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

[Prometheus]

You're doing the exactly the same thing with "dark energy"! Your whole argument about the existence of 'dark energy' is based upon you redefining your ignorance "unknown cause of acceleration" with the term "dark energy".

Could you point me to my argument about the existence of dark energy? I can't seem to recall making one. And again: substituting words is not the same as redefinition. Fail.

Which is exactly why it's a "high redefinition" fallacy. You're irrationally claiming that you already know that it interacts with the gravity field (vs. say plasma mostly interacting with an EM field), and then you proceed to more narrowly redefine what is really an "unknown cause of acceleration" to exclude the one and only logical option to explain such unknown acceleration. It's a pure high redefinition fallacy from start to finish.

Please point me to where I've made any claims at all about how anything interacts with the gravity field. I haven't, so you can't. This is a strawman fallacy. At least you've moved on to a different fallacy, now, so I guess we can call that 'progress' (though we'd right back to low-redefinition if we did! )

And I've not defined anything to exclude anything. So you fail again.

 

[Michael Mozina]

And again: substituting words is not the same as redefinition.

Then substituting "God energy" or "Michael's magic energy" into "cause of acceleration" is equally acceptable. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

And I've not defined anything to exclude anything. So you fail again.

Sure you are. You're already trying to claim we can *ALREADY* exclude the single most likely cause of acceleration of plasma!

 

[Michael Mozina]

This is hopeless!

No way. There's too much technology coming on line for this to be "hopeless". It may take time, but I know you'll come around eventually.

 

[Prometheus]

Then substituting "God energy" or "Michael's magic energy" into "cause of acceleration" is equally acceptable. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Of course you can do that if you like. I already told you so several posts ago. What you can't do is claim that doing so somehow makes cosmology into a religion. It's not.

Sure you are. You're already trying to claim we can *ALREADY* exclude the single most likely cause of acceleration of plasma!

EM is not excluded by definition, it's excluded by observation and experiment. And your use, here, of the phrase, "the single most likely cause of acceleration of plasma" is an example of a Begging the Question fallacy. Congratulations--more 'progress'!

 

[schrodingasdawg]

The pressure terms in the EM stress tensor are positive, not negative, so they cannot account for an acceleration of universal expansion. (Actually, they'd contribute to a deceleration.) Even if they were negative, an EM field strong enough to accelerate universal expansion at the measured rate would have easily measurable (but unmeasured) consequences in the lab.

I've done a rough order-of-magnitude estimation of the strength of an all-pervasive, uniform electric field needed to account for the rate of acceleration of the universe under the (rather faulty) assumption that the electric field provides a negative (rather than positive) vacuum pressure in the FLRW metric (and thus accelerates, rather than decelerates, expansion).

The cosmological constant in s^-2 is roughly 10^-35s^-2. A pressure that would give the same expansion acceleration rate would be roughly -10^-9N/m².

From the Maxwell stress tensor (with opposite sign, so the pressure is now negative) and with the permittivity as ~10^-11C²N^-1m^-2, the magnitude of the electric field must be on the order of 10 N/C.

An electron (q~10^-19C, m~10^-28kg) would experience a force of 10^-18N under this field, which using the Newtonian F=ma, gives an acceleration of 10¹⁰m/s². Which suggests it'd be accelerated to relativistic speeds on the order of a second.

I am a very lazy person, which is why I've only done a very rough order-of-magnitude calculation (and did the E but not the B), but it is still telling. Electrons aren't invariably accelerated to relativistic speeds in the lab, so such an electric field does not exist.

 

[Reality Check]

So if I substitute "cause of acceleration" with "acceleration" in my last sentence, would you *THEN* see the nature of your redefinition fallacy?

If you substitute "cause of acceleration" with "acceleration" in your last sentence *THEN* we get

You're simply redefining the term "acceleration" "cause of acceleration" as "dark energy" and away you go......

And we have the term that scientists use and that we have been telling you about: dark matter is the placeholder for the cause of the acceleration.

Prometheus's post:

Originally Posted by Prometheus
And if I define an orange as "a globose, reddish-yellow, bitter or sweet, edible citrus fruit."1
then the only way oranges could not exist is if there are no globose, reddish-yellow, bitter or sweet, edible citrus fruits.

By your argument, every entry in the dictionary creates a new religion. This is known as a Low Redefinition Fallacy.

The first paragraph is an example of the Low Redefinition Fallacy.
IMO But you are not really doing this. You would have to be replacing "dark energy" with a superclass of "dark energy".

What you are doing is replacing the word dark with the word god and claiming that because you did it that the original definition is a religion.

That is dumb.

"Dark energy" is the accepted scientific term for "whatever causes the acceleration of the expansion of the universe".
If you substitute anything for any part of "dark energy" then it is still a term for "whatever causes the acceleration of the expansion of the universe" (just not accepted ).
Thus:
The term for whatever causes the acceleration of the expansion of the universe can be

• "Dark energy" - and everybody will know what you are taking about.
• "Whozzle's knees" - and no one will know hat you are talking about.
• "Dog energy" - and everyone will think that you are a vet.
• "God energy" - and everyone will think that you are a preacher who does not know the accepted term.

The idiocy in your posts comes when you do this and then say that your action of replacing dark with god makes the cause of the observed acceleration of expansion of the universe into a religion.

1. Any explanation for the acceleration automatically becomes a religion, e.g. you claim (incorrectly) that an EM field is such a cause. That claim is thus a religion.
2. You must think that you can do the same for any phrase and make it a religion, e.g.
   "car wash" becomes "god wash" and is your religion.
3. You do not realize that you could anything and think that you have change the meaning of dark energy.
   But dark energy has a existing definition!
   Dark energy is whatever causes the acceleration of the expansion of the universe .
   It has nothing to do with God, cars, dogs or Whozzle's knees .

 

[Tubbythin]

So if I substitute "cause of acceleration" with "acceleration" in my last sentence, would you *THEN* see the nature of your redefinition fallacy?

No

It's a term for what amounts to "human ignorance". You don't know what the "cause" is so why not just admit it and be honest about it, and call it "cause of acceleration"?

Well its not just the cause of any acceleration, its the cause of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe. So to be specific we'd have to keep constantly referring to "the cause of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe". This is rather cumbersome, especially when many scientific journals have page limits. So what's the obvious solution? Replace this, would be common phrase, with something shorter like, ooh, I dunno, "dark energy". Now, instead of a 62 character phrase, its only 11.

 

[Tubbythin]

Er yes! You just redefined the idea of "cause of acceleration"! Whatever word we insert into our redefinition fallacy becomes unfalsifiable. God energy must have done it. Evil dark energy did it. Magic energy did it too! Anything and every word/phrase we might come up with can be abused in exactly the same manner.

What are you talking about? If I decided I was sick of calling gravity "gravity" and decided I'd rather call it "alfred" would gravity/alfred be unfalsifiable?
You can call dark energy whatever the hell you like. But if you use a name completely different to everyone else then nobody is going to know what you're talking about. After all, if I started that saying that it was alfred that kept us from falling off the Earth, people would probably think I had gone mad.

 

[Tim Thompson]

Accelerating Universe & Dark Energy

Sure. I agree we see "acceleration", ... Then "unknown acceleration" it is.

This is exactly what I have been saying since post one and I get nothing but grief from you about how this is not an "empirical" result. Do you or do you not agree that the apparent acceleration of the universe is empirical?

 

[Dancing David]

The pressure terms in the EM stress tensor are positive, not negative, so they cannot account for an acceleration of universal expansion. (Actually, they'd contribute to a deceleration.) Even if they were negative, an EM field strong enough to accelerate universal expansion at the measured rate would have easily measurable (but unmeasured) consequences in the lab.

I've done a rough order-of-magnitude estimation of the strength of an all-pervasive, uniform electric field needed to account for the rate of acceleration of the universe under the (rather faulty) assumption that the electric field provides a negative (rather than positive) vacuum pressure in the FLRW metric (and thus accelerates, rather than decelerates, expansion).

The cosmological constant in s^-2 is roughly 10^-35s^-2. A pressure that would give the same expansion acceleration rate would be roughly -10^-9N/m².

From the Maxwell stress tensor (with opposite sign, so the pressure is now negative) and with the permittivity as ~10^-11C²N^-1m^-2, the magnitude of the electric field must be on the order of 10 N/C.

An electron (q~10^-19C, m~10^-28kg) would experience a force of 10^-18N under this field, which using the Newtonian F=ma, gives an acceleration of 10¹⁰m/s². Which suggests it'd be accelerated to relativistic speeds on the order of a second.

I am a very lazy person, which is why I've only done a very rough order-of-magnitude calculation (and did the E but not the B), but it is still telling. Electrons aren't invariably accelerated to relativistic speeds in the lab, so such an electric field does not exist.

You and your silly math.

 

[edd]

Dark energy is whatever causes the acceleration of the expansion of the universe .

We're broadly in agreement RC, but this isn't entirely accurate. Dark energy is a specific class of potential causes of acceleration - it's basically any negative pressure component of the energy density.

Acceleration could also be caused by something that's not an energy component of the universe, like a modified gravity model. It could be due to a non-homogenous universe, like that of the Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi models. Neither of those would be described as 'dark energy'.

My opinion, and that of most cosmologists I think, is that dark energy is the most likely cause of the observed acceleration, but it isn't the only possible one.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Fred(peering through his telescope): "Look, the expansion of the universe is accelerating."

Greg: "Wow, let me see.(pushing Fred aside) Yes, it is, what could be causing that?"

Fred: "I don't know, but I don't know if anything can accelerate without energy causing it. What could it be?"

Greg: "I don't know either; I keep looking but I can't see anything causing it."

Fred: "Well, it must be there, if nothing can accelerate without energy, but it must be pretty dark, whatever it is."

Greg: "I have an idea. Let's call it 'dark energy' until we can figure out what it is."

Fred: "OK, so far, because of how everything is accelerating, I can tell that it is very homogeneous, not very dense and it doesn't seem to interact through any of the fundamental forces other than gravity -- as far as I can tell"

Greg: "So, let's ask around and see if anyone has any ideas, in the meantime let's stick with the term 'dark energy' unless someone has a better description."

Fred: "I have a bad feeling Mike isn't going to like this!"

Mike(entering the room): "Hey, what's up guys? See any new EM fields lately?"

 

[Michael Mozina]

No


Well its not just the cause of any acceleration, its the cause of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe. So to be specific we'd have to keep constantly referring to "the cause of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe". This is rather cumbersome, especially when many scientific journals have page limits. So what's the obvious solution? Replace this, would be common phrase, with something shorter like, ooh, I dunno, "dark energy". Now, instead of a 62 character phrase, its only 11.

"God energy" is only 10 characters. So what? You created a unfalsifiable new form of "energy" out of a simple observation of "acceleration"! That's like watching a car speed off and *assuming* "dark energy" did it, and "dark energy is real".

 

[edd]

"God energy" is only 10 characters. So what? You created a unfalsifiable new form of "energy" out of a simple observation of "acceleration"! That's like watching a car speed off and *assuming* "dark energy" did it, and "dark energy is real".

There's a couple of problems here - not all Michael's.

First off, as I said above, dark energy is not the only thing that could explain the acceleration.
Secondly, dark energy in the broadest sense does include a very wide range of things, which is why we start by consider a cosmological constant - a very constrained version of dark energy which is uniform and unchanging. The cosmological constant is much more falsifiable than just 'dark energy'. Without saying what you mean by 'dark energy' it's quite difficult to say how falsifiable it is, but it's certainly true that it is observationally constrainable - you can falsify some range of dark energy models, even if you can never completely exclude something. You can also demonstrate that some alternative is considerably more likely, even if you don't falsify something else per se.
Thirdly, it's not a bad thing to make some initial observation (like your car speeding off) and making some initial assumption about its nature, as long as you use that assumption as a starting point for considering how you might falsify that assumption or compare it to some other idea, and make progress from that. If you assume that your assumption is not an assumption and is in fact right - that's when you have problems.

Dark energy is (at least to some extent) falsifiable. It's not absolutely settled that it's the explanation, but it is a physically reasonable model that works very well. It's weird alright, but any model explaining the acceleration has at least one feature I would label 'weird'.

 

[ben m]

"God energy" is only 10 characters. So what? You created a unfalsifiable new form of "energy" out of a simple observation of "acceleration"! That's like watching a car speed off and *assuming* "dark energy" did it, and "dark energy is real".

You are attempting to prove that hard-to-detect non-baryonic, non-EM phenomena are philosophically undesirable.

You are completely ignoring the posts where we show that the observed "cosmic acceleration" cannot be either EM or baryonic.

Your priorities are backwards.

 

[Michael Mozina]

This is exactly what I have been saying since post one and I get nothing but grief from you about how this is not an "empirical" result. Do you or do you not agree that the apparent acceleration of the universe is empirical?

Philosophically speaking, not actually. Although I personally favor an acceleration "interpretation" of the available data just like the mainstream, I do realize that it is a personally subjective "interpretation" of the data. It's the "best" one that I can personally think of at the moment, but there may be other valid "interpretations' of the redshift phenomenon. I would say it's a valid "interpretation" from the standpoint of empirical physics, as long as you simply call it "acceleration". The moment you or I or anyone else tries to label it something other than "acceleration", it starts to take on a life of it's own and is no longer "empirical physics". The moment I change the name of "cause of acceleration" to "mythical new form of energy", it's not empirical physics until you can demonstrate a "mythical new form of energy" is real and has some effect on nature.

 

[GeeMack]

Keep in mind that Bad Astronomy actually holds "with hunts" (ATM trials) where the "accusers" (mainstream) of the "heretic" (ATM believer) are allowed to pummel you with questions. If you don't respond to each and every one of those questions in a timely manner, they lop off your virtual head. I've been virtually dead there for years now and couldn't defend myself there properly if I wanted to.

So there, as here, your arguments failed to support your crackpot conjectures. Got it.

 

[Michael Mozina]

S-Dawg......

I regret not having the time last night, nor this morning, to fully address your post(s) (now plural). I haven't forgotten you, and I will get to your posts later today, perhaps after work today. I may nibble at your last post first as I get time today.

 

[Pythonic]

You and your silly math.

Took the words right out of my mouth (keyboard?), DD. If MM has taught us anything it's that math and its ridiculous negative numbers is worthless. I can't believe I wasted 3 semesters on calculus now. What a loser I am.

 

[Michael Mozina]

So there, as here, your arguments failed to support your crackpot conjectures. Got it.

So in your mind, I'm sure that justifies your virtual witch hunts against all EU oriented theories, and my personal virtual lynching, eh? That place is the single most repressive "cult" on the planet. Most religious websites and organizations are not that repressive towards new ideas.