Split Thread Michael Mozina's thread on Dark Matter, Inflation and Cosmology

[Tubbythin]

Er, no. It's a fallacy to *assume* that the authority figure is right only because he is a recognized authority on the topic.

It was you who said:

they are evidently clueless about what goes on in a vacuum at the level of kinetic energy and actual physics.

Qualifications or no qualifications, even if I hadn't been witness to your frequent gross misuses of science and the scientific method and even if I wasn't aware that you were essentially talking out your rear end from my own physics education I would still have be drawn to the conclusion that you were talking crap, precisely because you completely failed to support the statement with any evidence whatsoever.
The fact that you accused a well-known expert in one of the fields of subatomic physics of not having a clue about subatomic physics whilst, in posts not long prior to that, having giving us all ample evidence that you did not have a clue about subatomic physics just made your claim even more laughable.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Ditto on "dark energy". You observed "acceleration", not "dark energy".

So you do accept the observed acceleration? Now, acceleration requires energy and the energy causing the observed cosmic acceleration cannot be "seen" and is not well understood; hence, it's called dark. It's merely a label. Why is that such a problem for you? Your comment makes no sense.

 

[ben m]

Yes, I'd agree with that statement.

Great!

Fine, consider your math blatantly pilfered, and "God energy" is now your scientific/religious arch nemesis. How might we physically (empirically) tell the two "hypothesis" apart?

Perfectly fair question. So we have two hypotheses, one being:

a) "The Universe, which obeys GR, has a constant vacuum energy density whose magnitude is Lambda". One parameter.

and the other being

b) "God arranges all of the accelerations however he wants". Infinity parameters.

You know, science deals with that particular "choice" in every single question it has ever answered. We have (and reject) the "God did it" option in figuring out why the Earth orbits the Sun, what causes tides, why light diffracts, how big Mercury's core is, what happens inside B0 meson oscillations, etc. Nonetheless, "B0 mesons oscillate because of a two-weak-boson box diagram" is a better hypothesis than "B0 mesons oscillate because of God".

But anyway---you're not here, posting voluminously, to tell us that the Lambda hypothesis is dumb because its proponents ignore the God hypothesis. Are you? No, it sounds like you're telling us that we should prefer to have no hypothesis at all.

Let's put it another way. Lambda-CDM cosmology has an explicit prediction for the next most distant supernova. For example, if Lambda-CDM is true, then if we observe supernovae at z=1.8 (we currently have them at z=1.6) we expect its "magnitude" to be about 45.5. If the next batch of data finds them all at 40, or 50, then standard "dark energy" would be rejected. Are you aware of an alternative hypothesis that's coherent enough to predict the magnitude of z=1.8 supernovae? "God did it" makes no such prediction. (ETA: The "God did it" hypothesis is also unable to predict the z=1.6,z=1.5, z=1.4,z=1.3, z=1.2, z=1.1, and z=1.0, etc., values of the distance-luminosity relation.)

 

[Reality Check]

Outstanding questions for Michael Mozina

1. Can you give a citation to "Birkeland's very first rough calculation..."
   First asked 7 January 2010
2. Do you understand that there is an upper limit on the baryonic mass of 6%?
   First asked 7 January 2010
   Note that baryonic mass includes all the things you have mentioned, e.g. rocks, planets, electron, ions, plasma, black holes, etc.
3. Do you know that Alfven-Klein cosmology is invalid?
   First asked 8 January 2010
4. A couple of really simple physics questions for Michael Mozina on pressure.
   First asked 8 January 2010
   (but a continuation of the various displays of your inability to grasp the concept of negative pressure in other threads since April 2009)

 

[Reality Check]

What is wrong with the measurement of negative pressure in Casimir experiments

It's good to me if I had any doubt the effect was 'real'. Does it help your case in any way? If so, how?

The point is that the Cosimo effect is real and measured to be negative.
Positive pressure pushes things apart.
Controlled empirical experiments in labs here on Earth (your holy grail!) show that the Cosimo effect pulls things together. That is not positive pressure. Scientists call this negative pressure.

First asked 9 January 2010
Michael Moina,
Pick any of the controlled empirical experiments that are available in the literature on the classic Casimir effect. This is the negative pressure geometry (there are positive pressure geometries).
What is wrong with the measurement of negative pressure in these experiments?

All you have to do is show how the scientists actually measured that the Casimir force made the objects in the experiment move apart (positive pressure).

I expect that you will spout your usual nonsense, e.g. its the atoms left in the vacuum.

 

[Reality Check]

Of course it works in a vacuum because the carrier particle of kinetic energy in this case is the carrier particle of the EM field, not the atoms in the chamber! The "pressure" still effects all sides of the plates, just some sides more than others.

Just like in the wing analogy, that minus sign in your math formula is a "relative" pressure, not an absolute measurement of the overall pressure. The pressure is simply greater on one side of the plate and less on the other side.

This is where your ignorance of science shows MM. You are treating pressure as if it was a force. Pressure is not a force.

The force is simply greater on one side of the plate and less on the other side. This results on a net force that is away from the other plate. Calculate the pressure from the net force and you get a negative value of pressure, i.e. negative pressure.

If you could answer a couple of really simple physics questions for Michael Mozina on pressure (First asked 8 January 2010) then this physical fact would be become obvious.

 

[Reality Check]

One of Michael Mozina assertions that he keeps on repeating is that inflation just postdicts or that it is a curve fitting exercise.
This is of course how every scientific hypothesis starts. A hypothesis has to first explain existing observations. That means that it has to postdict or curve fit the existing data. What makes a hypothesis into a scientific theory is that it makes testable, falsifiable predictions.

So lets point out to MM once more that inflation makes such predictions , they have been tested and they have been found to be true.
See for example, The Greatest Story Ever Told -- 01 -- Before the Big Bang

But the last (important) thing that inflation predicts was so profound, because it wasn't yet observed when it was predicted. Quantum mechanics tells us that empty space isn't completely empty. It's full of particles (matter) and anti-particles (antimatter) that continuously get created, live for a brief while, meet back up together, and annihilate one another again. This happens over very short timescales, and gives rise to the Casimir effect.
When inflation occurs, these particle/antiparticle pairs are suddenly ripped apart across the Universe by the exponential expansion. Instead of space being truly uniform everywhere, there are slight fluctuations -- overdensities in some regions and underdensities in others -- that arise from these quantum effects in the inflating Universe. Inflation predicted what these fluctuations would look like in the 1980s, and these fluctuations were finally observed to the desired precision in 2003, with WMAP's measurement of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.
And all of this happened before the big bang ever took place. Was it for the first 10^-35 seconds of the Universe? Possibly, but it's also possible that the Universe existed for billions of years before inflation, or not at all. It's also conceivable that time didn't have the same meaning that it does now back then. Regardless of what happened, inflation prevents us from knowing right now; it wiped out any information about the Universe that existed before inflation!
So that's our starting point in the greatest story ever told. Inflation is the first thing we can really knowledgeably speak about, and it sets up all the conditions we need -- including a flat, uniform Universe with the right fluctuations -- to start our Universe off with a bang!

 

[DazzaD]

Yes, but you'll need to throw me a bone here and use it in some meaningful physical context, explain it's use, what it relates to, etc.

I've learned over the years that various individuals have slightly different viewpoints of how things started and prefer to frame things in their own way.

How about you explain your "creation" story for me and explain when and how inflation did it's thing, what the "vacuum" might apply to, what that stress energy tensor applies to, etc.

You might try something like:

In the beginning was the (hot/cold) lumpy thing that (did/did not) have mass in the form of (fill in the blank). The "vacuum" was (fill in blank) in relationship to said lumpy thing. Inflation came from (fill in blank) and did (fill in blank) to the (hot/cold) lumpy thing.....etc.

Maybe you would personally prefer to begin your tale with the "vacuum" itself. I really don't care. I just need you put something into context for me to give you a meaningful answer and understand what you are physically trying to suggest is going on with inflation, and how that applies to a negative pressure in a vacuum.

No.

My point in asking was to try to help you understand the concept of negative pressue, which you seem to out and out deny in any way, shape or form.

We may be getting a little mixed in all the questions that are being bandied about.

Here in this post, to be clear, I am trying to explain how the concept of a negative pressure makes sense on a cosmological scale, given the acceptance of general relativity:



http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/einstein/node8.html

This amounts to giving empty space an energy density equal to capitallambda and pressure equal to -capitallambda

The principle here is, as stated here:

http://super.colorado.edu/~michaele/Lambda/gr.html

that:

The added ingredient is that, besides density, pressure also contributes to the gravitational potential. This is a purely general relativistic effect. It is the fact that pressure also contributes to gravity that makes the inclusion of the cosmological constant interesting.

So the cosmological constant behaves gravitationally like matter and energy except that it has negative pressure. The net effect of a positive cosmological constant is then to create a repulsive gravitational force. This repulsion acts to expand the universe.


Apologies for simply cutting and pasting but I felt those pages did a good job of explaining the concept and it gives the lurkers a head start on where to look for more research on these topics.

And that is all before we get into the nitty gritty of what we mean by a vacuum in quantum physics

 

[ben m]

The added ingredient is that, besides density, pressure also contributes to the gravitational potential. This is a purely general relativistic effect. It is the fact that pressure also contributes to gravity that makes the inclusion of the cosmological constant interesting.

I don't know if this is "the" source of MM's trouble, but it's worth emphasizing: to understand the effect of "negative pressure" in cosmology, you do NOT ask "what is the pressure pushing on, and from what side". Not at all---unlike the Casimir effect's pressure, this pressure doesn't need to push on anything. Rather, simply by being an energy density, it is a source of curvature in GR (just like all energy densities: mass, kinetic energy, electric fields, etc.) and generates some of the curvature that everything else is moving around in.

It is not directly exerting forces on cosmological objects.

 

[Tubbythin]

I don't know if this is "the" source of MM's trouble, but it's worth emphasizing: to understand the effect of "negative pressure" in cosmology, you do NOT ask "what is the pressure pushing on, and from what side". Not at all---unlike the Casimir effect's pressure, this pressure doesn't need to push on anything. Rather, simply by being an energy density, it is a source of curvature in GR (just like all energy densities: mass, kinetic energy, electric fields, etc.) and generates some of the curvature that everything else is moving around in.

I think MM's trouble may be that the only type of pressure he knows of is gas pressure. He keeps trying to pose everything in such terms anyway.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Oh it can be very useful.

People can watch and see and learn what makes a scientific debate and what is evidence. They can see others asking those "stupid" questions they themselves are too afraid to ask.

They can learn to gauge the responses and learn that some people know a lot but find it hard to communicate it well, some people who dont know much can communicate well and so forth across the spectrum.

Yep, that sums it up nicely (and is pretty much what I'd concluded too).

It can be a very powerful learning tool, its just damn hard to implement formally and in a planned way!

Upon further reflection, and a re-read (well, re-skim) of some other threads here, it would seem that "damn hard" is rather an understatement!

Sometimes the key elements are presented, analysed, and addressed quickly and clearly, and after a page or two it just becomes robot-like repetition (at best).

Sometimes there's no discussion at all, just two (or more) parties talking past each other (and how informative is that!).

Sometimes there are so many things flying around it's just a crazy jumble (a Gish gallop on steroids, for example).

And so on.

Without a moderator (or team of mods) - in the sense of moderating the discussion - with a great deal of time, patience, and (above all) who is very familiar with the topic (in all its glorious variety), there's no way to tell, in advance, how any particular thread/topic will turn out ...

Thanks very much for your insights.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

There's a loose connection with the Moore_method^WP, a participatory pedagogy from which I learned point set topology (as taught by Carl Pixley and RH_Bing^WP) and still use to teach theory of computation. Learning to criticize and to accept criticism from peers is an important part of the Moore method, as is paying close attention to the back-and-forth even when lurking. (If we're going to discuss this topic further, we should probably take it to the Education forum.)

Thanks; and good suggestion (re continuing discussion elsewhere).

 

[Michael Mozina]

So you do accept the observed acceleration? Now, acceleration requires energy and the energy causing the observed cosmic acceleration cannot be "seen" and is not well understood; hence, it's called dark. It's merely a label. Why is that such a problem for you? Your comment makes no sense.

What we observe is a pattern of "acceleration". "Acceleration" already has a proper scientific term. It needs no other term to be scientifically "described" in an accurate manner.

This ties right back to my conversation with TBT too:

In a sense I suppose you are right. But we have hypothesese for what dark energy might actually be. We do not have hypothese for what "God energy" is.

We don't have a "hypothesis" for any new form of "energy". What's in name? If it doesn't matter what we call it, why not call it "God energy"? If so, how do we no empirically verify it's existence?

Do you see the problem here PS? Acceleration may in fact have a physical "cause", it has nothing whatsoever (as far as we know) have anything to do with 'dark energies'. That's like a religious person blaming something they can't explain on the devil. There is nothing "explained" by claiming that acceleration process is due to "dark energies". It may have nothing to do with with a "force", but be related to a "stretching" of our local "spacetime" in some sort of multiverse gravitational interactive process. It could be related to something well "known" like an expanding, all pervasive EM field. I have no possible way of knowing what "causes" that acceleration other than known forces of nature.

Claiming it is "caused by" something called "invisible/dark/magical energy does nothing to enhance our understanding of that expansion process, in fact it could be easily leading on us on an unnecessary wild goose chase, looking for something "exotic", when the answer is nothing of the sort.

When I start reading those articles that do not say "acceleration is real", but claim "dark energy is real", I want to scream. That is not what we observe. We do not observe "dark energy". We observe a pattern that suggests an accelerating universe, not "dark energy".

"Dark energy" is not an "explanation". It is a "made up label", just as in my example to TBT. It's not a "cause" of the acceleration because "dark energy" never "caused" even two atoms to accelerate in a controlled experiment, so why should I think it makes a whole universe of plasma suddenly "accelerate"?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Thanks.

No doubt MM sees it differently ... have you come across anyone else, here in this part of the JREF forum, who has similar views to MM's (in this respect)?

All the PC proponents seem to be adept at hand-wavy explanations and a complete failure to understand that physics is quantitative subject. If seen them talk about the importance of lab-based experiments. But I don't recall any of them ranting quite so much about "empirical physics", "control mechanisms" and "Occam's razor" whilst not seeming to have a clue what any of these nice phrases actually mean.

In this forum, with perhaps one or two exceptions, "PC proponents" seem to make no distinction between PC and EU (so maybe "EU/PC proponents" might be more accurate).

There does seem to be pretty clear segmentation (bimodal distribution), doesn't there, and it's not just EU/PC proponents ... many of those presenting or advocating one kind of physics woo or other also clearly have zero understanding of the quantitative nature of physics. While there most certainly are people who not only understand physics as quintessentially quantitative but are also able to actually do valid research (in physics) - and who nonetheless are staunch fans of some kind of physics woo or other - they do not seem to grace this forum with their presence (Lerner and Peratt spring to mind).

What would you say is the most concise, telling example of this self-defeating approach of MM's?

His ranting about control mechanisms have been particularly telling. Apologies while I go into Vicky Pollard mode:
First he says that dark matter detectors don't have control mechanisms. Then I point out the blatantly obvious control mechanisms. Then he says yes but there is no on/off switch and controlled experiments have to have on/off switches. So I say that there's no on/off switch for gravity. But he says we don't need an on/off switch. So I tell him that he just said we did. So he asks me why I'm so obsessed with control mechanisms. Pure genius.

That's certainly a pretty amazing example of shooting oneself in the foot isn't it!

 

[Michael Mozina]

No.

My point in asking was to try to help you understand the concept of negative pressue, which you seem to out and out deny in any way, shape or form.

Well, no. We were specifically talking about a vacuum having "negative pressure" in relationship to Guth's inflation paper. It wasn't "any old' sort of "pressure" we were debating, but the possible "pressure" states of a "vacuum". Let's keep this somewhat focused shall we?

It then deevolved into the Casmir debate where it seems to make no difference how many articles from QM or pretty diagrams on the topic I present, they all get ignored.

If you have some example that you believe somehow validates Guth's claim that pressure state of a vacuum can become "negative", I'm willing to listen, but you'll need to put your model in some sort of (physical) context for me.

 

[Michael Mozina]

I think MM's trouble may be that the only type of pressure he knows of is gas pressure. He keeps trying to pose everything in such terms anyway.

No, it's not the ONLY pressure I know of, but if we're describing the possible "pressure" states of a 'vacuum', it's the most appropriate place to start a rational discussion on the topic.

Let's hear you put this whole thing into some sort of "physical" context and answer some of those questions I posed earlier that outlines the sequences of events where inflation did it's magic and explain how your 'vacuum' ends up with a "negative pressure" for us. Don't be coy, don't be shy, step up to the plate and offer us a physical model of some sort to work with.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Thanks.

I too went from taking what MM wrote as serious attacks on what I'd been taught, what I'd learned, and what I in turn had taught (and, early on, learned a fair bit about what is essential/fundamental, what is distracting/superfluous, what is easy to explain and what not, etc), to being interested in what makes MM and his ideas tick.

Have you come across anyone similar to MM, here in the Science section of JREF Forum?

Quite a few.

If you look at the few posts I have made on here most have been in replying to similar threads

Yes, I see what you mean.

Back to an earlier question, and assuming you've been following the various 'MM threads' for some time, how much of the content is new, in the sense of the topics covered in the various posts, and the extent to which MM's presentation has become more cogent, coherent, consistent, etc (even if it's the same old ideas recycled for the Nth time)?

 

[DazzaD]

Well, no. We were specifically talking about a vacuum having "negative pressure" in relationship to Guth's inflation paper. It wasn't "any old' sort of "pressure" we were debating, but the possible "pressure" states of a "vacuum". Let's keep this somewhat focused shall we?

It then deevolved into the Casmir debate where it seems to make no difference how many articles from QM or pretty diagrams on the topic I present, they all get ignored.

If you have some example that you believe somehow validates Guth's claim that pressure state of a vacuum can become "negative", I'm willing to listen, but you'll need to put your model in some sort of (physical) context for me.

Have you had a chance to look at the stress-energy tensor page that I linked to above?

It is an excellent starting point on getting your head around negative pressure in general relativity and how it affects the overall cosmology.

 

[DazzaD]

Yes, I see what you mean.

Back to an earlier question, and assuming you've been following the various 'MM threads' for some time, how much of the content is new, in the sense of the topics covered in the various posts, and the extent to which MM's presentation has become more cogent, coherent, consistent, etc (even if it's the same old ideas recycled for the Nth time)?

Without wishing to do anyone a disservice most of the posters that I have responded have a very similar behaviour.

They seem to decry certain aspects (or whole big chunks!) of current physics or maths, without really understanding that subject to, say, undergraduate level.

The actual topics are pretty varied (and also seem to vary wildly once discussion is seriously engaged.. perhaps in an attempt to evade? confuse?)...but the posters themselves behave in a very similar way.

As I said, I am not attacking anyone in person, most of those comments apply to people who have since left or been banned actually!

 

[Michael Mozina]

In this forum, with perhaps one or two exceptions, "PC proponents" seem to make no distinction between PC and EU (so maybe "EU/PC proponents" might be more accurate).

There does seem to be pretty clear segmentation (bimodal distribution), doesn't there, and it's not just EU/PC proponents ... many of those presenting or advocating one kind of physics woo or other also clearly have zero understanding of the quantitative nature of physics.

No, we keep handing you those quantitative papers and you keep ignoring them outright. What do you want me to personally do for you DRD? I can lead you to mathematical water, but if you refuse to drink it, stop claiming it was never given to you. It makes you sound absurd.

You don't care about quantitative or qualitative arguments. You ignore both with types of arguments with equal disregard and equal disrespect.

It doesn't matter to you one iota that Birkeland could 'explain' those coronal loops 100 years ago. It doesn't matter to you that his empirical experiments actually "predicted' (real empirical prediction) them. It's doesn't matter to you that there are "return currents' that sustain those same "magnetic ropes" that Alfven talked about, and wrote about in terms of MHD theory as "circuits". None of it matters to you.