21 cm Absurdity

Homepage: www.rasl.ca

Something I've been trying to get my head around is the 21 cm line. A lot of people don't realize how important the 21 cm line is. The 21 cm line is a particular emission line from hydrogen, and it's a gift; it lights up the entire sky. This emission has enabled amateur radio astronomers to do an incredible amount of investigation into the cosmos, the universe itself, and the structure of galaxies. It has also helped us understand various other cosmic phenomena, not only nebulae but also pulsars, neutron stars, and other interesting objects. Sometimes, we even see stars that are, as we say, radioactive and quite loud, and we have no idea why that is. It's pretty incredible.

However, there is so much controversy surrounding the 21 cm line. To explain what this is: if you have a wavelength of 21 cm, the speed of light is roughly 3 × 10⁸ meters per second, which results in a frequency of about 1420 MHz, or 1.4 GHz. This frequency can be received by an antenna tuned to the radio wavelength. With fairly simple equipment, you can receive, record, and analyze it.

As I said, the 21 cm line, this particular emission line from hydrogen, is unbelievably controversial. You see, there are a lot of people who talk about electrons flipping, and all sorts of things. This is absolute hogwash. It comes from a paper written in 1928 that discuss the spin states of the electron in hydrogen by people who have no idea what they are talking about.

The 21 cm line comes from the splitting of spectral lines, which was discovered by Zeeman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1902 for this discovery. It relates to the magnetic moment of the proton: the spin and angular momentum of the proton, not the electron. Electrons do not flip and violate the law of conservation of angular momentum. Things that spin don't automatically flip because of some supposed probability field.

What actually happens is that spectral lines are created when hydrogen gas is excited. We take Hydrogen under low pressure and subject it to an electric field. The light emitting from it is passed through a slit and a diffraction grating or prism. You can then see the spectral lines of hydrogen. These lines were already well-known when Zeeman wrote about the splitting of spectral lines due to the magnetic moment of the proton, leading to the 21 cm line. This line corresponds to an energy difference of about 1420 MHz, and wherever hydrogen gas is present, you'll detect the emission depending on the surrounding magnetic field.

In 1927, Erwin Schrödinger developed the famous Schrödinger equation, which describes the energy states of a Hydrogen atom. This equation marked a turning point, discrediting the Bohr model of the atom proposed by Niels Bohr. According to Bohr, electrons orbit around the nucleus in fixed paths. However, Schrödinger's work showed that this model was incorrect, as it violated Maxwell's equations, which predict that an electron in orbit would emit electromagnetic radiation, lose energy, and spiral into the nucleus. Instead, Schrödinger's equation offered a mathematical model of the atom, rejecting the idea of fixed electron orbits.

The controversy intensified when Albert Einstein supported Schrödinger's model, leading to a 20-year debate between proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation (Bohr's model) and Schrödinger's quantum theory. The Copenhagen interpretation, which relied heavily on probability, was criticized by Schrödinger and Einstein, who argued that quantum mechanics had a solid mathematical foundation that didn't require probability for understanding phenomena like the 21 cm line in hydrogen.

Despite the lack of experimental backing for the Copenhagen interpretation's view on electron flipping, it continues to dominate in certain scientific circles, particularly in radio astronomy. Unfortunately, those who challenge these views often face exclusion and marginalization, a modern example of the "war on science."

I’m in Canada, right now, I've spent a lifetime doing mathematical research and research in physics, and an awful lot of computer programming back from the '60s onward. I remember when, if you like, the war against science actually began. It began during the reign, if you like, of Canadian Prime Minister, Steven Harper. After Stephen Harper, then came Justin Trudeau. Even though there was supposed to be all the support for science, they got rid of the laboratory, the environmental laboratory, that covered a considerable area in Northern Ontario that was studying freshwater flows in Northern Ontario. That got completely shut down, the library got shut down, and all the journals got thrown out. It continued, and then started to be more and more exclusivity within the sciences. Science was some sort of really an old boys' club, but also more of a very, very exclusive group of people, with more dogmatism within scientific theories. It seemed like research just ended, and science started to get a bad name. For some strange reason, more and more people were excluded from being accepted into the scientific community. People forgot the fundamental premise that science belongs to everybody. In effect, we're all scientists. We all want to know what truth is, and it doesn't matter what culture you are. I've seen a lot of Native cultures, and all of the Native cultures that I've seen, including in the South Pacific as well as Western Canada, are all engaged in a particular type of epistemology to find knowledge and to find truth. It seems that Western knowledge and epistemology is more of this dogmatic fantasy of more and more clickbait that's becoming more and more absurd. Looking at what I'm seeing on the 21 cm line, everybody is excluded from using all these large telescopes and radio telescopes because of this nonsense that you cannot get the 21 cm line from stars, even though we do it all the time. The Sun, for example, pumps out a ton of 21 cm radiation radio waves anyone can pick up.

I'm trying to find a way to be heard because, of course, I'm blacklisted by every scientific journal on Earth. It took a lot of work to make that happen, but I got it done. I'm building an interferometer on a quarter section, with a couple of feed horns placed a half-mile apart, which gives me a resolution of approximately one minute of arc. I can use this setup to study galaxies and possibly get some spectroscopic data for detecting certain chemicals and the composition of stars. Mostly, I want to examine the rotation profiles of galaxies, including spiral galaxies in the Virgo cluster.

Even though my telescope will be the largest in Canada, I don't know how to broadcast this or how to get the public's attention. I'll try reaching out to the local press, local stories in newspapers, or perhaps local colleges to offer courses or field trips. I’m unsure where I’ll be able to publish or broadcast my findings, but I’ll give it a try.

Recently, I attended the annual general meeting of the Canadian Association of Physicists. They were discussing how membership was down, and they were trying to increase it, and someone suggested doubling the membership fees. It seemed to me like a counterproductive plan. I find it disappointing that, at this stage, Canadian science is at war with its own government. Funding for universities is being cut by hundreds of millions, forcing academics to work harder and publish ten times more just to keep up. The research, therefore, becomes more and more like clickbait: absurd and unproductive. The war on science is winning, and as a result, modern science has lost credibility with the public. The issue with the 21 cm line is a perfect example of this. Despite direct observational evidence, the absurdity within the scientific community remains.