Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Tubbythin]

But that's my point. "Inflation did it" is equally unfalsifiable!

Nope.

The weird part is that most folks believe God to exist today, whereas inflation does not. I mean the only difference between these leaps of faith is that one belief *might* be verified someday, whereas one could never be verified experimentally ever! Can't you see the irony in that?

What most people believe is irrelevant. Similarly, what you believe about whether inflation is verifiable is also irrelevant since you've repeatedly demonstrated you have no idea what you are talking about.

I have this "natural experiment" you see. It demonstrates that humans have believed in God and claimed to have experienced God's love in large numbers throughout recorded human history.

And this has what to do with what?

 

[Michael Mozina]

So proposing a new particle that hasn't been seen in labs is woo

No. The Higgs for instance is not "woo". It can be found experimentally so it can be verified or falsified in the conventional manner. Experiments to find it are already in the works, and already running.

Compare and contrast that to your dead inflation field/particle. It can *never* be found experimentally because it's dead, and it can never be falsified because you keep changing your equations, and therefore it's "woo".

but proposing a new state of matter which hasn't been seen in a lab isn't? I don't get it.

I don't have any problem allowing you to "scale" any known thing or force or curvature to size. I won't let you scale invisible dead unicorns to size however.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Nope.

Yep. I can't ever even hope to verify or falsify it's existence experimentally and your equations are constantly changing.

What most people believe is irrelevant. Similarly, what you believe about whether inflation is verifiable is also irrelevant since you've repeatedly demonstrated you have no idea what you are talking about.

You know, this whole debate would be over in an instant if Guth had used a known force of nature or you could empirically demonstrate your case. Since you can't do that, it's all my fault somehow that I lack belief in your dead inflation deity. I've heard this a million times in religious forums too. If I only had a little "faith" in their personal belief I would see it their way.........

And this has what to do with what?

There was an earlier discussion about "control mechanisms" that you evidently missed. Your side was trying to insist that a "natural experiment" was fine and could be used to determine the existence of something new in nature.

 

[Skwinty]

I think that this is relevant to the philosophical issues at play in this thread.


"The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the talents of man and of the circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the rules is bound to increase our professional qualifications at the expense of our humanity. In addition, the idea is detrimental to science, for it neglects the complex physical and historical conditions which influence scientific change. It makes our science less adaptable and more dogmatic: every methodological rule is associated with cosmological assumptions, so that using the rule we take it for granted that the assumptions are correct. Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest and not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for Granted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens. Case studies such as those reported in the preceding chapters show that such tests occur all the time, and that they speak against the universal validity of any rule. All methodologies have their limitations and the only 'rule' that survives is 'anything goes'."

Feyerabend

 

[Perpetual Student]

MM:

When Guth proposed inflation in 1980, there were a number of unexplained characteristics of the observable universe; these have been rehashed here again and again. Inflation was presented as a way to explain those observations. Guth made his proposals regarding inflation as any scientist would -- yes, as you love to say -- "out of his head" as opposed to what ever organ or orifice you use. Guth is a genuine, credible and very accomplished physicist and cosmologist.
Twenty nine years have now passed and thousands of theorists have had the opportunity over that period to come up with a better explanation. Don't you get it? Your PC/EU stuff just doesn't pass the test; the scientific community has rejected it.
I am not a big fan of inflation -- but it's the best theory we have!

 

[sol invictus]

Sorry, I should have quoted this statement.


"In the inflationary theory the universe begins incredibly small, perhaps as small as 10 –24 cm, a hundred billion times smaller than a proton. The expansion takes place while the false vacuum maintains a nearly constant energy density, which means that the total energy increases by the cube of the linear expansion factor, or at least a factor of 1075. Although this sounds like a blatant violation of energy conservation, it is in fact consistent with physics as we know it." Alan Guth.

Does this imply that the energy has been borrowed from gravity (Newton and Einstein), and if so what are the repayment terms?​

Hmm... "repayment terms". I'll have to think about how to answer that.

Whaaaaaaaaat? Are you trying to tell me that the universe has a net zero energy now?

GR 101. That follows immediately from time reparametrization invariance. Of course one can find definitions of the energy that aren't zero, but they amount to writing 0 = E - E (with that split done in a particular way).

[/FONT][/FONT]
The mass of the matter at the start of the universe applied to E=MC^2 would yield that amount of energy?[/LEFT]

There isn't really any matter at the "start" of the universe. Go back far enough and everything is radiation

 

[Tim Thompson]

Most Unfortunate

Compare and contrast that to your dead inflation field/particle. It can *never* be found experimentally because it's dead, and it can never be falsified because you keep changing your equations, and therefore it's "woo".

You keep saying this, but simply ignore out of pure faith that I have already explicitly demonstrated that inflation is not only testable, but already tested; see post #760 on page 19. Furthermore, you not only contradict yourself, but even insult yourself with a strawman of yourself, as I pointed out in Post #784 on page 20. And despite your extreme insistence on controlled laboratory experiments, you straightaway dismiss and ignore any controlled laboratory experiments which do not conform with your own personal bias, as is the case concerning proven magnetic reconnection in laboratory plasmas; see my post #1221 in the plasma cosmology thread, which you simply dismissed out of hand.

The fact is that despite your claims to the contrary, you do in fact practice "science" in a way that is contrary not only to the standard in the scientific community at large, but is not even consistent with your own declared guide to following the scientific method (http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html). It is simply obvious at this point that you are driven by obsession & prejudgement, and will not allow proper science to interfere. Most unfortunate.

 

[Michael Mozina]

MM:

When Guth proposed inflation in 1980, there were a number of unexplained characteristics of the observable universe;

So how do we go about "explaining" them? Do we just admit "I don't know", or do we just play "make believe" with physics?

these have been rehashed here again and again. Inflation was presented as a way to explain those observations. Guth made his proposals regarding inflation as any scientist would -- yes, as you love to say -- "out of his head" as opposed to what ever organ or orifice you use.

And therein lies the rub. Instead of just admitting to himself that he could not explain it, he literally "cheated". He simply postdicted a fit and called it "inflation" and called it "the ultimate free lunch". It's the ultimate in bogus ideas.

Guth is a genuine, credible and very accomplished physicist and cosmologist.

So was Chapman. His ideas were just "wrong". Even the most accomplished individual can be "wrong".

Twenty nine years have now passed and thousands of theorists have had the opportunity over that period to come up with a better explanation.

I don't need a "better one" to falsify or reject Lambda-CDM theory. There is no one to one correlation between rejection of Guth's "made up" idea and having faith in any other particular cosmology theory. Each theory has to stand on it's own merits and there is no requirement on my part to "do better" than pure "make believe" with three different hypothetical entities! Most religions only require faith in *one* hypothetical entity.

Don't you get it? Your PC/EU stuff just doesn't pass the test;

Which test? It passed the test on aurora. It passes the test on solar wind. It passes the test on coronal loops. It passes the test on jets. It passes the test of actual scientific "prediction' from real experimentation. These guys *still* can't explain solar wind!

the scientific community has rejected it.

Yes indeed, they rejected empirical physics for faith in a dead deity. Chapman rejected it too. PC theory however works in a lab and has survived the test of time. Inflation never will.

I am not a big fan of inflation -- but it's the best theory we have!

But even this statement is a highly subjective statement and ultimately it's a statement of faith in something (actually 3 things) you cannot empirically demonstrate. Typically the "best" explanation is the one that works and works in a lab and is the "simplest" explanation.

Birkeland generated sustained aurora around spheres in a vacuum and sustained solar wind flow using electricity and charge separation. He also found many other "surprises" in his experiments. I know with absolute scientific certainty that his beliefs work. They work in a lab, they work in space, and they work in the plasma ball on my desk. This is pure empirical physics PS. Right or wrong it's not "woo" because it is based on empirical physics. Inflation will forever be "woo" because it physically does not exist in nature, it is a figment of human (one human originally) imagination. It's now a "meme".

When you then say 'best', I can't help but cringe and ultimately disagree.

From day one, Guth tried to sell his "free lunch" inflation theory using really goofy rationalizations, like his belief that inflation was the "cause" for a lack of monopoles. Monopoles violate Gauss' law of magnetism, and they simply don't exist anymore than invisible unicorns exist. His rationalization was like claiming that inflation must have done it because inflation killed all the unicorns and that is why are are no more unicorns! His whole theory was band-aided together with pure pseudoscience and postdicted math from the very start.

I can't just snap my fingers and make my doubt go away. The more I read about those 'anolomolies' that are still unresolved in the one theory that actually needs inflation, the more my skepticism only grows. This whole theory is metaphysical mumbo-jumbo IMO, it's exactly like numerology in that it will never correctly predict the outcome of any controlled experiment. It's pure woo, and faith in a make believe, non-existent entity that came from one individual's wild imagination. It doesn't now and never will work in a lab. I'm looking for solutions to real problems like solar wind acceleration, not how to postdict a better fit with an unlimited supply of fudge factors and make believe entities.

 

[Michael Mozina]

GR 101. That follows immediately from time reparametrization invariance. Of course one can find definitions of the energy that aren't zero, but they amount to writing 0 = E - E (with that split done in a particular way).

Um, how about E=MC^2?

There isn't really any matter at the "start" of the universe. Go back far enough and everything is radiation

Radiation of what? From what?

 

[Ziggurat]

Um, how about E=MC^2?

E=mc² is special relativity. And it ignores the (negative) gravitational energy of that mass. Include that, and total energy goes to zero. Again, you demonstrate your ignorance of GR.

 

[Michael Mozina]

You keep saying this, but simply ignore out of pure faith that I have already explicitly demonstrated that inflation is not only testable, but already tested; see post #760 on page 19.

No Tim. What you handed me were more "point at the sky with invisible elf math" exercises. You didn't "test" anything. The inflation idea failed to predict acceleration, so you added in "dark energy". There's no way to "test" any of it.

And despite your extreme insistence on controlled laboratory experiments,

AKA: Empirical physics.

you straightaway dismiss and ignore any controlled laboratory experiments which do not conform with your own personal bias, as is the case concerning proven magnetic reconnection in laboratory plasmas

It's not that simple. I don't actually reject "magnetic reconnection" in terms of math or physics as it is verbally described until we get to the actual word "magnetic reconnection". That is physically impossible. It is *particle reconnection* and "circuit reconnection*, but magnetic lines are incapable of "reconnecting". I actually see MR theory as a form of EU/PC theory, albeit with a goofy and self conflicted name. I do in fact reject a couple of those 'experiments' only because they "assumed" that the E field remained constant even while the diameter of the flux tube shrank. That was simply a bad assumption.

 

[Skwinty]

[FONT=Verdana,Bold][FONT=Verdana,Bold][FONT=Verdana,Bold]Please comment on the following[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Bold][FONT=Verdana,Bold]​

[FONT=Verdana,Bold]Failure of general relativity[/FONT]
​

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[/FONT]​

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[/FONT]Many astronomers have speculated that the discrepancy between the mass seen in stars and gas and the mass inferred by applying general relativity (and Newtonian gravity, its low-velocity simplification) to astronomical observations is not the signature of some new exotic particle, but instead is the observational signature of the breakdown of general relativity. Classical Newtonian physics works well in daily life: Quantum mechanics is usually important only at very small scales and general relativity is only important on very large scales and near massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars. Perhaps the dark matter
problem is the observational signature of the failure of general relativity. The discovery of dark energy strengthens the motivation for considering these alternative models. Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), developed by Mordehai Milgrom and Jacob Bekenstein, is the most carefully examined alternative gravitational theory. It has the advantage of explaining galaxy rotation curves without resorting to dark matter. However, MOND has difficulties fitting the data implying the existence of​

dark matter in clusters and is inconsistent with WMAP's observations of microwave background fluctuations. http://www.mhest.com/spotlight/darkmatter/articles/Dark_Matter.pdf

 

[Ziggurat]

MOND kinda sorta works for galactic rotation curves, but not all that well. But it doesn't work for gravitational lensing.

 

[Michael Mozina]

E=mc² is special relativity. And it ignores the (negative) gravitational energy of that mass. Include that, and total energy goes to zero. Again, you demonstrate your ignorance of GR.

So you believe that the total energy of the entire universe is zero?

 

[Ziggurat]

So you believe that the total energy of the entire universe is zero?

The answer to that question rather obviously depends upon the way you define energy. But under the definition which makes the most sense in general relativity, this is necessarily so. Add positive energy to your universe, and that energy creates a gravitational field, which has negative energy which will cancel that positive energy. The only way the total energy could be nonzero is if general relativity is wrong.

 

[Michael Mozina]

The answer to that question rather obviously depends upon the way you define energy. But under the definition which makes the most sense in general relativity, this is necessarily so. Add positive energy to your universe, and that energy creates a gravitational field, which has negative energy which will cancel that positive energy. The only way the total energy could be nonzero is if general relativity is wrong.

What "negative energy"?

I learned a long time ago that you folks *LOVE* to stuff GR theory with all sorts of metaphysical nonsense. My question is basically pretty simple. Are you claiming that the total energy of the universe is zero? Are you suggesting that Guth was right, the universe is one giant "free lunch"? The laws of conservation of energy *insist* that all the energy that exists around me was neither created or destroyed. You seem to be creating it on the fly out of "nothing" and that's pretty much exactly what Guth tried to suggest. He literally called it a "free lunch". It was nothing of the sort. Whatever energy came out of that bang predated that event.

 

[Ziggurat]

What "negative energy"?

It's really quite simple. In electromagnetism, fields store energy with a density proportional to the square of the field. If you bring two like charges together, this means that the energy stored in their electrostatic fields increased. That's why it takes energy to push them together: you do work to create positive potential energy. But gravity is different: when you bring two like gravitational charges (ie, masses) together, you get work out of it. So the energy stored in the fields is negative: the volume integral of the field squared increases as you extract work from gravity.

I learned a long time ago that you folks *LOVE* to stuff GR theory with all sorts of metaphysical nonsense.

There's nothing metaphysical about it. Energy is a mathematically well-defined function. The way this function is defined in general relativity is not arbitrary, and while it may not be a unique definition, it is rigorous. And this isn't what I stuffed into GR, this is in GR. It's an integral part of GR. You keep being amazed that GR says things that you never knew it said, but all that does is reveal your ignorance of the subject.

My question is basically pretty simple. Are you claiming that the total energy of the universe is zero?

If you use the definition of energy that comes from GR, then yes.

Are you suggesting that Guth was right, the universe is one giant "free lunch"?

Oh, but that isn't the same thing at all.

You seem to be creating it on the fly out of "nothing" and that's pretty much exactly what Guth tried to suggest.

I am doing nothing of the sort. If you've got a problem with this Guth fellow, go complain to him. If you've got a problem with the net energy of the universe being zero, complain to Einstein: this is vanilla GR, something you reveal yourself time and time again to be woefully ignorant of. Which would be quite excusable (lots of very smart people don't know much about it), except for the fact that you keep making completely false claims about it, pretending that you accept it while holding views that directly contradict it.

 

[sol invictus]

Um, how about E=MC^2?

Umm, what about it?

Radiation of what? From what?

Mostly EM radiation. Does that make you happy?

Please comment on the following​

Failure of general relativity
Many astronomers have speculated that the discrepancy between the mass seen in stars and gas and the mass inferred by applying general relativity (and Newtonian gravity, its low-velocity simplification) to astronomical observations is not the signature of some new exotic particle, but instead is the observational signature of the breakdown of general relativity.
​

Well, I agree that it's worth thinking about that - and many, many people are. However no one has come up with an alternative that works - MOND was a failure, DGP was a failure, and the more we learn about GR, the harder it seems to alter at long distances.

What "negative energy"?

Two rocks in an empty universe, at rest, far apart. Call the energy zero (or call it 2Mc^2 if you prefer). Let them go; gravity pulls them together. They accelerate, gaining kinetic energy. But total energy is conserved - so therefore their gravitational potential energy becomes more and more negative as they fall together.

Gravitational potential energy is always negative. That's primary school physics.

I learned a long time ago that you folks *LOVE* to stuff GR theory with all sorts of metaphysical nonsense.

And I learned a few weeks ago that you have no idea what you're talking about.

My question is basically pretty simple. Are you claiming that the total energy of the universe is zero?

We've already answered that question at least four times. YES.

Are you suggesting that Guth was right, the universe is one giant "free lunch"?

Yes.

The laws of conservation of energy *insist* that all the energy that exists around me was neither created or destroyed.

Yep.

You seem to be creating it on the fly out of "nothing" and that's pretty much exactly what Guth tried to suggest.

Nope.

He literally called it a "free lunch". It was nothing of the sort. Whatever energy came out of that bang predated that event.

The big bang has nothing to do with this. We're talking about whether the expansion of the universe - specifically inflation - conserves energy.​

 

[Dancing David]

So let me make sure I get this straight. A hydrogen bomb actually has zero net energy because it's "mass" somehow zero's out the energy contained in the bomb?

Wow, the river of liver, the empty pond, the calvalcade of cacophony continues.

What is it with you and these terrible analogies and metaphors,

straw is thy name.

Who said the post BBE is anything like hydrogen bomb.

Oh, was it you?

 

[Dancing David]

Um, how about E=MC^2?


Radiation of what? From what?

Wow are you a theist, you sure act like one.

radiation from something, that is so silly.

Where does the vacum energy come from?
Or virtual partciles?
Or gravitation?