Hubble's Theft and Other Scientific Inaccuracies | Stars, Cells, and God

Foreign God the program where we discuss new discoveries that take place on the frontiers of science and that have theological and philosophical implications, as well as new discoveries that point to the reality of the existence of God. My name is Jeff Zwarink and today we are going to look at a discussion or controversy around Hubble and the law that bears its name, but before we get into the discussion, I want to encourage you to subscribe to our channel Reasons to believe so that You can receive notifications of new weekly videos in which you will learn more in Reasons. org about following us on our social media at rtb official David, it's great to have you here today.

I know it's kind of give us a little bit of your uh, your professional history if you want, why are you here and why are we talking? you today, so I used to serve as director of the Anglo-American Cosmic Dust Laboratory in Johannesburg, South Africa, and I have been involved in astronomical research not only in researching astronomical observations but also in researching the history of astronomy for many decades and Believe it, Jeff, I first met you in the 1980s. Reasons to believe it was in its early stages, very early, but I don't even know if it was actually five members, but to accelerate to 2022, I'm proud to be an rtb academic.

Visiting scholar for a couple of weeks after this, he headed to Hawaii to speak there, so as a visiting research scholar it is a great pleasure to be here and that is why David and my beloved wife Les are in The Angels. Well, I know. We've really enjoyed our time discussing the interactions we've had and we look forward to our conversation today because this is one of those examples where there is a name or something that becomes associated and becomes a common tradition, if you will, in the countryside. right and it turns out to be just wrong, but it's really hard to change, so this relates to the expansion of the universe and who discovered it and how it developed, so why don't you give us some background on what we're doing?

I'm going to talk about that and, uh, we'll talk about why it's important in a moment. I guess many of my students could tell me Professor who was or who is the father of Big Bang cosmology and all, I mean, if you look at any astronomy textbook, any, I mean the hundreds or thousands in the what one can think uh Hubble Edwin Hubble's 1929 article is believed to be the definitive article marking the discovery of the Big Bang of big bang cosmology his plot his famous plot in 1929 of speed versus distance, that is the speed at which galaxies are moving away from the US versus their distance, is a line graph in Hubble 1929, if you double the distance to a galaxy, you double the speed at which it is moving away from us and the idea is essentially that if you run the movie goes back in time in this expanding Universe, you eventually get to the point of creation, if you will, which is the Big Bang, but Hubble, uh, everywhere you look for sure until I did my research and

other

s had done there the Historical detective work was considered the father. of the Big Bang and, of course, Jeff appeared on the cover of Time magazine as the father of Big Bang cosmology.

Well, I mean, I know I've used that, one of the plots that I use often. You know, talking about Big Bang cosmology, you talk about general relativity. and I attribute it to Einstein you talk about if there is a beginning and you know that there are several people and that is a little more complicated when I talk about the expansion of the universe you know it's like I put here is the Hubble diagram here is the discovery of the expansion of the universe exactly this is not the right way, well it's not the whole story, it's certainly not the right way to look at it, so I know you've done a lot of work to see what Hubble did and what maybe it took. from

other

people, so give us what you've found, you've made your story, just back up a little bit.

I did my PhD on galaxy morphology GIFs, which are the shapes, sizes, and dynamics of galaxies, and again in every textbook you can find. Hubble's galaxy classification scheme is like a y tilted on its side and you have the elliptical galaxies on the left side of the tips and then you have the spirals on the other side of the well that form the two tips on your and. right and then I looked at the original Hubble paper which would be Hubble 1926. Okay, well, obviously there must be a tuning fork diagram there and if there is, it must obviously be named after the author, but to my great surprise I found that there was no no Hubble duck tuning fork, there was no diagram, there was no diagram and, to accelerate, I flew to Pasadena.

I met with Alan Sandidge, who was Hubble's right-hand man and who was one of the greatest astronomers of all time. Actually Ellen Sandidge and he was amazed and walked me to the 1926 Astrophysical Journals area. Okay, he opened the volume and upon opening it he actually agreed with me that there is no diagram there, but also written in pencil with the Hubble letter. It was the linklitzer name, if you will, used by J.H Reynolds to classify galaxies, so we believe that Hubble was the first to systematically classify normal and Bard spiral galaxies, but Sandy did not show me very clearly that in Hubble's writings they were references to Reynolds' work, so this turned me into quite the detective.

The clue is what is from Hubble, what is not from Hubble, what Hubble did, what data Hubble used, and what data Hubble did not use. Hubble was a meticulous annotator and a reference for previous and existing work in astronomy. or everything was simply included under the name Edwin Hubble. I mean, you have everything you know, you have the Hubble tuning fork, you have a Hubble luminosity profile, you have Hubble's Law and there are about 10 named after Hubble, but the point in my detective work was this GIF how much of this is true and how much of this is actually gently borrowed from other people's work and ideas and we need to remember this Jeff when we talk about Big Bang cosmology and his father, uh, we're talking about one of the greatest discoveries of all time, many viewers might say: well David, you know what's in a name, if it's not Hubble, it's someone else, but when it comes to unlocking DNA or the father of Big Bang cosmology , you must get your story. records in a straight line because credit must be given to Jeff, where credit is due, well that's one of the ones you're even while I've been researching and writing articles, that's a key part of writing a good article, it's not just Okay, I can reference this document, but it was like, yeah, there can be a summary, but when you want to get to the idea, you have to get to the original idea, so I want to go back to your discussion about what you know.

I'm looking at the astrophysical journals where you have Hubble's annotation and handwriting, so if I understand what you're saying there, it's like in his writing he's using someone else's classification, but he seems to pass it off as his own, that's right, um. in fact, it is a double mystery because it not only adopts the galaxy classification scheme rarely worked out by one of the great British astronomers. J.H. Reynolds, a very interesting character, and you can read a lot more about his age, Reynolds, in a book I wrote with Ken Freeman said that Shrouds of the Night is well published by Springer in New York, but yes, in that 1926 article, handwritten by Hubble himself, there is a reference to another masterpiece which is a masterpiece by John Reynolds on the classification of galaxies, but the point really The question is where the Hubble tuning fork comes from and it turns out that Sir James Jean, the great astronomer of Brazil, loved music and wrote a book that I think was called science and music, something like Science, Music and there he presents Sir James Jeans. the diagram and traditional now traditional and Hubble sees this, it's amazing Hubble sees this diagram and says well, this is amazing, this just works for me perfectly and he goes and uses it in the realm of nebulae, which is the famous popular book that published Hubble, but it is surprising that the current galaxy classification scheme is wrongly attributed to Hubble and that the tuning fork should be the tuning fork of Sir James jeans and I have that book I have that book on science and musical Cosmogenia and music something like that, buy jeans and there's the tuning fork, so this was a pattern that would repeat itself, Jeff, over and over again throughout Hubble's life.

Articles containing ideas or data points from others would be written and not referenced, so I have a question about that because you know I've written. in the Multiverse and I can't say that the Multiverse is an idea for me, but actually Genesis was like okay, people are talking about this. I need to understand it, so I go out and read and there's a cosmologist, you know. has been at Harvard MIT Max Tegmark and he came up with what I thought was a beautiful scheme to talk about the Multiverse, there's level one, level two, level three, level four, so I use that terminology all the time , TRUE?

In my writings the vast majority of the time at any time I refer to it. I go back and give him credit for it because I understand it. I think it's a beautiful mnemonic of itself or a way of looking at it. Is there a problem here with Hubble using others? things about people or is it something else, well, this is a very deep question and I think it's something else because there are simply too many missing pieces in this detective puzzle. It's one thing to let this happen once, and astronomers spoke so well about Hubble. of classifying galaxies and Hubble synthesizes it, but when there is no diagram to immediately alert you that something is really wrong.

Now, if you look at, for example, the Hubble graph in the seminal 1929 paper, there are a lot of data points, I think Hugh Ross said. 80 or 90 percent of the data points come from Vista Slifer. It's also not referenced, it's also not referenced in Hubble 29. So Slifer isn't even in the paper, that's what I remember, it's just giving you data points. like they were obtained from um Edwin Hubble oh interesting and then um most of them come from Slifer and some of them, as I remember, came from humans who were working with Hubble at the time, but the point is that then I became very suspicious of Edwin.

Hubble, not in terms of astronomy, he was one of their own, he was still considered one of the great astronomers of the current era, but I am a Christian, let me say that this credit from Jeff CRE should be given where credit is due and I think that if people are slaving away, for example, on telescopes and securing data points, I have to reference them. I have to acknowledge my sources and to return to your original question, it seems that the Hubble Persona was immense or, to use a better word, even astronomical. Hubble was considered in his time as the king, okay, the emperor, let's use that word as the emperor of galaxies and later I developed a talk based on what we will talk about later today called The Naked Emperor, you know, based on the famous book The Emperor has no clothes and uh, it's terribly unfortunate that Hubble allowed this Person to reach Osmos through a multitude of documents, textbooks, etc., as if it were his and, as far as I know, certainly, according to knowledge by Ellen Sandidge, too, uh, this.

A proper reference was never made, which upset Alan Sandidge so much that I remember being on the phone with him in Pasadena. I was in Johannesburg shortly before Alan Sandidge died, which was a couple of years ago, and he just said, David, I don't know who to turn to anymore. Given what you've discovered, I'm dismayed. I don't know what word he used exactly, but I couldn't believe this was a recurring theme in Edwin Hubble's Persona. You know, I remember when you know we were discussing this a few years ago. a few days ago on his visit and as I was listening to him there was a part of me that is not surprising, I mean, scientists, you know we have this idea that I have had in my mind, you know, scientists of these objective, rational, logical people, ethical and are people like the rest of us.

I mean, you know there's nothing different about that, so the fact that someone would do this isn't surprising, but it does raise some difficulties in fighting over how we take it, it seems to affect credibility. of science because you absolutely know and again, I don't think there is anything wrong or what Hubble has shown or what is attributed to Hubble is

scientific

ally accurate, but still his personality got in the way of getting the attributions right and credit, so people aren't getting credit for the work they do well, Jeff, the point really is that they weren't all right because, if you look closely at astronomical magazines, there was a very obscure magazine published in Belgium , very dark, not read by the masses, you know?

Pasadena was the center of the universe in Edwin Hubble's time, Mount Pelham or Mount Wilson, of course, true, and that's how I discovered it and there were others who discovered this too, we have to give you credit, but I was one of I pointed out that two years before Hubble's 1929 paper with aarticle by a Catholic priest now this is terribly interesting because he was one of the most brilliant experts in general relativity and cosmology. This is George Lamit, who was a Belgian priest. Catholic priest and an ardent old devotee. He would think that now he is a man of God who studied the universe if you look at the field equations which he, of course, he was very familiar with when I did the detective story.

I saw that Lametre had actually solved the Big Bang cosmology. not in 29 but in 1927 but not only that but not only that not only had he discovered Hubble's Law right now, that's the point not only had he discovered that galaxies should recede at speeds proportional to this, not only had he discovered that Elemental but that he actually made a calculation based on the data he had accessible at the time about the Hubble constant and it was wrong and of course it's not the The Hubble constant is the limiting constant because he calculated it two years before, so It's going to prove mathematically that if we live in an expanding universe, you know which one you say isotropic and homogeneous and you look at the metrics that they're in, then the universe.

This should expand according to this law, speed is proportional to distance and speed should be whatever figure was kilometers per second per Mega parsec, so I saw that, like I mean, it's the Rosetta Stone, we're not talking here Just from the name Jeff, that's the Rosetta Stone. I think that's why I approach it with such strength and passion when I talk about it. That article in La Mer 1927 is the real Rosetta Stone for the entire Big Bang cosmology. And, in my opinion, you know the first telescope. in space should be the Lumetra Space Telescope, not because it has anything or weapons to attack Edward in Hubble, but that's the Rosetta Stone, right, but because it was published in an obscure magazine in Belgium and is not available to the masses .

Hubble published his paper in 1929 without any reference at all to limit it as far as I know. I don't think you ever cited Lametra in your articles as far as I know, but anyway the reason I was so unhappy with all of this is This is not just a simple name, this is the Rosetta Stone, which I know which is the Rosetta Stone. Here there are reasons to believe it is true. You are all supporters of the Big Ben cosmology and, um, it is very interesting that the Big Bang, which is considered like that. As much as certain Christians consider it one of the greatest enemies of our faith, it is in fact developed by a devout believer in God um from everything I have read, Lamet was a devout believer, he has even noted I visited the limit archives in Belgium, my son Aaron and I and he actually have limits on writing Pascal, some of the numbered Ponce, etc., so I can understand that he was a very devout man of God, but as I say, overshadowing the Rosetta Stone was a sin , if you like.

I couldn't let it go, you know, it's a surprising discovery. I mean, you go for several reasons, one is that you have this, you know, how we think about cosmology today, it's really attributed to the wrong person, exactly, absolutely, and you know, I don't know. if Hubble knew about the paper and didn't say you knew about it, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of unknown things about this, but this idea, so there's this idea that Hubble came up with, yeah, now we have the research that shows otherwise. Yeah, absolutely, but I mean, I work on this quite a bit and this is the first time I'm hearing about it in the context that I heard that Lemaitre was involved, but not, you know, but it's like, really just think about it wrong, I I know, so my question about this seems like it's hard to dislodge these very popular notions because another popular notion is that science and the Christian faith or the antagonism of each other exactly and if I could read, I just wanted to. to read a quote from a book called science and religion a historical introduction by Gary Ferngrin where they talk about this conflict thesis and you know, I mean, you talk to a lot of scientists, a lot of people as they write about it, it's, oh yeah, science and Religion is in conflict and this is the assertion of historians of science.

Yes, however, it is salutary to point out that serious historical studies have revealed that the conflict thesis is at best an oversimplification and at worst a hoax, so here is this very popular notion that science and religion. they are in conflict with each other, but historians of science for at least 20 or 30 years have said that that is not the right way to look at it, but that is still the public perception in South Africa and I think that is where I was. I was chatting with Hugh Ross in the car coming back from San Diego. He was just making this very point that, you know, they tell me this over and over again.

Professor, you can't believe in the Big Bang because Big Bang equals Evolution, it's not God, that's the equation. I get criticized all the time in South Africa and criticized here: Big Bang equals Evolution equals no God, right? And yet, here I sit as an Orthodox Jew who came to faith in Yeshua Jesus in 1976 and I see the most glorious. Harmony, the Big Bang, not my enemies, my best friend. I see the most glorious harmony between the books of nature and the books and the Book of Scripture and, in fact, there is a book that I wrote, as you know, with Professor Ken Freeman, one of the greatest pioneers. dark matter and Ken and I wrote this book published in Chicago by Crossway called God and Galileo and there we see and there we discuss and we see that the harmony that between the two books goes back to Galileo and even before that, but Galileo The Life of Galileo was at stake, Jeff, because he was saying that there is a glorious harmony between the two books, the book of Nature and the Book of Scripture, if you interpret the book of Scripture correctly but if you interpret it incorrectly, for example, in the Scriptures indicate that The Earth cannot move, the Earth is on its foundation and is fixed and cannot move.

If you take it literally, you will be stuck in a geocentric Universe, which means that everything revolves around the Earth and the Earth is stationary and forever fixed in the foundation of it, but I mean you. I get into an immediate problem there because Jesus says in John 10 I believe, but you know, he described it as saying I am the door and no one would say that if you enter through a door or knock on a door, you will meet the presence of our beloved Savior. Jesus of Nazareth, right, you're clear on that, so yes, Leia understood all of this very clearly and tried to defend faith in God as a creative astronomer and creative scientist and I think he's very fortunate, in large part because of his connections. with the Duchess of Tuscany and so on, the Medici family, who wasn't actually burned at the stake for heresy because remember he had to recant his ideas in Rome in the famous trial, he had to recant all his ideas, um, it's a shocking revelation from people who consider themselves fundamentalists and who interpret the Bible without taking credit from the book of Nature and reaching different or diverse conclusions as you have read and so in the context of this interview, my greatest of my greatest.

Scientific friends, it is without a doubt the Big Bang, because I see so much harmony there, you know, in the beginning, in the beginning, God creates the heavens and the Earth, so there is a beginning, if the Bible is going to be the inspired word God, Jeff, there has to be. a beginning in cosmic space and in cosmic time and then when I look at my equations in general relativity and the articles and solutions of the lemmatory of 1927, I see that there is a beginning, there must be a beginning and we live in an expanding universe in expansion. as a result of this beginning and that's why I'm so excited to be a creative scientist who is also a believer, well that's one of the things I wonder about.

I mean, if you look at this kind of conflict thesis that started in the early 20th century, it was well known that here we have this Belgian Catholic priest whose absolutely devout man of God, yet he comes up with this thing that just gets rid of that you can't have this conflict, something else has to be happening. So if Lametra had the credit for it, yes, he could have subverted this or undermined this idea that science and faith are in conflict with each other absolutely. I think Diplomatra was already accredited in 1927 or 1928, there could have been a great step forward regarding the harmony of faith and science, but people today consider the Big Bang as something exercised by atheist cosmologists and such, and the father of the Big Bang is George, regrets that there is no doubt about it and, yes, a development of God who loved the Bible as From what I understand, he loved the Bible, he was also a priest and Who loved the mathematics of the expanding universe and when to place the Rosetta Stone on your item?

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I find all that fascinating, especially in the context of when Lametra proposed the Big Bang Yeah, science, it's not like scientists say ah, we had the Big Bang, we attacked Christianity in a sense. , you can argue that throughout the 20th century cosmologists were brought into Big Bang cosmology kicking, dragging and screaming because they wanted the universe to be Eternal and you have this model that has a beginning, so I find that there is actually evidence very powerful in favor of the Big Bang, it is as if this is what they did not want to be, they did not want it. uh, astronomers didn't want the universe to have a beginning in space and time.

I think that's summed up beautifully by Jeff in a book by Robert Gestro called Garden, the astronomers, which talks about the expanding universe and says that as astronomers climb the final mountains, final rocks meet the Creator or meet with a group of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries and yes, I mean the Big Bang, you know that now that I've done my historical detective work and so far the Big Bang is Christianity. of the best friends of Christianity, you know, discovered by the Christian himself George Lamitri and this is really important because we are not, not only what is in the name is Hubble's Law, but it is going to serve something much more profound that is so beautifully marked.

What is explained in that book, science and religion, is that we deal with the heart of something that is so critical and that is an apparent diversity between faith and science, you know, faith in God, science and the Big Bang, understood correctly. Jeff is the one who is in the most glorious harmony with Genesis chapter one and uh yes, it's its foundation the Rosetta Stone is not from some person you know who wants to disprove the Bible and so on and so on and so on George Lemetry just wanted the truth was exposed and in the most beautiful way, in its humble way, it presents the solution of the equations and an estimated value of the lametric constant.

It's fascinating, you know, one last question I have for you before we wrap up, you know, on the topic of we have. these ideas that Hubble came up with in the big bang: you have science and faith and religion or science and religion and they conflict with each other. Yes, there is another idea out there that is again ubiquitous among most of my

scientific

colleagues. There are people who address this. It's that you know Copernicus when he appeared, that he dethroned the Earth from its great and glorious foundation and presented it as an ordinary beginning, that is correct and again research shows that that is very cliché. that the Earth was in the scum of the universe by being in the center and is now elevated to the harmony of the

stars

, if you will exactly, but still this idea persists.

Any ideas on how we address these long-standing issues. There are widespread ideas that turn out to be wrong, yes, it is very difficult, especially when you have, for example, a Hubble space telescope. As I speak to you, articles are being written using observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, and you know. My biggest plea to those watching is where is the Los Angeles Metro Space Telescope, um, and it's almost, I think it's almost impossible to change, but I want to make one comment, if I may, as we wrap up, and that is that you I elbowed, I mean, I threw everything.

I took my toys out of the cot regarding what he had discovered and groups of other historians had done this as well. You know, we were all very agitated and, in fact, I guess I like to think that I was one of the main drivers of achieving this. before the iau, which is the International Astronomical Union, and they got all the astronomers to vote on whether it should remain Hubble's Law a couple of years ago, just a few years ago, unfortunately they didn't ask me to present the detective work that I think we would have done. ethically correct, but that's another story, but the point is that it was presented and, um, most astronomers, I think about 80 percent of astronomers agreed that it should be renamed the lick law. from Hubble, so for me it is not satisfactory at all.

I mean, you know. now suddenly instead of Hubble's law it's another newly labeled name at the end, the human framework, the human neurophysiological process remembers the name Hubble and Lamitra is just labeling it as a sideshow while in my mind it should be in the law of the Los Angeles Metro. I mean, I can honestly say that you have an article with a law with Hubble.um, you know the expansion rate of the universe. The elementary law to change these fundamental concepts. Jeff in science, it is now impossible once osmosis has taken place. um, it's very It was very, very difficult to turn around.

I did my best to get the law called Lametre's law. People still felt that we can't dislodge Hubble. He was the king of the galaxies and in many areas he was with respect to his observations of Cephedes. and a lot more, but when it comes to what we're talking about here, the father of Big Bang cosmology, it's too difficult and I think the reason it's too difficult is because it's all Hubble. Now, like I said, the Hubble Space Telescope, there's the Hubble Luminosity profile. and every time I present my case, people say for David that you're investigating Hubble, the dead man, um and yes, the man is dead, but that's the wonder of the story, right and as Christians, and this is another point as Christians, you and me.

The Seekers of Truth must be right and part of The Seekers of Truth is to see who presents what ideas first and when it comes to something, not just a small law but a Rosetta Stone solved mathematically and then computationally or astronomically in terms of kilometers per second per megapasik or whatever unit the Metro used at the time. I think that calms my heart, because the Big Bang is bathed under the mantle of a Catholic priest, a very humble Catholic. priest and I think if future books or people who watch this show rewrite books about the history of the expanding Universe featuring George Lemetry.

I have written many articles about this. Just Google David, block George Lemetry. My name even appears in the AAU final. resolution when the name was changed but it's not enough, you know, I don't think that Hubble to Hubble Dimitri is going to do Alamitra himself one iota of good, do you agree, Jeff, I do and you know, I tell you that I have you convinced, huh? Like I said, I've given a lot of talks where I talk about how exactly Hubble measured this. Now I'm going to change them to make sure the oldest makes us do it because I think it's important for him to know and I think he is. has major apology values ​​so I would really appreciate a discussion thank you for what you brought and you know, I hope you enjoyed this and thank you for joining us today.

Join us in the discussion below. I love hearing your comments. Remember to like this. subscribe to the video for more feedback set a reminder to receive new episodes as they are released each Thursday, available here on YouTube, your favorite podcast app, share it with a friend and remember that the more we learn about science, the more reasons we have to believe.