Some recent tests of the chronometric cosmology.
Two papers comparing particular samples of galaxies and quasars with certain predictions of the chronometric cosmology, and reporting significant deviations, are shown not to be altogether correct in their theoretical procedures. It is shown in addition that although the data employed in these papers are in part privately held, published data on similar samples fit the chronometric predictions satisfactorily, and fail to fit nonevolutionary Friedmann models with conventional values for q(0). As a check on and a refinement of our statistical analysis, the magnitude bias was removed from several well-documented samples by maximum-likelihood estimation of the individual probabilities in the differential luminosity function, without constraint on its form. The same conclusions as earlier follow, both in the classic regime of bright low-redshift galaxies and that of quasars.
Segal
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Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.