Question by:

Rob Bowdish
Technical Support Technician
Grass Valley, CA

I have recently been hearing about evidence suggesting periodicity of redshifts. Also I have been hearing about objects that are in close proximity or connected to each other (galaxies) having significantly different redshifts-possibly suggesting that there is more to redshift than meets the eye. Apparently these observations have been talked about since the late 70's... is this correct? Is there any proof to Tifft's (University of Arizona) claims? Have there been any recent discoveries to support these observations?

Thanks for your time.
Rob Bowdish

Answer by:

Dr. Rudolph E. Schild
Optical and Infrared Astronomy Division
Harvard Smithsonion Center for Astrophysics (CFA)

Dear Mr. Bowdish

Your question about periodicity of redshifts makes sense because the Astrophysics community is itself perplexed. The original work by Tifft has continued and evolved into a complex set of patterns of patterns of redshifts, and his latest work is in ApJ 485, 465 (1997). But the periodicities he finds are on small redshift scales, and if correct they probably say something about the condensation of matter and the way galaxies formed within local clusters and superclusters. Tifft's results may suggest that when primordial galaxy condensations formed, the scale of the primordial fluctuations was set by properties of the fluid at the time.

Cosmologists today are more concerned about the formation of structure on the largest scales in the early universe, when the galaxy superclusters and clusters were separating out. These scales were much larger than the ones explored by Tifft, and the first discovery paper by Broadhurst et al in Nature 343, 726, 1990 first gave evidence of redshift periodiciteis on scales of 200 Mpc. These periodicities are now confirmed by other data sets, and it appears likely that this dimension represents the scales of the fluid components that caused supercluster condensation in the non-Barayonic dark matter that co-existed with the Baryonic plasma even before the universe recombined, at a time of about 15,000 years. The Broadhurst et al periodicity is mentioned in papers about the development of structure in the universe, for example Cen and Ostriker ApJ 464, 27 (1996) and earlier references contained therein.

Thus the Tifft work may be of interest in understanding local galaxy formation matters, but this other quasi-periodicity of the density distribution of the universe almost certainly is of profound importance for the understanding of the emergence of the dominant structure of the universe.

Best wishes. --Rudy Schild--

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