And this is what, in my opinion, makes PC woo. This default assumption goes against piece after piece of observational evidence.
Not exactly.
It goes against piece after piece of assumptions in the Big Bang that have been piled up ontop of each other to prove the creationist perspective of the universe. Name one of these observations you speak of, and I can reply directly.
I think many cosmologists would tell you this means plasma cosmology isn't a cosmology at all.
Indeed they probably would. They think that any cosmology has to be used to prove the Big Bang, or any other slant on an initial event of creation. If an initial event of creation (the Big Bang) is wrong, that’s utter nonsense.
Anything that does entertain their creationist like world view would just be dismissed as not a cosmology at all, and so not worthy of consideration. A completely different type of cosmology does not have to be based on the same assumptions as the other ones. Plasma cosmology does not include an origin for the universe, certainly not a Big Bang, but does not rule one out either. The universe is assumed infinite in time, as because we don’t see anything being created out of nothing, or disappearing into nothing now, it is assumed that this is indeed the case. Quite a simple step really. Plasma Cosmology is a
completely different type of cosmology. Its similar in some respects to fractal cosmologies, and infact predicts a fractal structure to the universe on the large scale, which recent observations seem to be confirming. The universal distribution is not smooth and homogeneous, nearly every new observation is now showing that the universe is not at all homogeneous, but clumpy, like a fractal.
Plasma scaling is the most interesting aspect about plasmas. That’s how people get data about planets magnetic fields from using Terellas, a shame that most Terellas have been replaced with computer simulations that don’t tend to show the interesting effects that Birkeland and others achieved with actual experiments. Podgorny built a series of Terellas that simulated a flow of plasma away from the sphere, simulating the solar wind, and Hafiz-Ur Rahman followed his work up afterwards, but thats about it on the experimental side since Birkeland, its now all computer generated under the assumption that their models are correct.
One of the less known properties of plasma is that they can be fractal in nature over many orders of magnitude, ie, not scale invariant at every scale, but do become identical at various specific scales. This fractal nature of plasma has not been studied much, and no satisfactory model has been proposed to account for this fractal behaviour as of yet, although it is an area receiving much attention. The Renormalization group looks like a good start for a mathematically modelling this universality type property of plasma, but this does not really explain the plasma physics of what is involved, which has still to be modelled fully. The key observation that shows this in plasma is that at a phase transition fluctuations occur at all length scales, and thus one should look for a scale-invariant statistical field theory to describe the phenomena. Ultimately, universality is the observation that there are relatively few such scale-invariant theories. The properties of plasma may be able to explain how Different microscopic physics can give rise to the same scaling behaviour at a phase transition.
And lets not forget that Lerners magnetically confined
filament compression plasma model, in which the filaments condense gravitationally into a fractal distribution of matter, predicted that the universe would have a fractal dimension at large scales. This is why the prediction of fractal dimension (D~2) was made, and this value seems to be what scientists that investigate fractal cosmologies keep finding. Another successful PC prediction by the looks of things. And the newest data from SDSS has added further evidence for a large scale fractal structure in the universe, with D at ~2.1; (see;
http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.1132, or any other recent paper on fractal cosmologies) The associated recent press releases may be useful for anyone too lazy to read the paper;
NewScientist: Galaxy map hints at fractal universe, and
Discovery of Cosmic Fractals by Yurij Baryshev and Pekka Teerikorpi (need subscription for latter)
Could you please explain to us why on several occasions you have turned to steady state theory then?
I haven't. You seem to be confused between me saying that the universe is in a steady state, literally, and Hoyles steady state theory. Easy mistake to make
Just like mainstream cosmology has many inconsistant theories to explain galactic rotation curves, mond, dark matter, etc, which require a finite Big Bang approach.
Yes, but we don't try to use them both at once!
And neither do PC proponents. That would just be silly.
Please name some of these inconsistencies, and show where they are being used "both at once" and I can reply directly.
The unique scaleability that completely ignores gravitational effects?
No. The unique scalability that explicitly includes gravitational effects when they are modelled at the larger scales where gravity does come into effect. That why in their models gravity is included, you obviously can’t include it in experiments. Take a look at this recent experiment where they created a solar flare in the laboratory scaled down many orders of magnitude;
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/27/4287017/04287074.pdf?temp=x ..... or any of the other hundreds of experiments in various PC journals......
The fact that the EM based experiments can reproduce various phenomenon that exist in space on a much larger scale is strong evidence that gravity is not the only dominant force at work. You cant create a substantial gravitational field in a laboratory test, in an ideal world that would be great, but its not essential, the experiments are nearly always able to reproduce the phenomenon without the added gravitational variable.
No, conventional cosmology relies mainly on observation. The Universe is our lab.
Every area of science relies on observation. Yes, the universe is your lab from which you deduce models, but PC proponents like to tie down the models of the universe to some form of reality, reproducible in
actual in situ laboratory Earth based laboratories. Unfortunately for most ‘mainstream’ theories, no-one has ever found any dark matter, strange matter, Strange Quark Matter, exotic matter, expansion, or dark energy to use, and there’s insufficient knowledge of how gravity functions at small scales to induce it for direct experiments. There would be no knowledge in astrophysics without the reception of radiation, whether electromagnetic, neutrino, gravitational or cosmic rays (the latter forming an exception in having non-zero rest mass), but from Earth based experiments, where we have many extra controls on our tests, we can gain a lot more knowledge than what is inferred alone from distant radiation. That’s why PC places the experimental EM laboratory experiments in such high regard, a certain little method sometimes referred to as the
experimental method.
Since the attractive field of magnetostatics obeys the same geometric attributes as gravity (inverse square), but is much stronger, you can often apply a weak magnetic/electric field to replicate the effects that gravity would have on the space object in question.
Hi Zeuzzz: Thank you for confirming that plasma cosmology is an inconsistent set of scientific theories.
Yet you don’t point out any inconsistencies, you just claim it is so.
Can I ask why plasma cosmology includes models based on
plasma laboratory experiments being applied to the cosmos due to the scale invariant nature of Maxwell’s equations and the unique scalability of plasma
but does not include includes models based on gravity laboratory experiments being applied to the cosmos due to the scale invariant nature of Newton's equations and the unique scalability of gravity?
Because gravity is not scale invarient. Neither are electrostatics. Most of Maxwells equations for electroare.
For example, take the electric field E(x,a), which by Maxwell are represented by [latex]\nabla^{2}E=\frac{1}{c^2}\frac{\delta^{2}E}{\delta{a^2}}[/latex] [and also the equivalent form magnetism applies, using B(x,a) ], for the transformation [latex]x \rightarrow \lambda{x}[/latex] and also [latex]\lambda{x} \rightarrow \lambda{x}[/latex], giving scale invariant field equations. Maxwell’s Electromagnetism is scale invariant.
Why do 'models' such as
solar flares, current disruption, electric dynamo in the magnetotail, electric aggregation of dusty plasmas, various plasma laboratory experiments applied to objects in space, 'crab fingers', dense plasma focus, etc, etc
have any application to cosmology?
To your type of Big Bang cosmology, nothing. To plasma cosmology, they are all applicable, as they meet the main requirements for acceptance in the PC framework.
That is:
A) They are demonstrating that electromagnetic forces are equal in importance with gravitation on all scales.
B) They do not require their energy to be initially created out of nothing in a Big Bang. There are no ex nihilo type models in Plasma Cosmology.
C) They deal with EM/plasma forces, instabilities, pinches and emitted radiation in space, all that we can observe in the universe today.
D) They not use made up quantities to plug the holes in any equations. There will be no type of exotic matter, or other weird inventions to make the theory fit observations.
E) They don’t invent new physics to explain observations
And this approach essentially advocates that most things that are claimed to happen long long ago (ie, the few observations used to prove the Big Bang) can in fact be easily explained by plasma processes ongoing in the universe today, just like many of the other sources of radiation in space.
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