Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Tim Thompson]

Confessions of an Ignorant Fool

I'm stating rather emphatically that you have yet to demonstrate that you can accurately estimate the amount of *BARYONIC* matter in galaxies.

How do you know that? Describe the methods used to derive the baryonic mass of a galaxy and explain why they are wrong.

If you accurately estimated the amount of baryonic matter in a galaxy, you would not require liberal amounts of SUSY gap filler. I don't have to either explain the methods that don't work properly or explain *why* they don't work properly, ...

Congratulations on your ability to finally and openly admit that you are an ignorant fool. This kind of admission is the first step in the healing process. Go towards the light, brother!

 

[Ziggurat]

It demonstrates that gravity is attractive

No. It demonstrates that things fall towards the earth. It says nothing about other objects attracting each other. Which, let's face it, is complete nonsense. If Newton is to be believed, apples should fall towards other apples, but clearly they don't. How absurd can you get? Utter nonsense, the lot of it. Why should anyone believe Newton?

That would be a lame concept since you would have to assume Earth was unique

And Michael stumbles upon one of the foundational principles of modern cosmology: the invariance of the laws of physics. Baby steps, Michael, baby steps.

Why should I believe that mother natures changes it's stripes at the edge of our solar system?

Boy did you miss the point. It's kind of hard to fit a solar system inside your lab, Michael.

Quarks are simply "unstable'' and revert to other (known and identifiable) forms of matter.

You really don't understand quarks, do you?

 

[Michael Mozina]

I am talking about SOHO, STEREO and TRACE satellite images.
They have telescopes (many telescopes even on Earth are CCD detectors) and the appropriate filters.

The point here is that only in the last 10 years have we even had the technology to see the surface of the sun, and even that technology is still "pretty new". None of you seem particularly competent for instance at explaining RD images. You've actually done a better job than most folks I've met but you only identified one cause effect relationship in the image (flying stuff came from the CME) and you still have "problems" related to your ideas about "bar graphs" and their relationship to such images. Kosovichev's heliosiesmology data is less than five years old. The technologies to be able to 'see' under the surface have only been around a relatively short time, and understanding these images and these data sets takes time and effort.

But I am glad that you know that this is only your humble opinion.

You'll notice I left out the "H" in IMO.

It is a pity that the actual physics says that you are incorrect, e.g the optical depth of the photosphere means that you can only see a few hundred kilometers into it (this varies with wavelength).

You folks have a really hard time distinguishing between 'actual physics' (as in real experimental physics with real control mechanisms) and "point at the sky and make claims" physics where you simply "make it up" as you go. Show me from a physical experiment here on Earth that an extremely light, mostly hydrogen and helium plasma, will block *ALL* 171A light in a few hundred kilometers.

I asked this in another thread but it is now appropriate here:
First asked 22 July 2009
Michael Mozina:
Your assertion is that images taken in the the 171A pass band of the TRACE instrument can see 4800 kilometers into the Sun down to your hypothetical, thermodynamically impossible iron surface/crust.
Images taken in the the visible light pass band of the TRACE instrument will show only the photosphere.

That is simply not true. It's like claiming that the Earth's atmosphere is "optically opaque' to all wavelengths of light (because you say so) and therefore we could never see light from lightning in the Earth's atmosphere. We can clearly see lightning in the Earth's atmosphere, and we can obviously see discharges in the solar atmosphere too.

The physics tells us that this is wrong since the optical depth of the photosphere is too low to allow this (around 500 kilometers from memory).

Let's just assume for a moment that we can see to *SOME* depth below the photosphere in 171A. All we're really arguing about here is *HOW FAR*, not *IF* we can observe these wavelengths inside the photosphere.

Assuming that any of these discharges occur *under* the photosphere, we may even see "white light" evidence to support that idea, correct?

An effect of your assertion would be that if images are taken of the same event at the same time in the 171A pass band and in visible light then the surface seen in the images will move by 4800 kilometers.

What to you mean by "move"? If we are looking straight down at an active region in SOHO images, how would you determine the z-axis component?

For an image of the entire Sun, the diameter will change by about 0.7%. The TRACE instrument uses a 1024 by 1024 CCD detector. Thus the 2 images will differ by about 7 pixels, i.e. the Sun will shrink by ~3 pixels on all sides between a visible light image and a 171A pass band image.

The effect will be larger for events on the limb of the Sun.

Three pixels is pretty tough to pick out, particularly since the iron along the surface is clearly in motion and we can observe mass flows even in the original images all along the surface. They coronal loops carry this material high into the corona even by my estimations, so there is no "clear" border that might be obviously visible. If you look at a limb images in 195A or 171A, there in no 'clear" border that ends at a specific pixel. The materials being ionized in the loop flow up and down the coronal loops and that movement of mass creates blurry edges, not sharp delineations at the limb. Parts of the loops should

These effects would be quite easy to see

Your notion of "easy" is "misguided" or at least oversimplified. Its not the clear delineation you seem to imagine due to the mass flows up and down the loops.

There is an unclear crossing of the 171A "surface" at the bottom and it does appear below the white light surface (photosphere). But that still means that your iron surface pokes up onto the photosphere at least one point.

I'm sure the mass flows in the coronal loops come up through the photosphere on a regular basis. That is perfectly logical and it was true in Birkeland's experiments too. Even though his loops originated at "bumps' o the surface of his metallic sphere, they often rose well above the sphere, high into the atmosphere around the sphere just like the image on my website that compares his loops the x-ray images from Yohkoh.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Congratulations on your ability to finally and openly admit that you are an ignorant fool.

Whereas you will not admit that you are equally ignorant of the nature of the material that you can't find in these galaxies?

This kind of admission is the first step in the healing process. Go towards the light, brother!

Tim, eventually you will come out of the "dark" ages and your belief in "dark' invisible things, and you will come into the light of empirical physics. It's only a matter of time. Did you look at the image I cited yet?

FYI, the screen capture process is tedious and the capture programs I've downloaded won't let me save the image (evidently I have to buy the full version), but I will post these images once I can save them to some format.

 

[Michael Mozina]

No. It demonstrates that things fall towards the earth. It says nothing about other objects attracting each other. Which, let's face it, is complete nonsense. If Newton is to be believed, apples should fall towards other apples, but clearly they don't. How absurd can you get? Utter nonsense, the lot of it. Why should anyone believe Newton?

Actually, we can measure the attraction of objects to other objects, or if you prefer we can observe the bending of space time around two objects made of matter.

And Michael stumbles upon one of the foundational principles of modern cosmology: the invariance of the laws of physics. Baby steps, Michael, baby steps.

Editorialize much?

Boy did you miss the point. It's kind of hard to fit a solar system inside your lab, Michael.

Birkeland have very few difficulties simulating a solar system in his lab.

You really don't understand quarks, do you?

And you do?

I do understand that quarks are an important part of the standard particle physics model and they have been been observed and verified by multiple sources to emit particles from their transition process in controlled experimentation. That's a lot more than can be said for dark energy, inflation or SUSY particles.

 

[Ziggurat]

Actually, we can measure the attraction of objects to other objects

Newton couldn't. So obviously, he had no justification for proposing something he could never test.

Birkeland have very few difficulties simulating a solar system in his lab.

Really? He got gravitational orbits in his lab? Quite the trick, that. Since you've got such a great Birkeland archive, can you point me to a source detailing how he pulled off that amazing feat?

And you do? [qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/images/smilies/confused.gif[/qimg]

Enough to know that quarks don't revert to anything else.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Newton couldn't. So obviously, he had no justification for proposing something he could never test.

We can, so your point is moot.

Enough to know that quarks don't revert to anything else.

What *exactly* do they do then?

 

[Ziggurat]

We can, so your point is moot.

But Newton couldn't, and he couldn't know that we would be able to. So why did anyone take him seriously? Why should anyone at that time have taken him seriously? He never performed a single controlled experiment to test his theory, after all. Nobody at the time did. By your standards, they were all fools to have accepted such a revolutionary theory with no experimental confirmation.

What *exactly* do they do then?

When you pull quarks apart, they create new quarks. The quarks you pulled apart are still there. Or so the particle physicists tell us. Since they can't actually observe any quarks, it's all just a bunch of hand-waving.

 

[Dancing David]

If you accurately estimated the amount of baryonic matter in a galaxy, you would not require liberal amounts of SUSY gap filler.



I don't have to either explain the methods that don't work properly or explain *why* they don't work properly, I simply note they the don't work properly, hence your reliance upon hypothetical particles with make-believe, ad hoc properties.

[/lurk]
Oook?
[lurk]

 

[DeiRenDopa]

But Newton couldn't, and he couldn't know that we would be able to. So why did anyone take him seriously? Why should anyone at that time have taken him seriously? He never performed a single controlled experiment to test his theory, after all. Nobody at the time did. By your standards, they were all fools to have accepted such a revolutionary theory with no experimental confirmation.

[...]

The history is worth detailing to the next level, if only to illustrate just how sterile MM's view of science is.

Newton died in 1727, several years before Cavendish was born.

Cavendish did his 'density of the Earth' experiments in 1797 and 1798, and although these can be used to estimate G, the constant itself was not published for another ~100 years (I'm not 100% sure of this). AFAIK, the Cavendish experiment was the first to actually measure the mutual attraction of two (local) masses; by MM's standards, Newton's crazy, not-*EMPIRICALLY*-tested-in-the-lab ideas would have been long forgotten when it would have become technologically feasible to do so (or not; I suspect very little of the science of Newton's day would have passed MM's muster, so technological progress would have been very much slower ...).

Of course, precision lab tests of the (local) Newtonian law (i.e. constraining deviation of the exponent from 2) were not done until the second half of the 20th century.

 

[Tubbythin]

If you accurately estimated the amount of baryonic matter in a galaxy, you would not require liberal amounts of SUSY gap filler.

That's a nice circular argument you have there Michael.

 

[Tubbythin]

Good, we share a few things in common.

I'm guessing from the smilie that you're intentionally taking my comment the wrong way.

Well, evidently there are a few things we do not agree on too. IMO you could only get such "evidence" from controlled experimentation, and that has simply hasn't been confirmed in any way shape or form.

We would have to a agree on a definition of "controlled experimentation" before I could agree or disagree with the above. That doesn't seem likely.

What is it? IMO that part of standard theory is by far the weakest part of the whole theory. There is nothing known to humanity that acts like 'inflation'.

Loosely, a flat spacetime and a solution to the horizon problem. I'm sure others could explain more recent observations better than I could though.

I don't. I simply don't share your faith in these mythical entities.

In my opinion you do. Rather than trying to understand something complicated you just resort to insults and daft fictional creatures.

Well, I am actually sorry that I got under your skin and ruffled your feathers in this discussion. I guess you took some of my criticisms personally or something along those lines.

Not really. But its infuriating when you're tying to have a grown up conversation and some starts talking about pixies, deities, myths etc.

I regret that, but have to be honest about my position and sometimes that isn't always 'popular'. I've actually come to respect your position on the neutrino discussion. You actually have made me put some effort into that issue. That's actually rather unusual to be honest. Most folks around here simply bore me to tears. It's a rare scenario where someone actually makes a valid point from the perspective of physics, and I appreciate your input in that part of our discussion.

Personally I think others have made far more illuminating and often far more interesting comments than I have.

I simply do not share your position on the non-baryonic part of the DM papers. While I certainly do accept that neutrinos exist in nature, to the best of my knowledge that is the rare exception to an otherwise 'baryonic" universe.

You do realise free electron are also "non-baryonic" don't you?

You are welcome to 'explain' DM theories with MACHO and neutrino forms of "dark matter", but IMO the whole SUSY thing is pure hype.

But that's the whole point (or a large part of it anyway). We can't explain DM theories with MACHOs or neutrinos (at least not the ones that are currently part of the Standard model). That's why "we've" turned to more exotic possibilities. And rather than taking a wild stab in the dark, physicists have looked at the possible extensions of the Standard model to see what would fit the observational data. Hence we have several candidates: SUSY particles, axions heavy neutrinos, probably one or two things I'm ignorant of. Whether dark matter is one of these, a combination of these or something else... who knows? But simply refusing to acknowledge that we might well need something beyond the cosy standard model we have at the minute to explain our observations actually amounts to ignoring the last 100 years or so of lab based study of "normal matter".

 

[Steve]

Michael Mozina,

As layman with an interest but no formal eduaction in cosmolgy I have been following this thread and the related threads (electric universe, etc.) with much interest. I have not posted until now. I have learned much from posters such as DeiRenDopa, Ziggurat, Tim Thompson, Reality Check, sol invictus, and many others who have contributed real scientific knowledge in their posts. It seems that most of the things you have posted rely heavily on your opinions of how things look to you in photographs, etc. At the conclusion of last nights episode of ScienceNow on PBS Neil Degrasse Tyson gave an excellent summary of why relying on your senses does not make for good science. I have attached a link below. I would highly recommend that you watch, and listen, and consider the implications, before you post any more opinions of what things "look like".

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/cosmic/2009/07/coming-to-our-senses.html

 

[Reality Check]

Let's just assume for a moment that we can see to *SOME* depth below the photosphere in 171A. All we're really arguing about here is *HOW FAR*, not *IF* we can observe these wavelengths inside the photosphere.

At last ypou understand something - the optical depth of the photosphere means that we can see *SOME* depth. Now give us the optical depth of the photosphere at 171A.

Assuming that any of these discharges occur *under* the photosphere, we may even see "white light" evidence to support that idea, correct?

Yes, e.g. giganic holes blowin in the photosphere

What to you mean by "move"? If we are looking straight down at an active region in SOHO images, how would you determine the z-axis component?

Change position belteen the images.

Three pixels is pretty tough to pick out, particularly since the iron along the surface is clearly in motion and we can observe mass flows even in the original images all along the surface. They coronal loops carry this material high into the corona even by my estimations, so there is no "clear" border that might be obviously visible. If you look at a limb images in 195A or 171A, there in no 'clear" border that ends at a specific pixel. The materials being ionized in the loop flow up and down the coronal loops and that movement of mass creates blurry edges, not sharp delineations at the limb. Parts of the loops should

You missed out the same in time bit. Unless you are going to assert that your hypothetical, thermodiynamically impossible iron surface/crustoved 100's of kilometers per few minutes (the time to change a filter and take an image).

I'm sure the mass flows in the coronal loops come up through the photosphere on a regular basis. That is perfectly logical and it was true in Birkeland's experiments too. Even though his loops originated at "bumps' o the surface of his metallic sphere, they often rose well above the sphere, high into the atmosphere around the sphere just like the image on my website that compares his loops the x-ray images from Yohkoh.

You mean the picture on your web site that compares the picture (figure 247a) that Birkeland uses in an analogy to Saturn's rings (as he explicitly states in his book) in visible light to the X-ray image from Yohkoh of the Sun.

Originally Posted by Birkeland
It is by powerful magnetisation of the magnetisable globe that the phenomenon answering to Saturn's rings is produced. During this process, polar radiation and disruptive discharges at the equator such as that shown in fig. 247a (which happens to be a unipolar discharge) [this is MM's picture of the "loops"] may also occur, if the current intensity of discharge is great. If the magnetisation of the globe be reduced (or the tension of the discharge increased) gradually, the luminous ring round the globe will be reduced to a minimum size, after which another equatorial ring is developed and expands rapidly (Fig 247 b).

This paragraph is in a chapter on the Sun. Birkeland is about to speculate that the Sun has a ring as in the next figure (247b).

 

[Michael Mozina]

Michael Mozina,

As layman with an interest but no formal eduaction in cosmolgy I have been following this thread and the related threads (electric universe, etc.) with much interest. I have not posted until now. I have learned much from posters such as DeiRenDopa, Ziggurat, Tim Thompson, Reality Check, sol invictus, and many others who have contributed real scientific knowledge in their posts. It seems that most of the things you have posted rely heavily on your opinions of how things look to you in photographs, etc. At the conclusion of last nights episode of ScienceNow on PBS Neil Degrasse Tyson gave an excellent summary of why relying on your senses does not make for good science. I have attached a link below. I would highly recommend that you watch, and listen, and consider the implications, before you post any more opinions of what things "look like".

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/cosmic/2009/07/coming-to-our-senses.html

Thanks for the link. It was a relatively short video and I watched it a couple of times. I usually like Neil's TV specials by the way.

I guess my comment to this video is that sure, our senses *can be* unreliable, but they are all we have to "measure" things with in the first place. They can also be highly reliable, or we would not have scientific progress at all.

Neil talked about how the most successful sciences do not depend on the genetics of the individual taking the measurements, but even that notion is rather a limited concept since we all depend on our genetics for our sight, our hearing, our sense of smell etc. None of us can be sure we see exactly the same colors when we look at rainbow, or even that we observe things in the same way.

We also have numerous technologies (like Yohkoh and SOHO) that allow us to "see" on wavelengths that our human genetics is incapable of seeing directly so that part of his criticism was somewhat shortsighted IMO.

All in all, I hear what you're saying about the fact that I rely upon my senses, but who does not? Science is often about "pattern recognition" and recognition of things that we have seen before. I can't deny the fact I can observe something "rigid" under the photosphere in Kosovichev's video. That pattern is there, it's persistent and it's not my imagination. Even Kosovichev acknowledges that persistent feature. It must have a logical and valid scientific explanation of some kind. Likewise I see persistent patterns in the RD images. They are certainly there. Others can see them too. Again, there must be a logical explanation for these persistent patterns.

Sure, there may be other "explanations", other 'interpretations' that could be equally or more valid than the ones that I came up with. Then again, in four years of these discussions, what I've learned is that none of these folks want to actually discuss these images to any degree. They don't even seem to understand anything about the technologies that made these images possible. It's therefore impossible to me to know that the explanations I have come up with are incorrect or invalid. It is rather telling IMO that most folks do not even mention or talk about the persistent features in these images, even when I point them out to them. Ignoring that data is not a valid scientific "answer' IMO, it simply suggests to me that they can't and won't deal with these images.

Now sure, it's entirely possible that my personal opinions are not valid. That however is what makes "empirical physics" and "controlled testing" so scientifically important. There could be many reasons why a plasma universe accelerates. It cannot however be caused by "dark energy" because no such thing exists in nature or has ever been show to have any effect on anything in nature. Pointing to the sky with a math formula related to "dark energy" is therefore irrational IMO. It's no better than a religious opinion with some math attached to the idea. If however you, they or anyone could demonstrate that DE actually has some effect on plasma in lab, then the notion that it might cause the acceleration of a plasma universe might make sense. Without that empirical support, it's no better than a religion. The math isn't going to make "dark energy" become any more real, nor provide evidence that DM can cause acceleration. This IMO is why the requirement of *QUALIFYING* ideas in a lab is so critically important. It allows us to observe cause/effect relationships and go beyond individual opinions.

I must say that the notion that we can't trust what we observe is a bit misleading IMO. The only way to make an "observation" in any field of science is with our eyes. The only way to compare different theories is to visually check them out. Our senses alone could be deceived, but often times they are right on the money and they are highly accurate. I get behind the wheel of my care every day and I always get where I'm going. I trust my eyesight to provide me with useful information about the world around me. I recognize many patterns in nature and do so with great reliability.

The only way IMO to distinguish between 'good' ideas (that work in real life) and 'bad ideas' (one's that don't show up in a lab) is to put the theory to the test in real life experiment with real control mechanisms. In that way we can discern actual cause/effect relationships that go beyond a single opinion.

There are a billion possible things that might have some influence on our universe that I can't rule out. For instance "invisible energy" might have some effect on nature. "Magic energy" might have some effect on nature. "Dark energy" might have some effect on nature. None of these things qualifies as a "scientific theory" however unless someone can *DEMONSTRATE* they do have an effect on nature in real experiments.

I liked the video, but I'm afraid I don't think it applies here well at all. Guth for instance simply "made up" inflation in his head, based on his genetic dispositions (including his reliance upon math, etc). I should not be required to have "faith" in his predispositions. While I have no problem with his mathematical presentation, I also have no evidence that inflation ever existed or had the effect that he claims. How do we move beyond "opinions' if not via empirical experimentation and relying upon our eyesight to see the results?

 

[Ziggurat]

Neil talked about how the most successful sciences do not depend on the genetics of the individual taking the measurements, but even that notion is rather a limited concept since we all depend on our genetics for our sight, our hearing, our sense of smell etc. None of us can be sure we see exactly the same colors when we look at rainbow, or even that we observe things in the same way.

Which is why it's better to quantify things. The line between, say, green and yellow-green may be a little fuzzy, but if you measure a wavelength, there's no ambiguity. Quantification is what allows us to construct elaborate yet accurate physical theories, something that cannot be done with just our senses.

But you don't like to quantify things, do you, Michael?

 

[Michael Mozina]

We would have to a agree on a definition of "controlled experimentation" before I could agree or disagree with the above. That doesn't seem likely.

Well, my definition is no different than the definition used in all fields of science.
http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html
II. Testing hypotheses

As just stated, experimental tests may lead either to the confirmation of the hypothesis, or to the ruling out of the hypothesis. The scientific method requires that an hypothesis be ruled out or modified if its predictions are clearly and repeatedly incompatible with experimental tests.......

III. Common Mistakes in Applying the Scientific Method

As stated earlier, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of the scientist's bias on the outcome of an experiment. That is, when testing an hypothesis or a theory, the scientist may have a preference for one outcome or another, and it is important that this preference not bias the results or their interpretation. The most fundamental error is to mistake the hypothesis for an explanation of a phenomenon, without performing experimental tests. Sometimes "common sense" and "logic" tempt us into believing that no test is needed. There are numerous examples of this, dating from the Greek philosophers to the present day.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080923-dark-flows.html

*FAIL*

Loosely, a flat spacetime and a solution to the horizon problem. I'm sure others could explain more recent observations better than I could though.

How about the dark flows? Where were they "predicted" to exist in inflation theory. Why wouldn't these flows blow way inflation theory since inflation theory predicts a homogeneous layout of matter at large scales?

Let's go back to that definition for a second:

Another common mistake is to ignore or rule out data which do not support the hypothesis. Ideally, the experimenter is open to the possibility that the hypothesis is correct or incorrect. Sometimes, however, a scientist may have a strong belief that the hypothesis is true (or false), or feels internal or external pressure to get a specific result. In that case, there may be a psychological tendency to find "something wrong", such as systematic effects, with data which do not support the scientist's expectations, while data which do agree with those expectations may not be checked as carefully. The lesson is that all data must be handled in the same way.

Why shouldn't we now rule out inflation?

In my opinion you do. Rather than trying to understand something complicated you just resort to insults and daft fictional creatures.

The theory of inflation isn't actually all that complicated. It has simply been falsified by observation and it was never physically shown to exist or have any effect on anything in the first place. What else should I call it?

Not really. But its infuriating when you're tying to have a grown up conversation and some starts talking about pixies, deities, myths etc.

You should be on this side of the debate awhile and listen to all the personal attacks that come your way. It's not like you folks are exactly "fair' in your criticisms, or that your criticisms are directed at ideas and theories.

Personally I think others have made far more illuminating and often far more interesting comments than I have.

Well, not IMO. You've made me do more reading than anyone else here. Derek has kept me busy too, but most of these folks aren't even attempting to communicate at the level of science.

You do realise free electron are also "non-baryonic" don't you?

Ya, but they aren't "invisible" and they emit light.

But that's the whole point (or a large part of it anyway). We can't explain DM theories with MACHOs or neutrinos (at least not the ones that are currently part of the Standard model). That's why "we've" turned to more exotic possibilities.

Why didn't you just scrap your galaxy mass estimation techniques and start over? Remember that part about not accepting evidence that blows away the theory?

And rather than taking a wild stab in the dark, physicists have looked at the possible extensions of the Standard model to see what would fit the observational data. Hence we have several candidates: SUSY particles, axions heavy neutrinos, probably one or two things I'm ignorant of.

But none of these things have been independently confirmed to exist in nature. No 'properties' of these particles has been observed. Any attempt to simply slap on "properties" to them in an ad hoc manner is simply unacceptable. You can't go around just "making up" properties so that things fit properly into your otherwise falsified theory about galaxy mass estimation techniques. You are making it impossible to falsify the theory in that manner.

Whether dark matter is one of these, a combination of these or something else... who knows?

Who knows if such particles even exist? Aren't you just grasping at straws now instead of letting a falsified theory die a natural scientific death?

But simply refusing to acknowledge that we might well need something beyond the cosy standard model we have at the minute to explain our observations actually amounts to ignoring the last 100 years or so of lab based study of "normal matter".

I disagree. I'm relying on the fact that 100 years of so of lab based study has turned up no evidence or any need for any new forms of exotic particles. Sure, anything is "possible", but how "probable" is it that new exotic forms of matter exist in nature? It seems a lot more likely to me that mass estimates are simply wrong and that theory should die a natural death.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Which is why it's better to quantify things. The line between, say, green and yellow-green may be a little fuzzy, but if you measure a wavelength, there's no ambiguity.

How did you intend to "measure" anything or quantify anything without sight and without observation? How would you know different colors even exist if not because of our senses? How would you know there was any difference between them if not for our senses?

Quantification is what allows us to construct elaborate yet accurate physical theories, something that cannot be done with just our senses.

You wouldn't get very far in trying to quantify any theory without the ability to see and measure things with your senses.

But you don't like to quantify things, do you, Michael?

Sure I do. I just see no need to "quantify" the number of pixies that fit on the head of pin.

 

[Ziggurat]

How did you intend to "measure" anything or quantify anything without sight and without observation?

I don't need to see in order to quantify, and seeing isn't the same thing as quantifying. I may use my eyes to read the number off a spectrometer (though if I didn't, other methods of transmitting that info are possible), but the spectrometer is doing the quantifying, not my eyes, and the numbers which come from the spectrometer are ultimately far more meaningful than what color the light looks like to my eyes. Apparently this is a hard reality for you to grasp, what with your aversion to numbers.

 

[Reality Check]

Let's go back to that definition for a second:

Another common mistake is to ignore or rule out data which do not support the hypothesis. Ideally, the experimenter is open to the possibility that the hypothesis is correct or incorrect. Sometimes, however, a scientist may have a strong belief that the hypothesis is true (or false), or feels internal or external pressure to get a specific result. In that case, there may be a psychological tendency to find "something wrong", such as systematic effects, with data which do not support the scientist's expectations, while data which do agree with those expectations may not be checked as carefully. The lesson is that all data must be handled in the same way.

Why shouldn't we now rule out inflation?

Could the reason be that dark flow is not (yet) data which does not support the hypothesis?

1. Dark flow is a single statistical analysis of the three year WMAP data. Experimental data or statistical analysis of data are not accepted until they are repeated independently. That is the scientific requirement that results be reproducible. Th authors know this and that is why they are going onto analyze the five-year WMAP data (ideally it should be another group doing this).
2. Dark flow places a limit on the parameters of inflation. That limit when measured accurately may rule out some inflationary theories. It may even rule out all inflationary theories. That is still to be determined.
   FYI: Guth's original inflationary theory has been joined by several other candiates.