William G. Tifft

William G. Tifft is Emeritus Professor/Astronomer at the University of Arizona. His main interests are in galaxies, superclusters and what Tifft calls redshift problems (see redshift quantization). [ [http://www.as.arizona.edu/department/faculty/tifft.html William G. Tifft's Personal Web page at the U. Arizona] ] He was influential in the development of the first redshift surveys [http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~thompson/void.html] and was an early proponent of manned space astronomy, conducted at a proposed moon base for example.

He has an A.B. in Astronomy from Harvard University (1954), and Ph.D. in Astronomy from the California Institute of Technology (1958) where he wrote his dissertation on photoelectric photometry, a copy of which is [http://etd.caltech.edu/etd/available/etd-01192006-093239/ available online] .

Redshift quantization

Based on observations of nearby galaxies, Tifft has put forward the idea that the redshifts of galaxies are quantized, or that they occur preferentially as multiples of a set number. These findings on redshift quantization were originally published in 1976 and 1977 in the Astrophysical Journal.cite journal
author=W. G. Tifft
title=Discrete states of redshift and galaxy dynamics. I - Internal motions in single galaxies
journal=Astrophysical Journal
year=1976
volume=206
pages=38–56
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1976ApJ...206...38T
doi=10.1086/154354] cite journal
author=W. G. Tifft
title=Discrete states of redshift and galaxy dynamics. II - Systems of galaxies
journal=Astrophysical Journal
year=1977
volume=211
pages=31–46
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1977ApJ...211...31T
doi=10.1086/154901] cite journal
author=W. G. Tifft
title=Discrete states of redshift and Galaxy dynamics. III - Abnormal galaxies and stars
journal=Astrophysical Journal
year=1977
volume=211
pages=377–391
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1977ApJ...211..377T
doi=10.1086/154943] The ideas were controversial when originally proposed; the editors of the Astrophysical Journal included a note in one of the papers stating that they could neither find errors within the analysis nor endorse the analysis. Subsequently Tifft and Cocke put forward a theory to try to explain the quantization. Tifft's results have been largely replicated by Croasdalecite journal
author=Martin R. Croasdale
title=Periodicity in Galaxy Redshifts
journal=Astrophysical Journal
year=1989
volume=345
pages=72–83
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1989ApJ...345...72C
doi=10.1086/167882] and later Napier and Guthriecite journal
author=W. M. Napier and B. N. G. Guthrie
title=Quantized Redshifts: A Status Report
journal=Journal of Astrophysics & Astronomy
year=1997
volume=18
pages=455–463
url=http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/18/455-463.pdf
doi=10.1007/BF02709337] . Croasdale did a comprehensive analysis of the statistical significance and confirmed the special frame in which quantization is found to be the same over the whole sky. Since the initial publication of these results, Tifft’s findings have been used by other individuals, such as Halton Arp, in making an alternative explanation to the Big Bang Theory, which states that galaxies are redshifted because the universe is expanding.cite journal
author=H. Arp
title=A corrected velocity for the local standard of rest by fitting to the mean redshift of local group galaxies
journal=Astronomy and Astrophysics
year=1986
volume=156
pages=207–212
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1986A&A...156..207A] cite journal
author=H. Arp
title=Additional members of the Local Group of galaxies and quantized redshifts within the two nearest groups
journal=Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy
year=1987
volume=8
pages=241–255
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987JApA....8..241A
doi=10.1007/BF02715046] However, Tifft himself, when interviewed for the popular science magazine Discover in 1993, stated that he was not necessarily claiming that the universe was not expanding [Dava Sobel, " [http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-93/departments/manstopsuniverse206/ Man stops universe, maybe - William Tifft believes the universe may not be expanding] ", "Discover", April, 1993)] .

Today, Tifft’s redshift quantization, as well as other intrinsic redshift theories, are rarely cited. The most widely used method of determining periodicity, the correlation function, does not detect them. The reason that Tifft's method of simple redshift periodicity detects the redshift quanta and the correlation function does not is explained by Arp as being due to the redshift quanta being due to temporal steps in redshift which therefore cannot logically be mixed with the other two space dimensions as is done in the correlation function. A large majority of the observational evidence reviewed in a 1993 cosmology textbook by Peebles cite book | first = P. J. E. | last = Peebles | title = Principles of Physical Cosmology | publisher = Princeton University Press | year = 1993 | id = ISBN 0-691-01933-9 ] suggests that redshifts are indeed related to the expansion of the universe and are not intrinsic to the galaxies themselves. Tifft’s research and other astronomers’ research into redshift quantization have also been criticized for their inconsistent results. A review of the subject shows that the claimed periodicity of redshifts has ranged from 5.76 km/s to 72.5 km/s.cite journal
author=E. E. Salpeter
title=Fallacies in astronomy and medicine
journal=Reports on Progress in Physics
year=2005
volume=68
pages=2747–2772
url=http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0034-4885/68/12/R02
doi=10.1088/0034-4885/68/12/R02
format=abstract page] Some of the smaller periodicities that Tifft claimed to find are difficult to measure accurately. Moreover, the description of the quantization and the techniques for measuring it vary depending on the extragalactic objects (i.e. dwarf galaxies, spiral galaxies, superclusters) being observed.

External links

* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&qform=AST&sim_query=YES&ned_query=YES&aut_logic=OR&obj_logic=OR&author=tifft%2C+w&object=&start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_year=&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1 Tifft Articles at the NASA ADS Database] | ( [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&qform=AST&sim_query=YES&ned_query=YES&aut_logic=OR&obj_logic=OR&author=tifft%2C+w&object=&start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_year=&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1 Full text] ):Clicking on this link does a search for all articles by Tifft at the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System. The full text of the articles is available in some cases.

References