The Big Bang - Woo or not?

[DeiRenDopa]

Tubbythin: By-the-by, I'm still interested to know what all this BBT based nuclear fusion power is all about.

Oh I think it's pretty straight-forward; the logic goes like this:

Lerner is a big fan of PC, and an even bigger nay-sayer re LCDM cosmology models.

Lerner is one step closer to developing an interesting fusion device that may produce a net, positive, output of usable energy.

Ergo, plasma powers the universe.

Of course, an unbiased reader would have many questions, such as:
* is Lerner's fusion device expected to produce neutrinos?
* what would be the ultimate source of the net output energy? specifically, what part would nuclear binding energy play?
* over a reasonable timeframe, would hydrogen be consumed in such a device? would helium be produced?

In other words, does Lerner's device work, in generating energy, by converting H to He (in some net sense)? If so, then I'm sure it has an indirect connection with cosmology, but not one I'd've expected Z to be happy about, namely that either we live in a very special part of the universe (so explicitly breaking the Copernican principle) or that it cannot possibly be infinitely old (otherwise all the H would be gone).

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Z: We're not in the 1950's, many, many completely different methods for fusion have now been established, it doesn't have to be the usual straight nuclear fusion hypothesised in the sun and stars. Z-pinch fusion, Magnetic confinement fusion, IEC fusion, Focus fusion, Dense plasma focus fusion, Perodically Oscillating Plasma Sphere fusion (POPS), Polywell concept fusion, all of which produce neutrinos, and plenty of them.

All of which may be so, and may also (or otherwise) be interesting.

However, what any of it has to do with how fusion powers the Sun is beyond me ... and nothing in any of the great quantities of material you have posted, in this thread and others, even hints at how any of these fusion mechanisms could - might - work in the Sun, to produce the observed output of neutrinos (and photons) ... aside from the crackpot webpages, of course, which make wild claims and contain indigestible word salads.

So perhaps you'd be kind enough, Z, and take a few minutes to write down some back-of-the-envelope calculations that show that even one of these mechanisms might come close to explaining both the observed neutrino output of the Sun and its energy output in photons (you can assume no significant energy outside the 100 nm to 10 micron part of the spectrum). And for good measure, indicate how any of these mechanisms would be stable enough for the observed integrated (photon) output to be constant, to within 0.1% over decades, and 1% over millions of years.

 

[Zeuzzz]

[mdma]

Assuming that Z has decided to view posts by DRD ...

Z, your stuff about the Sun and electric currents is, no doubt, interesting.

Well, that was easy. Judging from this post, DRD has been removed from my Ignore list. Lets hope this continues.

And i'll try to be a bit less, how can I put this, accepting of critisism of theories. They are only theories after all.

However, what it has to do with any electric currents 'powering' the Sun is not at all obvious, from what you have posted.

I didn't say that it powers the sun. Ohmic disspiation inside the sun from the current systems that are hidden from us however could in my mind have an effect on the power output of the sun. But I dont have a source for this, just my opinion. The suns a pretty energetic object.

I really only brought up the heliospheric current circuit to show that the fuel the sun uses could indeed not be all it can use, but it could in essense be connected to the galaxy and recieveing the particles that fuel it in nuclear reactions (wherever you believe these reactions are occuring) externally. So it may not need to burn itself out over its lifetime, as current understanding goes.

Further, it's pretty hard to see how any could be such a cause, if only because they all are quite clear that the currents vary substantially over quite short timescales ... yet the Sun's energy output does not (again, with the caveat of the crackpot website source).

Very true. Infact the constant output of the sun is quite amazingly constant. Which implies that if a percentage of its power is derived from the currents inside it, the E-field system producing those currents would be relatively constant and thus give rise to a constant current component.

Specifically, give a simple, back-of-the-envelope calculation showing that the observed currents (per the published papers) can produce energy outputs that match the observed power of the Sun?

I need to give this a bit more thought. But i dont think that current alone can likely account for the energy output, its likely a combination of fusions and resistive (current) heating. But I still dont think that the evidence for how gravity works inside large mass bodies is very conclusive, rendering the nuclear core model of sun highly precarious in my mind. We've only collected data of gravity at depths in our own earth down to two miles (about 0.1%), we've still got another 2500 to go! And even even with these measurements there were various gravitational anomalies.

[/mdma]

 

[Zeuzzz]

So perhaps you'd be kind enough, Z, and take a few minutes to write down some back-of-the-envelope calculations that show that even one of these mechanisms might come close to explaining both the observed neutrino output of the Sun and its energy output in photons (you can assume no significant energy outside the 100 nm to 10 micron part of the spectrum). And for good measure, indicate how any of these mechanisms would be stable enough for the observed integrated (photon) output to be constant, to within 0.1% over decades, and 1% over millions of years.

Give me a while, really busy at the mo with going back to uni stuff, but i'm sure I can come up with something.

And i would be patient with Peratt, Scott, Thronhill, etc, I highly expect that over the next year or so some interesting alternative models of the sun are going to be published so we can see what all this electric sun business is all about. The first was thornhills, somewhat unorthodox, publication in the IEEE transactions on plasma science in 2007. And this is no doubt because Peratt can see this fitting in with his model of galaxy formation in some way, or something related.

Scott seems to have backed away from the extravagent claims on his website now, even though its still up and running. His last publication at the IEEE was far more tepid than the personal opinions portrayed on his website. http://members.cox.net/dascott3/SDLIEEE.pdf

 

[DanishDynamite]

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. - Terry Pratchett.

So. Woo or not?

MODERN COSMOLOGY: SCIENCE OR FOLK TALE?




This thread should be about all the points raised in the above quoted article on the Big Bang and modern cosmology. If you cant be bothered to read it and contemplate what is being said, then please don’t post anything. It makes some very pertinent points.

It makes no pertinent point that I can spot.

The creation of time, space and matter from a sudden "explosion" is indeed weird and something which needs to be explained. Hence, we will and should try to explain it. And we are (see the LHC).

But the fact that the Universe we exist in was created at a given point, and that it's creation resulted in the existence of time, space and matter as we see it, is beyond doubt.

 

[reverebison]

This thread is interesting. I am not schooled in physics or comsology, so will not debate any experts here. But maybe someone can help me with a question I have always had:

Does not the big bang violate the first law of thermodynamics?

Also, Steve Hawkins, one of the geniuses who came up with the Big Bang, for years told us that matter sucked into black wholes simply disapeared into nothing...then he was shown to be wrong. His reptuation tarnished.

Point...you can't create something from nothing, and you can't turn something into nothing.

 

[DanishDynamite]

This thread is interesting. I am not schooled in physics or comsology, so will not debate any experts here. But maybe someone can help me with a question I have always had:

Does not the big bang violate the first law of thermodynamics?

Also, Steve Hawkins, one of the geniuses who came up with the Big Bang, for years told us that matter sucked into black wholes simply disapeared into nothing...then he was shown to be wrong. His reptuation tarnished.

Point...you can't create something from nothing, and you can't turn something into nothing.

No, the Big Bang does not violate any natural law we know of, including the First law of Thermodynamics.

The reason it doesn't violate the 1st law of thermodynamics is that the energy of the explosion of time, matter and energy is supposedly ballanced by the gravitational potential energy of the energy (equivalent to matter via E = mc(squared)) mentioned.

 

[Dancing David]

This thread is interesting. I am not schooled in physics or comsology, so will not debate any experts here. But maybe someone can help me with a question I have always had:

Does not the big bang violate the first law of thermodynamics?

Also, Steve Hawkins, one of the geniuses who came up with the Big Bang, for years told us that matter sucked into black wholes simply disapeared into nothing...then he was shown to be wrong. His reptuation tarnished.

I’m not sure you have the story right , the theory was around before he started to study physics and it is called hawking radiation.


Also a black hole is NOT nothing. Nothing can not have mass.

Point...you can't create something from nothing, and you can't turn something into nothing.

Hiya RB,
That is because of semantic misapplication of nothing to the BBE (big bang event) remember that is label was applied by a detractor of the theory, it might also just be called 'the expanding universe theory'.

From observations that Hubble and an assistant made it was found that there was a relationship between the luminosity of Cepheid variables and the 'red shift' of galaxies, in that in general the dimmer the Cepheid variable the greater the redshift. Cepheid were used because there is a relationship believed to exist between the period of the variable and it's absolute luminosity IE you can tell how bright it is at it's peak from how long it's period is.

Now while there are some other ideas about where redshift comes from it is commonly accepted theory that it comes from the expansion of the universe. It is not as though a giant firecracker went off, it is more that space time itself is expanding (the cosmological constant that Einstein found , rejected and hated), think of an expanding balloon, that isn't a two dimensional surface.

So here you are with this thing, it looks as though (and may be) that the farther an object is the faster it is moving away from us. this is the main point of the theory called Hubble law. Now someone at some point asked a question, if we know it is expanding, what happens if we look at time? Well if we reverse time then everything is getting closer. And there is a place where it converges in to a very small area.

Now this is where Hoyle's appellation becomes misleading: "big bang". That is not really part of the theory. it looks as though the universe is expanding, so a conjecture is made that at some time it was very small. But and it is the Big Butt of the theory, it is not an explosion, it is not a fire ball, it is not a big bang.

It is a rapid expansion of a very small, very hot, very dense universe. It does not go bang, or whoomf or sproing even. Because here is the deal, we are in a universe that we most likely can not see out of, or leave or get information in and out of. we are closed into our universe and can not do any more than speculate about what is 'outside' of it. All we know is that it is expanding and it looks as though we can make theories that match it having expanded from a very small universe to a very large one.

We can not leave sense or see beyond the space or time of our universe. It did not come from nothing, it came from "We don't know, we can't know." There are many possible somethings that our universe could have come from yet all of them are hidden from us and can't be known at this time.

So as I said earlier, the universe came from something something we are ignorant of and that is hidden from us. It could be 'nothing' as in a quantum fluctuation creating universe, anti-universe pairs, it could be recursive inflationary bubbles of space time, it could be branes intersecting in 11 dimensional space, and it could be the Great Burrito eaten by the Great Fox and A Mighty Fart Was Loosed. We don't know.

Now some bright person will find a way to perhaps judge the consequences of the different theories.

But the BBE does not violate the 2nd law of thermo dynamics. as far as we know it came from 'something' or 'nothing we can know'.

But I think there is a clue, space is empty right? Like take space between galaxy clusters and find an area that has no matter for a huge area, like a couple square meters. What is that space, there are no particles in it, and there is no energy (like photons) in it. there is no something as we think or stuff in it, but there is this thing called the ‘vacuum energy' there, even in empty space. Or so the story goes.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

 

[reverebison]

Dancing:

thanks for that great explanation.....so the BBe theory does say that the universe may be infinitely old...but also says that matter and energy is finite. Is that correct?

 

[Zeuzzz]

Hiya RB,
That is because of semantic misapplication of nothing to the BBE (big bang event) remember that is label was applied by a detractor of the theory, it might also just be called 'the expanding universe theory'.

From observations that Hubble and an assistant made it was found that there was a relationship between the luminosity of Cepheid variables and the 'red shift' of galaxies, in that in general the dimmer the Cepheid variable the greater the redshift. Cepheid were used because there is a relationship believed to exist between the period of the variable and it's absolute luminosity IE you can tell how bright it is at it's peak from how long it's period is.

Now while there are some other ideas about where redshift comes from it is commonly accepted theory that it comes from the expansion of the universe. It is not as though a giant firecracker went off, it is more that space time itself is expanding (the cosmological constant that Einstein found , rejected and hated), think of an expanding balloon, that isn't a two dimensional surface.

So here you are with this thing, it looks as though (and may be) that the farther an object is the faster it is moving away from us. this is the main point of the theory called Hubble law. Now someone at some point asked a question, if we know it is expanding, what happens if we look at time? Well if we reverse time then everything is getting closer. And there is a place where it converges in to a very small area.

Now this is where Hoyle's appellation becomes misleading: "big bang". That is not really part of the theory. it looks as though the universe is expanding, so a conjecture is made that at some time it was very small. But and it is the Big Butt of the theory, it is not an explosion, it is not a fire ball, it is not a big bang.

It is a rapid expansion of a very small, very hot, very dense universe. It does not go bang, or whoomf or sproing even. Because here is the deal, we are in a universe that we most likely can not see out of, or leave or get information in and out of. we are closed into our universe and can not do any more than speculate about what is 'outside' of it. All we know is that it is expanding and it looks as though we can make theories that match it having expanded from a very small universe to a very large one.

We can not leave sense or see beyond the space or time of our universe. It did not come from nothing, it came from "We don't know, we can't know." There are many possible somethings that our universe could have come from yet all of them are hidden from us and can't be known at this time.

So as I said earlier, the universe came from something something we are ignorant of and that is hidden from us. It could be 'nothing' as in a quantum fluctuation creating universe, anti-universe pairs, it could be recursive inflationary bubbles of space time, it could be branes intersecting in 11 dimensional space, and it could be the Great Burrito eaten by the Great Fox and A Mighty Fart Was Loosed. We don't know.

Now some bright person will find a way to perhaps judge the consequences of the different theories.

But the BBE does not violate the 2nd law of thermo dynamics. as far as we know it came from 'something' or 'nothing we can know'.

But I think there is a clue, space is empty right? Like take space between galaxy clusters and find an area that has no matter for a huge area, like a couple square meters. What is that space, there are no particles in it, and there is no energy (like photons) in it. there is no something as we think or stuff in it, but there is this thing called the ‘vacuum energy' there, even in empty space. Or so the story goes.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

A fine summary

However I still think that on philosophical grounds it is legitimate to question this approach. Hoyles critisisms of BBT were philosphical in nature, thus why he developed the steady state theories. But even these didn't really escape a big bang either, or the big question. Where did this come from? How was it brought into being? Something out of nothing? Issues.

Of course, you can solve these problems by assuming infinity. And when you do this infinity starts cropping up everywhere in your models of the universe, and it all becomes a bit confusing, and overwhelming for thoses not confortable with the concept of infinity. People want to ask, where did infinity come from? but thats a misnomer. The nature of infinity explicity answers that question.

I think that Hoyles critisisms are still pertinent to this day. And as i'm sure people here are aware, I endorse an infinite universe. For many reasons. And due to this i remain skeptical of BBT.

I happened to stumble across the page about this issue on the 'null physics' (whatever that is, haven't really explored this yet) website. Which makes for very interesting reading, its essentially getting at the same epistemic arguments often made by PC proponents against the big bang. Both approaches are valid from a scientific perspective, they are just so amazinlgy different its impossible to say which one is correct and the other is wrong.

heres that site that peaked my interest: http://www.nullphysics.com/sampchap1.pdf

UNIVERSAL CONSERVATION

The conservation of energy is the cornerstone of modern physics, yet is blatantly violated by a universal origin from nothing - ex nihilo. There are four ways to address this problem: [.....]

Eternal energy, periodic universal renewal. Here the energy of which the universe is composed is eternal, and the Big Bang is just the latest cosmic renovation. This satisfies energy conservation but fails to explain why the universe exists instead of nothingness. Philosophers attack this issue with the disingenuous counter argument that “somethingness” could well be the universe’s natural state, and we have no way of knowing otherwise. The last time this line of reasoning was used to mask a general ignorance of a phenomenon was when Archimedes explained gravitational attraction as an object’s innate tendency to return to its natural place. This was over 2200 years ago! We ought to be able to do better by now. Speculation about exceptions to fundamental physical laws is entertaining, but the universe exists now, there is a reason why this is the case, and no violation of energy has ever been observed. [......]

TIME BEFORE TIME

The idea that the universe came into being in the distant past is as perplexing as how it emerged from nothingness in the first place. If it began at some particular moment, what transpired prior to this? If no events preceded the Big Bang, how could time be reckoned at all? This is the time before time problem. If time predates the universe, energy emerged at some time t0 in what will be called the post-time model:

SPACE-TIME → t0 → SPACE-TIME-ENERGY

This doesn’t really make the time before time problem any easier. When was primordial space-time born in this model? Does it even need an origin? Either primordial space-time has been around forever or it had an origin itself. If the latter is true, space-time begins at t0 and energy follows at t1, yielding the two-stage model:

Unfortunately, I think you have to buy the book to read the rest. Which hasn't exactly raised my hopes for this 'null physics' theory. If it was so good then they should publish it in a journal or upload it to arxiv.

 

[Tubbythin]

Good explanation I think DD, except for this bit:

Now while there are some other ideas about where redshift comes from it is commonly accepted theory that it comes from the expansion of the universe. It is not as though a giant firecracker went off, it is more that space time itself is expanding (the cosmological constant that Einstein found , rejected and hated), think of an expanding balloon, that isn't a two dimensional surface.

The Universe is not expanding because of the cosmological constant. The cosmological constant was added because Einstein erroneously thought the Universe was stationary. However, acting on an expanding Universe, it can cause an acceleration. Hence it could be the solution to "dark energy".

 

[Tubbythin]

I happened to stumble across the page about this issue on the 'null physics' (whatever that is, haven't really explored this yet) website. Which makes for very interesting reading, its essentially getting at the same epistemic arguments often made by PC proponents against the big bang. Both approaches are valid from a scientific perspective, they are just so amazinlgy different its impossible to say which one is correct and the other is wrong.

I take it you missed the 17 page thread on here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94861
Its quite easy to say which is wrong.

Unfortunately, I think you have to buy the book to read the rest. Which hasn't exactly raised my hopes for this 'null physics' theory. If it was so good then they should publish it in a journal or upload it to arxiv.

Indeed.

 

[sol invictus]

The Universe is not expanding because of the cosmological constant. The cosmological constant was added because Einstein erroneously thought the Universe was stationary. However, acting on an expanding Universe, it can cause an acceleration. Hence it could be the solution to "dark energy".

Well, just to explain that a little more - universes full of ordinary matter and radiation have an expansion history that gradually slows with time. At some point it may stop and turn around, leading eventually to a "big crunch", or the expansion may continue forever, but gradually slowing.

The presence of dark energy allows the rate of expansion to increase with time, which is what we observe in the recent stages of the universe.

 

[Tubbythin]

[mdma]

I didn't say that it powers the sun. Ohmic disspiation inside the sun from the current systems that are hidden from us however could in my mind have an effect on the power output of the sun. But I dont have a source for this, just my opinion. The suns a pretty energetic object.

Indeed. And we know the rate that energy is produced. And we can measure the neutrinos from the Sun and independently measure the neutrino mixing angles. And guess what, the neutrino flux is consistent with the SSM. No need for any ohmic dissipation. Who was it who was talking about parsimony?

I really only brought up the heliospheric current circuit to show that the fuel the sun uses could indeed not be all it can use, but it could in essense be connected to the galaxy and recieveing the particles that fuel it in nuclear reactions (wherever you believe these reactions are occuring) externally. So it may not need to burn itself out over its lifetime, as current understanding goes.

And these come from where?

I need to give this a bit more thought. But i dont think that current alone can likely account for the energy output, its likely a combination of fusions and resistive (current) heating.

Of course it can't. Neutrinos remember!

But I still dont think that the evidence for how gravity works inside large mass bodies is very conclusive, rendering the nuclear core model of sun highly precarious in my mind. We've only collected data of gravity at depths in our own earth down to two miles (about 0.1%), we've still got another 2500 to go! And even even with these measurements there were various gravitational anomalies.

So I guess you think we can't rule out there being a neutron star in the centre of the Earth or something.

 

[Reality Check]

I happened to stumble across the page about this issue on the 'null physics' (whatever that is, haven't really explored this yet) website. Which makes for very interesting reading, its essentially getting at the same epistemic arguments often made by PC proponents against the big bang. Both approaches are valid from a scientific perspective, they are just so amazinlgy different its impossible to say which one is correct and the other is wrong.

heres that site that peaked my interest: http://www.nullphysics.com/sampchap1.pdf

Unfortunately, I think you have to buy the book to read the rest. Which hasn't exactly raised my hopes for this 'null physics' theory. If it was so good then they should publish it in a journal or upload it to arxiv.

Null Physics is just another of the many crackpot theories on the web. Here is a review of it from a working physicist. If you like the concept of infinity then the mathematics in it will appall you. Terence Witt throws away 200 years of understanding of infinity by replacing it with his own definition. He makes it into a numeric length that has "magnitude" just so that he can treat infinity as a number.
The rest of his physics is similar crackpot-ism. His philosophy does not like quantum mechanics and its "illusory probability cloud known as orbitals" so he tries to replace the atomic model with a classical model by fixing Rutherford's model with a new physical law so that a ground state exists. The problems are many, e.g. the very first equation he starts with is from quantum mechanics!
He defines neutrons as a bound state of a proton and electron. There is no such bound state and we rarely see electrons as a result of neutron-neutron collisions.
His cosmology demands that stars are recycled back into hydrogen and so the super-massive black hole in the center of our galaxy is a "galactic core" (a massive body that happens to be just bigger then the event horizon). A galactic core was predicted to have a temperature of 280,000K to disassociate hydrogen and allow it to escape from the core (red-shifted to infrared temperatures). He is actually just retracted that prediction after someone pointed out to him that the galactic core is well observed including in the infrared band.

 

[Tubbythin]

He defines neutrons as a bound state of a proton and electron. There is no such bound state and we rarely see electrons as a result of neutron-neutron collisions.

Not to mention being entirely inconsistent with about 70 years of particle physics data.

His cosmology demands that stars are recycled back into hydrogen and so the super-massive black hole in the center of our galaxy is a "galactic core" (a massive body that happens to be just bigger then the event horizon). A galactic core was predicted to have a temperature of 280,000K to disassociate hydrogen and allow it to escape from the core (red-shifted to infrared temperatures). He is actually just retracted that prediction after someone pointed out to him that the galactic core is well observed including in the infrared band.

Doesn't care much for the second law of thermodynamics either, does he?

 

[Tubbythin]

Its more to do with funding and god damn money than anything else, and thus why hundreds of scientists have signed the document calling for more money to be put into alternative cosmology ideas now (see:http://www.cosmologystatement.org/).

I was bored. So I looked at some of the links on that list. Quite interesting. Apparently, atoms have feelings, special relativity was a hoax, and the Earth is just approaching its 6011th birthday.

By the way, ever heard of project Steve, Zeuzzz?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Z: I really only brought up the heliospheric current circuit to show that the fuel the sun uses could indeed not be all it can use, but it could in essense be connected to the galaxy and recieveing the particles that fuel it in nuclear reactions (wherever you believe these reactions are occuring) externally. So it may not need to burn itself out over its lifetime, as current understanding goes.

That leads to another request for a back of the envelope calculation: what is the estimated flow of mass into the Sun, consistent with the sources you cited (excluding the crackpot one)?

Space probes have been doing in situ observations of the solar wind for several decades now, and have found that it is (net) outward, away from the Sun. In other words, the Sun is losing mass to interstellar space, not gaining mass from it. It will be interesting to see how the results of your calculation compare with the estimates of mass loss due to the solar wind.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

But why are we discussing the solar wind anyway?

With Z's admission that the BBT is not woo, isn't this thread done?

 

[Dancing David]

Dancing:

thanks for that great explanation.....so the BBe theory does say that the universe may be infinitely old...but also says that matter and energy is finite. Is that correct?

Not as I understand it, the 'universe' is bounded by space/time, we do not knwo what is outside of it. If we run the expansion backwards we get a time-zero of 13-15billion years. There is not universe we can observe prior to that point, we can not see past or beyond the universe.

we can not know what was before the universe or next to the universe. we can only know the universe.