M WATSON’S letter (HAS, Aug 18) is, like his previous one, a hotch-potch of ill-digested nonsense with absolutely no basis in scientific fact.
I will deal here with only one of his alleged points (no room to do otherwise) – his reference to the “red shift” of distant objects as they recede from us.
This phenomenon is, of course, a “doppler” effect: the wellknown fact that the wave-length of the light of such objects gradually increases as they move away from us. The very pronounced red shift of the light from remote galaxies and quasars is, therefore, evidence that the universe itself is expanding. What’s more this expansion must have begun with a quantum event – popularly but misleading known as “the Big Bang” – that occurred some 13.75 billion years ago.
This is scientific fact rather than theory and is recognised as such by all leading physicists, from Stephen Hawking to Brian Cox. M Watson’s views are not based on science, but on prejudice against religion, especially the Catholic Church.
Tony Kelly, Crook
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