(continued)
... snip ...
And this uncensored version of the wikipedia page on plasma cosmology gives a brief overview;
Overview
Plasma cosmology posits that the most important feature of the universe is that the matter it contains is composed almost entirely of astrophysical plasma. The state of matter known as plasma is an electrically-conductive collection of charged particles, possibly together with neutral particles or dust, that exhibits collective behavior and that responds as a whole to electromagnetic forces. The charged particles are usually ions and electrons resulting from heating a gas. Stars and the interstellar medium are composed of plasma of different densities. Plasma physics is uncontroversially accepted to play an important role in many astrophysical phenomena.
The basic assumptions of plasma cosmology which differ from standard cosmology are:
1. Since the universe is nearly all plasma, electromagnetic forces are equal in importance with gravitation on all scales.[10].
2. An origin in time for the universe is rejected,[11] due to causality arguments and rejection of ex nihilo models as a stealth form of creationism.[12]
3. Since every part of the universe we observe is evolving, it assumes that the universe itself is evolving as well, though a scalar expansion as predicted from the FRW metric is not accepted as part of this evolution (see static universe).
Plasma cosmology advocates emphasize the links between physical processes observable in laboratories on Earth and those that govern the cosmos; as many cosmological processes as possible are explained by the behavior of a plasma in the laboratory.[13] Proponents contrast this with the big bang theory which has over the course of its existence required the introduction of such features as inflation, dark matter and dark energy that have not been detectable yet in laboratory experiments.[14]
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A couple of extra things on this part ...
"
this uncensored version of the wikipedia page on plasma cosmology": when it comes to topics such as plasma cosmology, Wikipedia may not be the most reliable source, for reasons that are (or should be) well known. However, to call the material written by "Elerner" (in 2006) "uncensored" betrays a certain ... bias, shall we say. It's also interesting that Zeuzzz chose not to mention the following caveat, right at the top of the page, preceded by a large orange exclamation mark: "
The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed." No surprise; a page written by Elearner gives extraordinary prominence to the work of a certain "Lerner, E. J."
On the plus side, Elerner openly mentions several of the problems and challenges his version of PC faces (in this he serves as a welcome contrast to BeAChooser, robinson, and to a large extent Zeuzzz; if iantresman had continued posting in this forum, I suspect he too would be at least as open as Elerner about many of the problems). For example, the section on Alfvén's ambiplasma and he and Klein's attempts to explain the Hubble relationship.
On the minus side, Elerner, like Zeuzzz (and BeAChooser, and ...) leaves some, quite serious, problems unstated or understated. For example, he highlights Peratt and Lerner's work on structure formation (e.g. spiral shapes in galaxies, filaments of many scales), and blandly mentions, in effect, that Peratt's 'no CDM' spiral galaxy model is inconsistent with estimates of the amount of CDM from gravitational lensing ("
The mass estimates of galaxy clusters using gravitational lensing, which is a measurement independent of the rotation curves, also indicate that there is a large quantity of dark matter present independent of the measurements of galaxy rotation curves."). Not mentioned at all are the very serious difficulties with the Peratt model (discussed in another JREF thread), and the fact that the mass of spiral galaxies can be estimated using gravitation lensing too (and those estimates are consistent with them having massive CDM halos - another blow to Peratt's model).
Another example of omission is Olbers' paradox.
Alfvén recognised this as a knotty question (in one of the papers cited in the overview Zeuzzz conveniently posts), and proposed a robust solution (in effect a fractal scaling, so that at ever larger scales the universe becomes less dense faster than it can overheat due to the simple premise of Olbers). Elerner appears to recognise that this is also a knotty question, for any 'eternal' universe; conveniently his "
fractal scaling relationship (with fractal dimension equal to two)" would neatly make Olbers' paradox go away (note that until Zeuzzz read up on Lerner, he never mentioned anything about fractal scaling; now that he has, Zeuzzz seems to be singing Lerner's "
fractal scaling relationship is a key prediction of plasma cosmology" tune with all his heart!).
Elerner does cite Tegmark et al. ([35]), and even quotes the paper ("
The failure of the fractal model is clearly indicated by the deviation of the matter power spectrum from a power law at scales larger than 0.5 h Mpc-1 (visible here).The authors comment that their work has "thereby [driven] yet another nail into the coffin of the fractal universe hypothesis...""). Oddly, Elerner does not also mention that the WMAP team's analysis of the CMB produces an estimate of large-scale structure that is completely consistent with that from teams like SDSS; nor does he mention the observational detection of BAO (baryon acoustic oscillation) in the 'local' universe. It's a relatively simple matter to put these together, and show that an 'eternal' PC universe would not, and could not, resolve Olbers' paradox, even with Lerner's tired light.
So theres no need for the continual comments from Sol and people that "The trouble is that there is no such thing as plasma cosmology", when the exact definition of plasma cosmology has been put forward so many times now (see the bolded statement in this post [incase you missed it {again}]). I at least thought that you could accept that this type of approach exists, but I suppose that denying that it even exists in the first place makes it easier for you to deal with
. I'm sure that the pioneers of plasma cosmology and other contributors to this field such as Alfven, Peratt, Lerner, Birkeland, Verschuur, Fälthammar, Bruce, Langmuir, Dirac, Jansky, Arp, Burbidge, Grote Reber, Appleton, et al, would be amazed to find out that they have been working in a field that doesn't even exist for their entire lifetimes
... snip ...
Wow, just wow!
Zeuzzz, apply for a job as spin-master for any politician ... with creativity such as this, you're sure to be hired in an instant!
Once again the willingness to accept what must surely be quite intolerable internal inconsistencies points to PC being built on an approach to science that differs fundamentally from that of contemporary physics.
We've asked Zeuzzz (and JdG, and robinson, and ...) before, but have as yet received no answers: "
Plasma cosmology advocates emphasize the links between physical processes observable in laboratories on Earth and those that govern the cosmos; as many cosmological processes as possible are explained by the behavior of a plasma in the laboratory" (Elerner; Zeuzzz and others are far more demanding - no black holes in the lab,
ergo no black holes period), yet, to take just two examples, Arp (he of 'intrinsic redshifts') and Burbidge (he of QSSC and thermalising starlight to produce the CMB, with no mechanism, and directly inconsistent with Lerner's own model) become, in spin-meister Zeuzzz' hands "
pioneers of plasma cosmology and other contributors to this field" who "
have been working in [the PC] field [...] for their entire lifetimes".
Wow ... just wow!
(to be continued)
but i'm not going to start getting into a full blown debate, dont have the time.
Maybe this thread will not turn out to be a completely lost cause...