific Establishment and denied telescope-time by the space observatories! "When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the Moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You care for him?" (Tehillim - Psalms 8).
There is evidence that the stars, which were only created on the Fourth Day, are not at the vertiginous distances claimed for them. The savants admit that the distances to the stars and galaxies are only "estimated", "apparent", "approximate", "inferred", "indicated", "assumed" or "guessed", and that their true distance has yet to be determined. Parallax measurement (different viewpoints due to varied angles of viewing) is inaccurate beyond 300 light-years, and there is no empirical evidence obliging one to commit to a universe larger than 600 light-years in diameter, with it possibly being much less. To the Moon is 2 light-seconds, to the Sun is 8 light-minutes, and to Pluto is 5 light-hours. The Galgal Hatshi'i - the Ninth Sphere - is the border of this physical universe: "the distance from the Earth to the firmament is a journey of five hundred years, and the thickness of the firmament is a journey of five hundred years, and likewise the distance between one firmament and the next" (Talmud, Chagigah 13). "Is not Hashem in the highest heavens - look at the stars how lofty they are" (Iyov- Job 22).
Modern astronomy has found that the stars themselves are much smaller than is commonly believed, having a smaller angular size than previously estimated, as in the 'Plasma Cosmology' and 'Electric Universe' models of Nobel prize-winner Hannes Alfven, Oskar Klein and others. The Rambam states that ain kochav gadol min hashemesh - "no star is bigger than the Sun" (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah Laws of Torah Fubdamentals by Maimonides). "The music of the Sun is so exquisite that if it could be heard, the neshomoh would leave the body" (Zohar, Vayakhel).