Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Michael Mozina]

You have a fundamental problem! You make no attempt to learn from or even pay attention to any comments made here.

With all due respect PS, I have tried very hard to understand their position. I just don't happen to agree with it.

Simply put, you are in combat and don't really make an effort to learn from or understand someone else's remarks.

I'm sure it seems that way, but I am trying to understand their position and I've made an effort to pick on specific ideas and explain why they are not true.

Your response above is nothing more than a quick knee jerk answer with no thought.
That's not science; it's dogma! You are not engaging in a scientific discussion; you are spouting blind MM dogma.
If you were to make any attempt to understand my comment above, you would realize that any system can be described as having zero energy. Then as the system evolves (in isolation) various aspects or parts of the system can have positive, zero or negative energy with the total system energy remaining at zero, which would be consistent with the conservation of energy law you know so well. That is true of the whole universe, which is a system (a big one).

Regarding cosmological questions about energy and the big bang, here is a view to consider: http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html
It may make you happier to call the total energy of the universe something like 10²⁷⁷ joules, but it would accomplish nothing. It would be a number that could not change, just like zero.

Actually PS, I realize exactly what you meant, and I actually agree with you that we can *arbitrarily* pick an energy state as a zero state for purposes of experimentation.

The problem with their belief however is fundamentally a problem with the laws of nature. The energy state of this universe is not zero. The sun shining on Earth demonstrates this claim. The total energy state of this whole physical universe is not changing, but it cannot be zero. In fact the observation of acceleration makes it *impossible* for it to be zero.

I hope you spend as much time trying to understand my position as you would have me put into understanding your position on this issue. I think you will find that I am trying to be fair and reasonable, but the notion that the universe has no energy is obviously wrong. I can't ignore the fact that the sun shines and the world turns. There is energy in the universe now. It could not ever have been zero unless the laws of conservation of energy are not laws of physics.

Even the most remote reaches of space do not have even a "zero" energy state. While it can be handy in a math equations to think in terms of negative energy, in the realm of physics, that isn't what is going on. At the particle physical level (like neutrinos) the particles are moving and they convey positive kinetic energy into experiments here on Earth. We simply do not live in a "zero energy" universe. This one is full of energy.

 

[Ziggurat]

Energy cannot be created or destroyed

That formulation implies that it's a thing. But it is not. It's a property of things, which we can quantify. That quantity happens to be conserved, but that statement says nothing about its distribution or its total. Momentum is also conserved. The universe is full of momentum. And yet, the total momentum, as far as we can tell, is zero.

The total amount of energy has never changed. I may not be able to measure it all at the moment, but I know from laws of physics that the total energy has not changed one iota.

Nothing I said implies otherwise.

The negative sign you put in that formula is purely arbitrary and depends on the observer.

No, it is NOT arbitrary. It is necessary. Without that minus sign, energy would NOT be conserved. The constant C is arbitrary, but that minus sign is an absolute requirement. Again, you reveal yourself to be ignorant of freshman physics.

There isn't any such thing as "negative energy" in nature.

Except I already demonstrated that there must be for potential energies, or else you have potentials which are always infinite.

Even antimatter is not 'negative energy'.

Well, duh. Of course antimatter isn't negative energy. Nothing I said implies otherwise.

We already went through that "potential" energy thing with the pendulum.

You arbitrarily defined the potential energy as being positive. There was no requirement that it be positive. Everything works out the same if you define the top of the swing as zero, and the bottom as negative. You still get a loss of potential energy and an increase in kinetic energy. NOTHING about your scenario requires that we define the potential as positive anywhere. In fact, the only potentials which you have to define as positive are repulsive ones, for the same reason that attractive potentials can always go negative: repulsive potentials can be unbounded in the positive direction, while attractive potentials can be unbounded in the negative direction.

The pendulum doesn't hit a zero potential energy and then go negative by flying up and off planet Earth!

If its potential goes from positive to negative, that means it's getting closer to earth, not flying into space. Epic fail.

There simply is potential and/or kinetic energy in the system. None of it is "negative energy", all of it is "positive" energy in one form or another.

This is simply false. Whether or not potential energy is negative depends entirely upon where your zero reference is, which in Newtonian physics is arbitrary. But if the potential is unbounded at the lower end (which is the case for gravity), then you cannot define a zero such that it cannot go negative. But since you can't do math, and don't know why there's a negative sign in that potential, I guess it's not surprising that you don't understand why.

The total energy can be anything, all the matters is that total energy is preserved.

Bwahahahahaha! If the total energy can be anything, then it can be negative. Congratulations, you've just contradicted yourself.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

[...]

Bwahahahahaha! If the total energy can be anything, then it can be negative. Congratulations, you've just contradicted yourself.

(bold added)

It seems that has happened rather a lot, in this and at least two other threads, that MM contradicts himself ...

It can happen to anyone, of course, but it would seem that it's a rather frequent event, for MM and his posts here.

It seems that sometimes MM tries to clarify the contradiction (or perhaps one should say 'apparent contradiction'), but IIRC it's very unusual for such attempts to actually resolve the apparent contradiction; rather, they make it worse, or more stark, or are in essence incoherent ("illucid", perhaps).

Does any reader, other than MM (presumably), feel this is an inaccurate summary, in any significant way?

 

[temporalillusion]

With all due respect PS, I have tried very hard to understand their position. I just don't happen to agree with it.

I don't think this is true. You've demonstrated almost no understanding of what they are trying to say. If you understood what they were saying then you wouldn't be making mistakes in rephrasing and interpreting what they are saying.

It's possible to understand someone else's position and disagree with it completely. You don't seem to understand the position being given here though.

You can tell this by the very common phrases "That's not what GR says" or "That's not what <insert whatever> says" being used.

 

[Perpetual Student]

The problem with their belief however is fundamentally a problem with the laws of nature. The energy state of this universe is not zero. The sun shining on Earth demonstrates this claim.

OK, stay with me on this one. The sun formed through the action of gravity on a cloud of dust and gas. Gravitational forces then facilitate nuclear reactions, which then release energy. But you know that the energy is being released by the sun -- not created. It is already there in the binding energy of the atoms involved in fusion. That energy and those atoms got there when those atoms were formed from the "positive" energy of the early universe. That "positive" energy used to create those atoms and binding energy were balanced by the "negative" gravitational energy caused by the expanding universe as stuff spread apart. That's not hard to understand, regardless of whether the total energy of the universe is some positive number of joules or zero. However, let the physicists here clean up my act on this one, if my explanation is lacking or flawed.

 

[Michael Mozina]

OK, stay with me on this one. The sun formed through the action of gravity on a cloud of dust and gas. Gravitational forces then facilitate nuclear reactions, which then release energy. But you know that the energy is being released by the sun -- not created. It is already there in the binding energy of the atoms involved in fusion. That energy and those atoms got there when those atoms were formed from the "positive" energy of the early universe.

So in this example gravity seems to facilitate the release of stored preexisting energy in atoms.

That "positive" energy used to create those atoms and binding energy were balanced by the "negative" gravitational energy caused by the expanding universe as stuff spread apart.

You've lost me here somehow. The gravitation energy in your example is actually helping to release energy that has been stored in atoms. It's more or less *adding* energy to the system to help facilitate fusion. As this release of energy occurs, the sun even loses a little "gravity" as protons and electrons accelerate toward the heliosphere. There is an "additive" property to gravity that is helping to create positive pressure, and to help heat the plasma to a temp that initiates fusion reactions.

I'm unclear hot gravity is being considered "negative' in this example.

I fully agree with your earlier statement that we can pick an arbitrary point to be a "zero" when experimenting with things like gravity, etc. There may be instances in such a math formula where such an equation can become negative in certain scenarios as well, as in your example. In this instance however we are interested in the total energy of the universe and there are physical processes for us to consider. Every moving object contains positive amounts of kinetic energy. Objects separated by distances have "positive potential energy" that can convert into positive kinetic energy. Particles that traverse space also have kinetic energy. The whole universe is essentially kinetic energy in motion. Even at the level of the atom, the electrons are not stationary and there is kinetic movement and kinetic energy and energy in general that can be released by fusion for instance in your example. There is an abundance of stored energy in this system, both in terms of kinetic energy of massive objects, and small objects, but also in terms of potential fusion and fission reactions that "release mass and gravity".

Essentially the energy state of the universe can be any *non negative* number, but it cannot be zero, nor can it be negative. Even antimatter is not "negative energy", it's essentially kinetic energy in another form that can be released from that form by the introduction of matter. Both types of matter contain energy that can be released in annihilation. No type of matter is a zero or negative kinetic energy state. All forms of matter have momentum and kinetic energy.

 

[Michael Mozina]

That formulation implies that it's a thing. But it is not. It's a property of things, which we can quantify. That quantity happens to be conserved, but that statement says nothing about its distribution or its total. Momentum is also conserved. The universe is full of momentum. And yet, the total momentum, as far as we can tell, is zero.

This statement doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't the Earth then just fall into the sun?

No, it is NOT arbitrary. It is necessary. Without that minus sign, energy would NOT be conserved.

But the initial energy state is all that needs to be conserved. It can be any *positive* number.

The constant C is arbitrary, but that minus sign is an absolute requirement. Again, you reveal yourself to be ignorant of freshman physics.

I think it's outrageous to look at any of this in terms of "freshman physics" and then turn right around and claim there no energy in the universe. Come on. The posturing here is pointless.

Except I already demonstrated that there must be for potential energies, or else you have potentials which are always infinite.

The universe potentially contains an infinite (or nearly so) amount of energy for all I know. I can only see a small sliver of it, and that part has *lots* of energy that I experience with my eyes, my ears, etc.

Well, duh. Of course antimatter isn't negative energy. Nothing I said implies otherwise.

There is no form of energy that is "negative". The energy is kinetic in nature and movement oriented. You can take all movement out of the system and all energy out of the system and achieve a zero state, but in no way can you achieve a "negative energy" state. You might reach zero at best case.

You arbitrarily defined the potential energy as being positive.

No, I did not. It is "positive" kinetic energy that I can feel on my skin in the morning when I feel the sun hit my face. There is heat coming from the sun that is energy in motion.

There was no requirement that it be positive.

In physical motion scenarios, the energy is kinetic and it is positive.

Everything works out the same if you define the top of the swing as zero, and the bottom as negative. You still get a loss of potential energy and an increase in kinetic energy. NOTHING about your scenario requires that we define the potential as positive anywhere.

You're simply playing with an arbitrary starting point. It doesn't change the nature of the kinetic energy and the bottom of the swing. It will still have a "positive" affect on anything it might hit at that point in the swing. The energy is kinetic in nature, and there's always kinetic energy in the system. We're repeating now, so I'll skip a bit.

Bwahahahahaha! If the total energy can be anything, then it can be negative. Congratulations, you've just contradicted yourself.

And to think I'm being accused of not trying to understand your points and being combative. This is like lawyers looking for any slip of the tongue, not a person interested in understanding my point.

This universe is *filled* with kinetic energy in motion. You can't take it out of the system if you wanted to, and if you did you would only reach a state of zero kinetic energy. Since that cannot ever be achieved, we will forever be living in universe with a non zero amount of kinetic energy in motion and potential energy between objects. It is all "positive energy" because it is all kinetic in nature.

 

[Michael Mozina]

(bold added)

It seems that has happened rather a lot, in this and at least two other threads, that MM contradicts himself ...

I'm sure if you want to twist my words you can, but if you want to understand the nature of kinetic energy it's easy to do. The energy state of the physical universe is not zero. The sunshine is proof of this statement. Gravity helped release the potential energy of atoms, it didn't cancel out that kinetic energy, it released that stored energy from the atom.

 

[Michael Mozina]

This is simply false. Whether or not potential energy is negative depends entirely upon where your zero reference is, which in Newtonian physics is arbitrary. But if the potential is unbounded at the lower end (which is the case for gravity), then you cannot define a zero such that it cannot go negative. But since you can't do math, and don't know why there's a negative sign in that potential, I guess it's not surprising that you don't understand why.

You know, it's these statements that really tick me off. I understand the math just fine which I why I know your statements are false. It is you that do not seem to have a grasp of the actual physical processes that your mathematical equations relate to. You guys are *so* fixated *only* on the math side, that you utterly ignore the physics part entirely. The energy is *kinetic*. It can't be "negative' because all mass exists or it doesn't and it's moving (or not) and conveying positive kinetic energy (or not). It cannot be "negative" because it's simple kinetic energy. Even at the level of particle physics, neutrinos and photons convey kinetic energy. There is a positive amount of kinetic energy in the system that relates to the particles in motion that distribute this energy. There is no way the universe can have zero energy or we could not even have this conversation. You're lost in the math, and oblivious to the physics.

 

[Michael Mozina]

OK, stay with me on this one. The sun formed through the action of gravity on a cloud of dust and gas. Gravitational forces then facilitate nuclear reactions, which then release energy. But you know that the energy is being released by the sun -- not created. It is already there in the binding energy of the atoms involved in fusion. That energy and those atoms got there when those atoms were formed from the "positive" energy of the early universe. That "positive" energy used to create those atoms and binding energy were balanced by the "negative" gravitational energy caused by the expanding universe as stuff spread apart. That's not hard to understand, regardless of whether the total energy of the universe is some positive number of joules or zero. However, let the physicists here clean up my act on this one, if my explanation is lacking or flawed.

Let me try that two bomb analogy one more time. We could put them together and *call* it a "zero" energy state. We can add energy and move them apart a distance and add energy to the system. If we let them go, the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. There is however energy inside the mass of the objects themselves that we can release at any time. That too is a form of 'energy' it is necessarily non negative, and non zero. We can then set them off and release that "stored energy" to verify that there was never really 'zero' energy in our system, we just chose that "zero" as a handy reference point. In reality however, even the mass has energy, and it is a "form of" energy that can be converted back into other forms of energy. Even though we can pick a zero arbitrarily, there are other physical factors at play and physical energy in matter itself.

The easiest and best way I can think to explain this is in terms of kinetic energy. Our universe is filled with kinetic energy which keeps the Earth from falling into the sun, and the sun from falling into the core of the galaxy. Even light and neutrinos all convey positive kinetic energy to other objects. The only thing that the conservations laws actually tell us is that whatever amount of total energy exists in the universe today it is not zero and it cannot be negative. It is simply kinetic energy and there is plenty of it in our universe.

 

[temporalillusion]

This statement doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't the Earth then just fall into the sun?

But that's exactly what it is doing. An orbit is falling is it not? Just falling around, not directly into. There's no energy constantly being expended to hold the earth up.

You say that you can see and feel energy so the energy of the universe can't be zero, you understand that they're saying the net energy is zero right?

Take entropy as an analogy.. entropy always increases, but it is allowed to decrease locally as long as it increases elsewhere right?

Same kind of thing, energy can be positive in some places, as long as its offset by negative energy elsewhere, so the sum total of all the energy in the observable universe is zero.

 

[Michael Mozina]

But that's exactly what it is doing. An orbit is falling is it not? Just falling around, not directly into. There's no energy constantly being expended to hold the earth up.

There was kinetic energy put into the Earth to get it into this position to begin with. It has all the momentum it needs, but that momentum is *kinetic energy*.

You say that you can see and feel energy so the energy of the universe can't be zero, you understand that they're saying the net energy is zero right?

In this case it doesn't matter if you're talking net or gross energy. There is a net surplus of kinetic energy in this universe.

Same kind of thing, energy can be positive in some places, as long as its offset by negative energy elsewhere, so the sum total of all the energy in the observable universe is zero.

The energy in the universe is kinetic in nature. What is "negative energy"? Don't say "gravity" because gravity is not "negative energy". You can have *potential energy* thanks to gravity and distance, but that is simply another form of energy that can easily be converted back into kinetic energy.

That bomb analogy is the best example I can think of to demonstrate that a mass object does not have "zero" energy, even if it wasn't moving in relationship to anything else. The atoms in the device have energy and they can release that energy at at time. It is not that we have "zero" energy even with no kinetic energy due to movement of mass objects. Even the mass is itself composed *of energy*.

 

[temporalillusion]

There was kinetic energy put into the Earth to get it into this position to begin with. It has all the momentum it needs, but that momentum is *kinetic energy*.

Sure but the kinetic energy isn't what is holding it up there, it's falling. If it wasn't moving it would fall in without any help. It takes "negative energy" to bring the earth and the sun together (as opposed to positive energy to bring two like charges together).

In this case it doesn't matter if you're talking net or gross energy. There is a net surplus of kinetic energy in this universe.

Based on what? Where did the energy come from? They've supported the net zero energy with GR, you'll have to support surplus kinetic energy with something as comprehensive and well supported.

The energy in the universe is kinetic in nature. What is "negative energy"? Don't say "gravity" because gravity is not "negative energy". You can have *potential energy* thanks to gravity and distance, but that is simply another form of energy that can easily be converted back into kinetic energy.

Semantics? Does it matter if you call it potential energy or call flat space zero and a gravity well negative energy? The result is the same, if you want to pull something out of a well you have to give it positive energy.

That bomb analogy is the best example I can think of to demonstrate that a mass object does not have "zero" energy, even if it wasn't moving in relationship to anything else.

Who claimed that a mass object has zero energy? No one.

 

[Skwinty]

Zero Energy Universe

Sorry to drag up "Null Physics", but wasn't one of the tenets of null physics the fact that the universe sums to zero.

 

[derekmcd]

Hi again Michael,

Not sure if you challenged me on Ari B's paper. Honestly, I don't wish to dig through this thread to find it.

I would like to present you with a simple, laboratory experiment that describes negative energy.

Let's use a rubberband. Place this rubberband between your two fingers and stretch it. How much you stretch it is irrelevant. The work you applied to stretching this rubberband is kinetic energy. Now, when you are holding this rubberband, it also has potential energy. The potential energy is the stored energy that wants to snap the rubberband back to its original shape.

I believe we all agree that the kinetic energy applied to the rubberband to make it stretch can be considered 'positive' energy. We applied a force to the rubberband. We have added energy to a closed system.

It would seem that your conundrum is defining the potential energy. I think it is simple, basic physics. Let go of the rubberband and let it return to its natural shape. Should we also consider that a positive energy? I think not. If both the kinetic energy and potential energy are positive, then we have some serious issues. We are creating free, unlimited energy. If I stretch and release my rubberband, I am creating energy for free.

The laws of conservation demand that one of the two energy sources be considered negative. If you can explain it a different way, I'd love to hear it.

 

[Skwinty]

Violation of Conservation of Energy in an expanding space

Baryshev in "Expanding Space: The root of conceptual problems of the cosmological Physics" link posted earlier.

"The problem of the absence of a true EMT for gravity field in cosmology appears as the violation of energy conservation"

 

[Ziggurat]

This statement doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't the Earth then just fall into the sun?

Dear oh dear. You don't know? Well, first, angular momentum and linear momentum aren't the same thing (you can have one be zero while the other is not), and second, globally vanishing momentum doesn't mean locally vanishing momentum, of either kind.

But the initial energy state is all that needs to be conserved. It can be any *positive* number.

Your insistence that it must be positive is without any basis. There is nothing wrong with negative potential energies.

I think it's outrageous to look at any of this in terms of "freshman physics"

When you master freshman physics, we can move on to more advanced topics. But right now, that's the level at which your comprehension is failing. Potential energies can be negative. This is indeed a point which gets drilled into freshmen.

You can take all movement out of the system and all energy out of the system and achieve a zero state, but in no way can you achieve a "negative energy" state. You might reach zero at best case.

The gravitational potential energy of two point masses interacting with each other is lowest when their separation is zero. Now, if we assign that as our zero potential energy state, what's the potential energy for any nonzero separation? Why, it's infinite, for ALL nonzero r. Do the path integral if you don't believe me. The ONLY way around that is to assign some nonzero r as our zero potential. In which case, there will always be r's where the potential is negative.

No, I did not. It is "positive" kinetic energy that I can feel on my skin in the morning when I feel the sun hit my face. There is heat coming from the sun that is energy in motion.

All that tells you is about the sign of the change in energy. It tells you nothing about its absolute value. How could it? In Newtonian physics, its absolute value has no meaning.

In physical motion scenarios, the energy is kinetic and it is positive.

Potential energy is not kinetic energy. You had problems comprehending this with magnetic fields too, even though in that case the potential energy was positive.

You're simply playing with an arbitrary starting point.

No ****, Sherlock. That's rather the whole point: where you set your zero in Newtonian physics is completely arbitrary.

It doesn't change the nature of the kinetic energy and the bottom of the swing.

I never said it did.

It will still have a "positive" affect on anything it might hit at that point in the swing.

If I go from U=5 J and KE=0 to U=3 J and KE=2 J, you're OK. But for some reason, you can't wrap your head around the idea of going from U=0 and K=0 to U=-2 J and KE=2 J. Still gots me some positive kinetic energy there.

The energy is kinetic in nature, and there's always kinetic energy in the system.

No. At the top of the swing, there is no kinetic energy. Kinetic energy and potential energy are not the same thing. Are you really that confused about physics that you can't recognize the difference?

You know, it's these statements that really tick me off. I understand the math just fine

Then prove it. F=-dU/dt. If F=-1/r² (an attractive potential), what is U?

The energy is *kinetic*.

We've been through this before. You are wrong. I've even given you examples of cases with magnetic fields where I gave you reasons (physical reasons) why the energy cannot be kinetic.

 

[Dancing David]

This statement doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't the Earth then just fall into the sun?



.

But we can't have evolved from monkeys, there are still monkeys!

 

[Dancing David]

In this case it doesn't matter if you're talking net or gross energy. There is a net surplus of kinetic energy in this universe.

Uh, sure , this contradicts something, what is it that you have been talking about, what was it, ... it will come to me in a moment...

conservation of something?

Oh I know, consistency of application!

Wear your belt in the cherry picker, you might fall out.

 

[sol invictus]

I think it's outrageous to look at any of this in terms of "freshman physics"

You're absolutely right, and Zig was wrong. This isn't freshman physics..... it's primary school physics. And you fail utterly.

Aren't you ashamed? You've got a website devoted to the sun. You even have papers about it (published, even - I shudder for the peer review system). And yet you don't know that gravitational potential energy is negative.

30 seconds of googling results in this,, this, and this.

Obvious common sense and basic physics - just let two objects fall towards ech other - indicates the same, and has been explained to you over and over.

High school calculus - integrate gravitational force over a distance, or find the potential whose gradient is the field - gives the same.

Not to understand this basic fact, with your background.... I honestly don't know how to interpret that, other than as a sign of plain old stupidity. But I have faith in people, generally - try to actually think about this, and maybe you'll be able to learn something.