Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Reality Check]

Yes GeeMack, he did. You'll find images of his work on my website. Here is a Yohkoh image (orange) next to a black and white image of coronal loops (and polar jets) simulated by Birkeland in his lab:

http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/images/birkelandyohkohmini.jpg

Actually what you have is two pictures that look a bit alike.

A simulation is more than a likeness between pictures. There is also a process of comparing the simulated data with the actual data. So we need a reference to the paper that Birkeland wrote that did this.

 

[Michael Mozina]

[/LIST]Or Ari's theory of redshift:

1. Maybe plasma causes redshift?

1. 
   
   Just out of morbid curiosity, how in your opinion is that any better than "maybe space expansion causes redshift"? I will grant you that an "objects in motion, stay in motion sort of "expansion" would generate "subluminal" redshifts, potentially approaching 2C if we throw in some accelerating expansion process, but in no way are you going to get the redshift necessary to explain everything based strictly on movement alone.
   
   How is your notion of expanding space any better than plasma causing redshift?
   I'm also going to admit right now that Ari's theory is no more "tested" than yours, but his theory *can* be tested whereas your theory will *never* be tested if your statements about inflation are accurate.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Actually what you have is two pictures that look a bit alike.

A simulation is more than a likeness between pictures. There is also a process of comparing the simulated data with the actual data. So we need a reference to the paper that Birkeland wrote that did this.

http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/birkeland.pdf

Careful. It is a 160 meg file and it will take awhile to download. Make sure you save it so you don't have to download the whole volume a second time. Pay careful attention to his terella experiments, in fact you might skip to those and come back for the rest.

Specifically what Birkeland did is tinker with an arrangement of controlled variables. He change the variables and noted the results. By charging the sphere's surface as a cathode, he was able to produce that black and white image, produce solar wind, produce jets, and evidently produce "tornados" in the solar atmosphere which he wrote about but was unable to photograph. Such structures have been seen in TRACE images of the solar atmosphere. Pure coincidence?

 

[Michael Mozina]

Errors in your Errors claims.

# There is no known interaction that can degrade a photon's energy without also changing its momentum, which leads to a blurring of distant objects which is not observed. The Compton shift in particular does not work.

I'm not sure exactly what amount of "blurring" you might expect to "observe* from this distance assuming any light made it at all. There are many "blurry" areas behind plasma structures to be seen in Hubble images.

# The tired light model does not predict the observed time dilation of high redshift supernova light curves. This time dilation is a consequence of the standard interpretation of the redshift: a supernova that takes 20 days to decay will appear to take 40 days to decay when observed at redshift z=1.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602500

Your first two basic objections do not seem very convincing from my perspective.

Even if I just "give you" (for now) the black body argument, mainstream theory doesn't actually "explain" it either since it never really "explains" DE or inflation. I really don't see how this makes any theory superior to any other theory frankly.

I will have to do some further research on issues related to the BB spectrum you guys keep harping on. I suspect there is a relatively simple solution I'm simply overlooking at the moment, but frankly I think you're putting *way* too much emphasis on this *one* issue when there are a whole host of other issues to discuss.

 

[temporalillusion]

Wow, I just read this whole thread. 5 pages of me yelling at the screen that even I knew that a Bose-Einstein Condensate wasn't the same thing as a Higgs condensate.

And 6 pages of the "if it hasn't been produced in a lab up until today it doesn't exist" gets REALLY old.

I don't think I've ever seen someone so systematically disassembled and still carries on oblivious.

Thanks for sticking with it though, I learned some good things from this thread.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Wow, I just read this whole thread. 5 pages of me yelling at the screen that even I knew that a Bose-Einstein Condensate wasn't the same thing as a Higgs condensate.

As it relates to density and volume the condensates are no different. You certainly won't get the density of the particle condensate to remain constant over exponential increases in volume! Gah. Talk about useless peanut gallery comments.

 

[Vorpal]

Just for the record, which of these do you believe to be a legitimate "experiment" complete with a "control mechanism"? I'm beginning to wonder if your entire industry is even capable of discerning an "experiment" from a "subjective interpretation of uncontrolled observations".

It's time for some semantics.

 

[Tubbythin]

Who cares what you think you can "explain" (if you can call it that at all) with a theory that is 96 percent "made up" nonsense and only 4% real physics?

Your refusal to explain any of the most important observations in cosmology with your preffered theory has been noted.
So that's 0/14 then. Bit of a failure I'd say.

 

[Reality Check]

Just out of morbid curiosity, how in your opinion is that any better than "maybe space expansion causes redshift"? I will grant you that an "objects in motion, stay in motion sort of "expansion" would generate "subluminal" redshifts, potentially approaching 2C if we throw in some accelerating expansion process, but in no way are you going to get the redshift necessary to explain everything based strictly on movement alone.

How is your notion of expanding space any better than plasma causing redshift?
I'm also going to admit right now that Ari's theory is no more "tested" than yours, but his theory *can* be tested whereas your theory will *never* be tested if your statements about inflation are accurate.

Read the post. It is not about inflation. It is about cosmological redshift.
Redshift caused by velocity is tested now.
Ari's theory (cause by plasma) is not tested.

By your own criteria that makes cosmological redshift caused by velocity the better theory.

 

[Tubbythin]

It has certainly not been demonstrated empirically and not one single useful product uses or requires the use of inflation. It's hard to take seriously if you are skeptical of the idea because it's no better than numerology at actually "predicting" events on Earth.

Its been shwon to empirically match observations. Of course its better than numerology. Numerology can't make succesful predictions.

I don't "lack belief" in your inflation faeries because other people lack belief in them. I lack belief in them because you cannot physically demonstrate that they are anything other than a figment of Guth's imagination. Big difference. Why do you believe inflation exists? Please don't tell me it's because of the redshift phenomenon because I can explain that with a simple EM field thanks to Ari's work. In an Occum's razor scenario, EM fields win hands down.

What just like your alternative explanation of the CMBR. Gonna do better than out by a factor of 700 million this time are we?

I'm sure it's also very obvious to a numerologist that there are critics out there of numerology that are by no means an expert on numerology. So what? The thing inflation proponents share in common with numerologists is that they can't demonstrate their claims in controlled experimentation. In addition, no 'expert' on inflation seems to be able to "predict" the outcome of any controlled experiment here on Earth as the result of their "expertise" on this subject, so it's all useless number shuffling as far as I know.

They can demonstrate there claims in controlled experimentation. Just not in a lab. Just as we can't demonstate evolution of large animals in a lab overnight. Your creationist style argumental technique is doing you know favours.

But you never showed that "space" can or ever has "expanded". That's another of those dogma things related to *subjective* redshift "interpretation"", not controlled experimentation. Einstein rejected GR with constants and Lambda-CMD theorists stuffed them in there anyway.

He rejected part of his own theory precisely for the reasons I gave you. Do you understand what an unstable equilibrium is?

Thus far what I have learned is that none of the proponents of inflation can empirically demonstrate their claim as I already knew, and people get ticked of when their belief systems are scrutinized and found to be wanting.

You've just been linked to a load of stuff. Read it and stop lieing.

No. Redshift observations have been *interpreted* to be related to "space expansion", one of those things that astronomers cannot demonstrate here on Earth. Its amazing how many of their fudge factors must be accepted on faith, and in the absence of a proof of concept here on Earth.

Then you just seem to be rejecting GR after all.

Let's just be clear that I don't care if the universe was created or not, if it has a creation date or not, or if it is simply eternal and infinite. I don't care.

I guess that would make you an anti-cosmologist then.

It is only the mainstream that *insists* that there was a "creation event" and that they have the day figured out down to about 100K years. These are *extraordinary* claims that I cannot and would not make. I expect 'extraordinary' evidence to support that claim, not a simple "interpretation' based on an uncontrolled observation.

We've given you the etroardinary evidence. Like the prediction and observation of the Universe being bathed in microwave radiation with a perfect blackbody spectrum. Or the Lyman-alpha forrest? And all those other things on that list you could not explain a single one of.

 

[Tubbythin]

Originally Posted by Perpetual Student:

What is your response to s. i.'s view that if there were EM fields that could have cosmological effects they would be easy to detect, since EM fields so readily influence light and other EM radiation.

My response is that they *are* easy to detect. Every key "prediction" that Birkeland made with his empirical tests have been observed. We observe solar wind acceleration as he "predicted" *and simulated empirically*. We observe coronal loops as he predicted and photographed in his experiments. We observe "jets" flying off the sun as he "predicted". We observe lightning around planets and aurora and rings around planets just as he predicted and simulated in his lab. The are *extremely* easy to detect in those "flux tubes" they keep talking about and Birkeland first described in his writings.

The mainstream just doesn't want to admit that they've been beaten to the "explanation" of these observations by over 100 years now.

This is worth repeating...

NONE OF THE ABOVE HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH COSMOLOGY.

I can't believe you've been arguing all these pages about the current cosmological paradigm without even having the faintest idea of what cosmology is.

 

[Tubbythin]

How is your notion of expanding space any better than plasma causing redshift?
I'm also going to admit right now that Ari's theory is no more "tested" than yours, but his theory *can* be tested whereas your theory will *never* be tested if your statements about inflation are accurate.

Give it some credit. Ari's theory has been tested. It failed the second law of thermodynamics and belongs in the bin.

 

[Reality Check]

Errors in your Errors claims.

Errors in Tired Light Cosmology is Edward L. Wright's page not mine. But there are plenty of other sources for the problems with tired light - including Wikipedia.

I'm not sure exactly what amount of "blurring" you might expect to "observe* from this distance assuming any light made it at all. There are many "blurry" areas behind plasma structures to be seen in Hubble images.

The "blurring of distant objects" = blurring in the images of distant galaxies. The Hubble telescope is very good at getting clear images of galaxies at high z.
Things behind plasma are of course "blurred" - by the plasm obstructing the object.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602500

This unpublished pre-print (not cited by anyone except another paper by the author) is not a good source of information.
Ari Brynjolfsson in fact cites Goldhaber et al. whose abstract ends:
"We also demonstrate the 1+z light-curve time-axis broadening expected from cosmological expansion. This argues strongly against alternative explanations, such as tired light, for the redshift of distant objects".
He ignores the other papers on the same subject, e.g.
Has the time dilation of distant source light curves predicted by the Big Bang been observed?
For a more recent paper see Time Dilation in Type Ia Supernova Spectra at High Redshift.

Your first two basic objections do not seem very convincing from my perspective.

Even if I just "give you" (for now) the black body argument, mainstream theory doesn't actually "explain" it either since it never really "explains" DE or inflation. I really don't see how this makes any theory superior to any other theory frankly.

I will have to do some further research on issues related to the BB spectrum you guys keep harping on. I suspect there is a relatively simple solution I'm simply overlooking at the moment, but frankly I think you're putting *way* too much emphasis on this *one* issue when there are a whole host of other issues to discuss.

The emphasis on black body spectrum is easy to explain. Only a smaller universe completely filled with photons at a temperature of 3,000 K will produce a CMB of 2.725 K.

Mainstream theory explains (no quotes needed) the BB spectrum of the CMB and its power spectrum.

There are no other real issues to discuss.

There is only your belief that deductions about the universe cannot be made from observations (your "uncontrollable experiments") without verification from empirical controllable experiments here on Earth. It is obvious that this is not something that you will change your mind on.
Thus by your definition the expansion and dark energy part of BBT are invalid because thay will never be tested here. Gravity dominates over expansion locally (in galaxies). Dark energy is too weak to measure on a small scale.
Dark matter may be testable here on Earth.

Of course Ari Brynjolfsson's plasma redshift seems to be untestable here on Earth (unless you cited a paper that I missed?) and so is also invalid. Thus you can forget about refering to his paper again since it is nonsense by your own definiiton.

 

[sol invictus]

Just for the record, which of these do you believe to be a legitimate "experiment" complete with a "control mechanism"? I'm beginning to wonder if your entire industry is even capable of discerning an "experiment" from a "subjective interpretation of uncontrolled observations".

Mmmm, fresh hypocrisy!

I'll let you argue with the other Michael Mozina that posts here:

As far as dinosaur extinction theories, they too are based on observed processes in nature, including a nifty little layer of iridium around the whole planet (common in meteorites) that defines the boundary layers where the dinosaur fossils end.

 

[sol invictus]

Er, why?

For the same reason perpetual motion machines are impossible. The 2nd law says the entropy is increasing, and every star that forms generates a huge amount of entropy and uses up some of the available free energy. In our universe (I can't speak for yours), after a few more stellar generations all the available material for star formation will be used up, the remaining stars will burn out, and the universe will be a cold and dead place.

The details of the future evolution of the stellar population follow from understood principles of stellar dynamics. But even if you ignore those, the 2nd law is one of the most basic, well tested, and thoroughly understood laws of physics we have. An eternal universe which is still forming stars today violates it - it is a perpetual motion machine.

So there you have it - the theories you favor rely on wildly speculative mechanisms for redshift that have never been empirically demonstrated in any context (on the contrary, they are impossible according to all the data we have), violate the fundamental laws of physics (which have massive empirical support - there's a reason they're called "laws"), and are inconsistent with general relativity (which one of the other yous said he believed in), and the theory you claim is garbage and nonsense relies only on empirically and theoretically almost certain
phenomena like Doppler shift and general relativity.

Oh and incidentally, how does your eternal universe theory get around Olber's paradox?

 

[Ziggurat]

in no way are you going to get the redshift necessary to explain everything based strictly on movement alone.

Sure you can. You forget time dilation, another lab-verified phenomenon which contributes to redshift. When you take time dilation into account, you can obtain arbitrarily large redshifts. And again, I'm not even resorting to expanding space, I'm only dealing with things (doppler shift and time dilation) which have been verified experimentally right here on earth.

How is your notion of expanding space any better than plasma causing redshift?

This has already been pointed out to you: it won't blur images or spectral lines. Compton scattering will. Any tired light process which doesn't violate conservation of energy and momentum will. But again, we don't need to resort to expanding space: all we need do is acknowledge that redshifts mean objects are moving away from each other.

I'm also going to admit right now that Ari's theory is no more "tested" than yours, but his theory *can* be tested whereas your theory will *never* be tested if your statements about inflation are accurate.

You are forgetting, once again, that inflation does not mean any expansion of space. But again, let's leave that to the side for the moment. Let's stay focused on the fact that the ONLY explanation we have to explain redshifts is that galaxies are moving away from each other. Can you accept that yet, or are you still in denial?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Michael,

May I ask if you're prepared to go through this "whopper" in detail, to see just how well it accounts for all directly relevant astronomical observations?

I'm pretty sure that you've already spotted at least one of the fatal errors in the theory part of this paper*, being a serious sceptic and heavy duty critical thinker and all, so I don't feel a need to ask similar questions concerning those aspects ...

* unpublished, not least because of the 'bloopers' in the theory parts!

I know of only one specific issue that I still "question" about his work, but to this point in time, nobody inside your industry has even mentioned it. It's just something that evidently bothers me, not you folks. The only criticism I've heard thus far from any astronomer is more of a problem with their understanding of individual photons rather than a problem with the actual paper. Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out the "fatal flaw" that you believe negates his work?

Thanks for the swift response.

However, you didn't answer the question I asked, which was "Are you prepared to go through this "whopper" in detail, to see just how well it accounts for all directly relevant astronomical observations?"

A simple "yes" or "no" will do.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On the theory side, perhaps I was too quick off the mark in assuming you'd already spotted at least one fatal flaw; never mind, several others have (collectively) pointed out more than one such flaw, so there's no need to take up more server space discussing them, is there.

 

[temporalillusion]

As it relates to density and volume the condensates are no different. You certainly won't get the density of the particle condensate to remain constant over exponential increases in volume! Gah. Talk about useless peanut gallery comments.

You haven't read anything Ziggurat been trying to tell you about it, or you haven't understood what he's saying.

One other observation, you called sol's formulas "formula salad" because there was no units, and didn't comprehend when he said units weren't involved...

E = mc² - What's Einstein doing, he forgot the units!

F = ma - Oh look, Newton's laws of motion are formula salad because there's no units!

V = IR - Uh oh, no units here either.

A = πr² - No units here either, geometry is nothing more than formula salad (that's supposed to be pi, not sure why it looks weird).

You think the relationships of things in the universe care if we use m/s, furlongs/fortnight, or smizmars/perocals?

As an innocent bystander watching this train wreck, I can honestly say your ability to understand what others are saying and communicate what you are saying is sorely lacking.

 

[Tubbythin]

I will have to do some further research on issues related to the BB spectrum you guys keep harping on. I suspect there is a relatively simple solution I'm simply overlooking at the moment, but frankly I think you're putting *way* too much emphasis on this *one* issue when there are a whole host of other issues to discuss.

Hmm. A "relatively simple solution" that's so simple not one person has come up with a meaningful alternative explanation for in half a century. And you, Michael Mozina, who doesn't seem to understand what the CMBR even is (or for that matter what cosmology is) is going to come up with a meaningful alternative explanation in the space of a few moments? Seriously?

 

[Michael Mozina]

You haven't read anything Ziggurat been trying to tell you about it, or you haven't understood what he's saying.

All Ziggurat did is post a quote that did *not* support the original claim. In fact it wasn't even Ziggurat's original claim to begin with and I'm not even sure he agrees with sol to begin with on the density issue.

One other observation, you called sol's formulas "formula salad" because there was no units, and didn't comprehend when he said units weren't involved...

His one claim about Higgs condensates not being composed of particles has already been thoroughly debunked. His claim was related to particles per volume and he can't support his claim. When asked for any sort of units, he ran like hell.

E = mc² - What's Einstein doing, he forgot the units!

It's in JOULES! Gah. I won't do these one by one.

You think the relationships of things in the universe care if we use m/s, furlongs/fortnight, or smizmars/perocals?

I care that you aren't just making things up as you go, and knowing what units are in use is typical in any calculation. Get over it. I didn't ask for the moon, just the units of measurement.

As an innocent bystander watching this train wreck, I can honestly say your ability to understand what others are saying and communicate what you are saying is sorely lacking.

Your participation in this thread takes you out of the role of "innocent bystander" and puts you squarely in the roll of 'peanut gallery commentator'. The "train wreck" is watching you all try to avoid the fact you can't physically demonstrate inflation, so you're attempting to attack the messenger. How predictable.