Grote Reber: Difference between revisions
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| alt = Grote Reber | | alt = Grote Reber | ||
| birth_date = {{birth date|1911|12|22|mf=y}} | | birth_date = {{birth date|1911|12|22|mf=y}} | ||
| death_date = {{death date|2002|12|20| | | birth_place = Wheaton, Illinois, United States | ||
| fields = | | death_date = {{death date and age|2002|12|20|1911|12|22}} | ||
| residence = Tasmania, | | death_place = Tasmania, Australia | ||
| nationality = | | fields = Radio astronomy, low-frequency cosmic radio emission, cosmology | ||
| known_for = | | residence = Bothwell, Tasmania, Australia | ||
| nationality = American | |||
| known_for = Founder of radio astronomy; the first parabolic radio telescope (1937); the first radio maps of the sky; lifelong opposition to the [[Big Bang|big bang]] | |||
| awards = Bruce Medal (1962); Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1962); Elliott Cresson Medal (1963); Jackson-Gwilt Medal (1983) | |||
}} | }} | ||
Grote Reber | '''Grote Reber''' (22 December 1911 – 20 December 2002) was an American radio engineer and astronomer who is generally regarded as the founder of radio astronomy as an observational science. In 1937, working alone in the side yard of his mother's house in Wheaton, Illinois, he built the first parabolic dish radio telescope; for most of the following decade he was, in effect, the only radio astronomer in the world. | ||
Reber | He is documented on this wiki for the other half of his career. Reber rejected the [[Big Bang|big bang]] for the whole of his working life, denied that redshift indicates expansion, and spent nearly fifty years in Tasmania pursuing the very low frequency radio sky that no one else was looking at. He is an unusually clear case of a researcher honoured by the mainstream for his instruments and observations while dissenting from its cosmology — he held the Bruce Medal and the Russell Lectureship, and went on publishing papers with titles such as "[["The Big Bang is Bunk" Revisited]]". | ||
== The first radio telescope == | |||
Karl Jansky had detected radio emission from the Milky Way in 1932, but no observatory followed it up. Reber, an amateur radio operator and engineer, did. In 1937, at the age of 26, he built a 31-foot parabolic reflector out of wooden rafters, galvanised sheet metal and parts from a Ford Model T, in the side yard of the family house in Wheaton. | |||
It was the second antenna ever used for astronomical purposes and the first parabolic reflector built for the job. With it Reber conducted the first systematic survey of cosmic radio emission and drew the first radio maps of the sky, publishing results that established the subject as an observational science. He did this without institutional support, at his own expense, while working a full-time job. | |||
There is a pleasing accident of local history here. Reber's mother, Harriet Grote Reber, taught at the Longfellow School in Wheaton, and among her seventh- and eighth-grade pupils had been the young [[Edwin Hubble]] — whose redshift measurements her son would spend his later career reinterpreting. | |||
[[ | == Tasmania and the low-frequency sky == | ||
[[ | |||
In the 1950s Reber deliberately chose the part of the spectrum everyone else had abandoned: cosmic radio waves at very low and medium frequencies, roughly 0.5–3 MHz, corresponding to wavelengths of hundreds of metres. Such waves cannot penetrate the Earth's ionosphere except from a few places on the planet, at times of low solar activity. Tasmania is one of them. | |||
He moved there in 1954 and stayed for the rest of his life. Working with Bill Ellis of the University of Tasmania, and through the 1960s operating a large array of dipoles near Bothwell, he made observations at frequencies no other instrument in the world could reach. His paper "[[Cosmic Static at 144 Meters Wavelength]]" (''Journal of the Franklin Institute'', vol. 285, January 1968, pp. 1–12) is representative of that work. | |||
== Cosmology == | |||
=== Redshift without expansion === | |||
Reber consistently opposed the big bang and rejected the inference from redshift to an expanding universe. His alternative was a [[Tired Light|tired-light]] account: that light loses energy in transit through the intergalactic medium, by repeated absorption and re-emission, or through Compton-type collisions with electrons in space. He set out his cosmology in "Endless, Boundless, Stable Universe" (1977), and returned to the theme in papers running from "[[Intergalactic Plasma]]" (1986) to the end of his life. | |||
A point he made repeatedly, and which is often forgotten, is that [[Edwin Hubble]] himself never committed to the expansion interpretation of the redshifts he had measured, and remained open to other explanations of them. | |||
His account of redshift was developed in parallel with a similar proposal by [[John W Kierein]], and it belongs to the same family of objections as those of [[Halton C Arp]] and the other critics of expansion documented here. See [[Redshift]] and [[Eternal Universe]]. | |||
=== A claim about the microwave background === | |||
It has been asserted in the dissident literature, and previously on this page, that Reber detected the cosmic microwave background before Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, researched it for far longer before publishing, and lost the Nobel Prize because he published obscurely and had no publicity working on his behalf. | |||
This claim should be recorded but also flagged. It does not appear in the standard accounts of Reber's life and work, including his obituaries and the reference biographies, which credit Penzias and Wilson with the 1964–65 detection. It is also worth the reader's noting that Reber's own measurements were made at metre wavelengths — frequencies of a few megahertz — whereas the cosmic microwave background is, as its name says, a microwave phenomenon peaking some five orders of magnitude higher in frequency. Anyone wishing to press the claim would need to establish which of Reber's measurements is meant. | |||
== Pushing gravity == | |||
Reber was an active member of the Association for Pushing Gravity Research, which before the 1990s was effectively the only organised group of dissident physicists and cosmologists in the United States. Its members broadly accepted the [[Georges-Louis Le Sage|Le Sage]] account of gravitation, attributing gravity to a pushing force delivered from outside a body, plausibly by a gaseous medium, rather than to attraction. See [[Pushing Gravity]]. | |||
== Recognition == | |||
The mainstream honoured Reber generously for his observational work: the Bruce Medal and the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, both in 1962, the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1963, and the Jackson-Gwilt Medal in 1983. His biography appears in the ''Encyclopaedia Britannica''. He died in Tasmania on 20 December 2002, two days short of his ninety-first birthday; his ashes were distributed to major radio observatories around the world, in Australia, England, Canada and the United States. | |||
== Papers on this wiki == | |||
* 1968 — "[[Cosmic Static at 144 Meters Wavelength]]", ''Journal of the Franklin Institute'' | |||
* 1986 — "[[Intergalactic Plasma]]" | |||
* 1989 — "[[Cosmic Matter and the Nonexpanding Universe]]" ([http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_1075.pdf read in full]) | |||
* 1994 — "[[Crucial Deficiencies in the Theory of the Expanding...]]" | |||
* 1995 — "[[Versus the Big Bang]]" | |||
* 1996 — "[[How the Universe Winds Itself Up]]" | |||
* 1999 — "[["The Big Bang is Bunk" Revisited]]" | |||
== See also == | |||
[[ | * [[Big Bang]] — which Reber opposed throughout his career | ||
* [[Tired Light]], [[Redshift]], [[Eternal Universe]] | |||
* [[John W Kierein]] — who proposed a similar account of redshift | |||
* [[Halton C Arp]] | |||
* [[Pushing Gravity]] | |||
* [[Edwin Hubble]] | |||
[[Category:Big Bang]] | [[Category:Scientist|Reber Grote]] | ||
[[Category:Cosmology|Reber Grote]] | |||
[[Category:Big Bang|Reber Grote]] | |||
[[Category:Worldwide List of Dissident Scientists|Reber Grote]] | |||
Latest revision as of 07:20, 21 July 2026
Grote Reber | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | December 22, 1911 Wheaton, Illinois, United States |
| Died | December 20, 2002 (aged 90) Tasmania, Australia |
| Residence | Bothwell, Tasmania, Australia |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Founder of radio astronomy; the first parabolic radio telescope (1937); the first radio maps of the sky; lifelong opposition to the big bang |
| Awards | Bruce Medal (1962); Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1962); Elliott Cresson Medal (1963); Jackson-Gwilt Medal (1983) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Radio astronomy, low-frequency cosmic radio emission, cosmology |
Grote Reber (22 December 1911 – 20 December 2002) was an American radio engineer and astronomer who is generally regarded as the founder of radio astronomy as an observational science. In 1937, working alone in the side yard of his mother's house in Wheaton, Illinois, he built the first parabolic dish radio telescope; for most of the following decade he was, in effect, the only radio astronomer in the world.
He is documented on this wiki for the other half of his career. Reber rejected the big bang for the whole of his working life, denied that redshift indicates expansion, and spent nearly fifty years in Tasmania pursuing the very low frequency radio sky that no one else was looking at. He is an unusually clear case of a researcher honoured by the mainstream for his instruments and observations while dissenting from its cosmology — he held the Bruce Medal and the Russell Lectureship, and went on publishing papers with titles such as ""The Big Bang is Bunk" Revisited".
The first radio telescope
Karl Jansky had detected radio emission from the Milky Way in 1932, but no observatory followed it up. Reber, an amateur radio operator and engineer, did. In 1937, at the age of 26, he built a 31-foot parabolic reflector out of wooden rafters, galvanised sheet metal and parts from a Ford Model T, in the side yard of the family house in Wheaton.
It was the second antenna ever used for astronomical purposes and the first parabolic reflector built for the job. With it Reber conducted the first systematic survey of cosmic radio emission and drew the first radio maps of the sky, publishing results that established the subject as an observational science. He did this without institutional support, at his own expense, while working a full-time job.
There is a pleasing accident of local history here. Reber's mother, Harriet Grote Reber, taught at the Longfellow School in Wheaton, and among her seventh- and eighth-grade pupils had been the young Edwin Hubble — whose redshift measurements her son would spend his later career reinterpreting.
Tasmania and the low-frequency sky
In the 1950s Reber deliberately chose the part of the spectrum everyone else had abandoned: cosmic radio waves at very low and medium frequencies, roughly 0.5–3 MHz, corresponding to wavelengths of hundreds of metres. Such waves cannot penetrate the Earth's ionosphere except from a few places on the planet, at times of low solar activity. Tasmania is one of them.
He moved there in 1954 and stayed for the rest of his life. Working with Bill Ellis of the University of Tasmania, and through the 1960s operating a large array of dipoles near Bothwell, he made observations at frequencies no other instrument in the world could reach. His paper "Cosmic Static at 144 Meters Wavelength" (Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 285, January 1968, pp. 1–12) is representative of that work.
Cosmology
Redshift without expansion
Reber consistently opposed the big bang and rejected the inference from redshift to an expanding universe. His alternative was a tired-light account: that light loses energy in transit through the intergalactic medium, by repeated absorption and re-emission, or through Compton-type collisions with electrons in space. He set out his cosmology in "Endless, Boundless, Stable Universe" (1977), and returned to the theme in papers running from "Intergalactic Plasma" (1986) to the end of his life.
A point he made repeatedly, and which is often forgotten, is that Edwin Hubble himself never committed to the expansion interpretation of the redshifts he had measured, and remained open to other explanations of them.
His account of redshift was developed in parallel with a similar proposal by John W Kierein, and it belongs to the same family of objections as those of Halton C Arp and the other critics of expansion documented here. See Redshift and Eternal Universe.
A claim about the microwave background
It has been asserted in the dissident literature, and previously on this page, that Reber detected the cosmic microwave background before Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, researched it for far longer before publishing, and lost the Nobel Prize because he published obscurely and had no publicity working on his behalf.
This claim should be recorded but also flagged. It does not appear in the standard accounts of Reber's life and work, including his obituaries and the reference biographies, which credit Penzias and Wilson with the 1964–65 detection. It is also worth the reader's noting that Reber's own measurements were made at metre wavelengths — frequencies of a few megahertz — whereas the cosmic microwave background is, as its name says, a microwave phenomenon peaking some five orders of magnitude higher in frequency. Anyone wishing to press the claim would need to establish which of Reber's measurements is meant.
Pushing gravity
Reber was an active member of the Association for Pushing Gravity Research, which before the 1990s was effectively the only organised group of dissident physicists and cosmologists in the United States. Its members broadly accepted the Le Sage account of gravitation, attributing gravity to a pushing force delivered from outside a body, plausibly by a gaseous medium, rather than to attraction. See Pushing Gravity.
Recognition
The mainstream honoured Reber generously for his observational work: the Bruce Medal and the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, both in 1962, the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1963, and the Jackson-Gwilt Medal in 1983. His biography appears in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He died in Tasmania on 20 December 2002, two days short of his ninety-first birthday; his ashes were distributed to major radio observatories around the world, in Australia, England, Canada and the United States.
Papers on this wiki
- 1968 — "Cosmic Static at 144 Meters Wavelength", Journal of the Franklin Institute
- 1986 — "Intergalactic Plasma"
- 1989 — "Cosmic Matter and the Nonexpanding Universe" (read in full)
- 1994 — "Crucial Deficiencies in the Theory of the Expanding..."
- 1995 — "Versus the Big Bang"
- 1996 — "How the Universe Winds Itself Up"
- 1999 — ""The Big Bang is Bunk" Revisited"
See also
- Big Bang — which Reber opposed throughout his career
- Tired Light, Redshift, Eternal Universe
- John W Kierein — who proposed a similar account of redshift
- Halton C Arp
- Pushing Gravity
- Edwin Hubble