Way back in
post #85 of this thread sol invictus wrote:
The trouble is that there is no such thing as plasma cosmology. There is a set of ideas, ranging from the totally ridiculous (the sun is powered by electricity) to the merely stupid (flat galactic rotation curves can be explained by electromagnetic forces) to phenomena not fully understood by anyone (solar flares) to the totally mundane (most matter in the universe is plasma).
Every single concrete idea which has been put forward - of which there have not been many - has either been debunked or turns out to be consistent with mainstream astrophysics. After the fact, Zeuzzz has then declared that those ideas weren't PC after all. Every attempt to get him to produce a concrete or quantitative prediction of PC has failed, largely I think because he recognizes that it will probably be shown false in short order, leaving him with few options.
So instead he continues making vague statements about PC, and spends most of his posts attacking aspects of the standard cosmological model (relying on the logic of false dichotomy: if the standard theory is wrong mine must be right - even though I don't have one).
He runs away whenever he gets too thoroughly trapped. For example we had a long discussion on magnetic reconnection - a standard and well understood phenomenon which he claimed violated Maxwell's equations. Since this was an extremely clear example, I decided that it would make a good test. If Zeuzzz couldn't learn or admit he was wrong about that, he never would about anything and there wasn't much point in conversation. After months of being bludgeoned with irrefutable experimental, theoretical, and numerical evidence, he had totally reversed his position - while denying he had changed at all. When confronted with proof in the form of his own old posts (internet fora are nice that way) he ran away, and has only been back rarely since.
(I added some bolding)
And so history repeats itself; or, as ben m put it, Lather, Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
I've been curious about why it's so hard to get hold of the landmark PC papers by Thornhill, W. W. that Zeuzzz has referenced several times. You'll readily recall his style: sweeping generalisations about paradigm-shattering discoveries, followed by some quotes that don't seem to say anything much and many links. If you follow the links and read the papers (if you can), keeping Zeuzzz' posts on hand so you know the context, you'll be nearly always in turn frustrated, disappointed, and amused; Zeuzzz' case is, in almost all his posts, a strange mixture of waffle, ignorance, and cynical deception.
Here's a good example:
Shortly after Zeuzzz introduced 'electric stars' as yet another part of 'plasma cosmology', I asked this simple question: "Q:
In which publications (papers) can one read "the electric star interpretaion of the hertzsprung russell diagram"?
After several exchanges of posts, filled with vintage Zeuzzz waffle, word salad quotes, and ignorance, I asked the question again, with a rider:
Comment: the paper(s) should explicitly discuss the HR diagram, and quantitatively address the observed colours, luminosities, and masses, by a direct derivation of these observables from the 'electric star' model (or theory, or ...).
If there are no such papers, to your knowledge, please say so."
Zeuzzz' reply is yet more classic Zeuzzz.
And my final attempt to get an answer,
here, is where Zeuzzz ran away.
But why didn't he simply answer the question?
I think the reason is his cynical deception (or perhaps his ignorance) ...
Take
The Z-Pinch Morphology of Supernova 1987A and Electric Stars, for example, from which he quoted in an earlier post.
This document is quite difficult to get hold of (or it was for me), which is perhaps just as well, given how awful it is.
It does, as Zeuzzz stated, contain a section on the HR diagram ("X. Hertzsprung-Russell
Diagram"), and another five directly related to it.
It also does, as Zeuzzz stated, relate the HR diagram to the (or an) "electric star model".
However, contrary to what you'd expect to find for an academic, technical paper in a physics journal, there are no equations, no numbers, ... and no model!
Worse, Thornhill includes a figure (two actually) that even undergrad students would get an "F" for ... it has a grossly misleading axis label*.
In short then, Thornhill's paradigm-shattering "model" is a waffly word-salad supported by a sloppy figure. Oh, and his list of references includes a couple of articles from KRONOS, several press releases, articles in Scientific American, New Scientist, some popsci books, commentary (not papers) in Science ... and Scott's crackpot book! One can only wonder who the reviewers of this so-called paper were.
I guess the most charitable interpretation you could give to this is that for Thornhill 'science' is done quite differently; certain requirements on rigour and precision are optional (to take just one aspect).
If it were just Thornhill, who cares?
What's more distressing is that this awful paper got published in "IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science" - do the editors not care? Or did Peratt somehow 'help'?
(to be continued)
*
If you're curious, it's Figure 9; the x-axis, at the bottom, is labelled "CURRENT DENSITY AT THE STAR'S SURFACE (Amps/m2)", with a big arrow; there are no numbers, even though the axis has tick marks. The same axis is also labelled "(Spectral Type)" as well as "(color)".
).
