Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Michael Mozina]

You'll be posting in the Religion and Philosophy section from now on then?

I don't think so. My light is electrical in nature. It belongs here. You're the one peddling religion based on "pure faith", not me.

I cannot even believe you're trying to wiggle your way out of your dilemma with Birkeland and his sphere. He *NEVER* claimed it would emit only one kind of charged particle DRD. You're so out to lunch on that point it's sad. If you had actually read his work you would know that he did NOT suggest only one type of particle was emitted and in fact he continually wrote about the sun emitting both positively and negatively charged particles. Did you even read that link I posted earlier, or the NY Times article? He even predicted the rotation pattern of planets based on which types of charged particle was involved. I'm simply "amazed" that you could miss all that after all the trouble I've taken to post links to all the relevant work. You might get tusenfem to translate the french paper on solar wind for you. That's about the only paper I haven't provided for you in English.

 

[Reality Check]

What exactly were you "right" about first time through?

That is right !
No science is ever "right" the first time. It is only right after review and testing. For example: General Relativity was not right until it was tested by observation. It is not even "right" now. There is enough evidence to so that GR is regarded as a confirmed theory. There is also the expectation that it is wrong because it does not include quantum effects.
Guth's first paper had a flaw that was fixed by another scientist. So what? That happens all the time. Einstein did it to Newton.

Excuse me, but that "dark energy makes up 72% of the universe" claim pushed me over the edge in terms of trusting any of your numbers. You guys make this stuff up as you go. 15-20 years ago nobody had ever heard of the stuff. Suddenly its 3/4th of the whole universe? Give me a break. Your industry hasn't been "right" the first time *EVER*. You had us sitting in the middle of the universe for centuries. At the pace you're going you'll be living in the dark ages of astronomy for another 200 years too. Sorry, I've seen the light.

Now you are back to your religion that science can only be right once. So when should we have stopped dong scientific research

• After Galileo?
• After Newton?
• After Maxwell?
• After Einstein?
• Or after Mozina and his inane iron crust fantasy ?

That position is just insane.


There is no claim. There is the scientific evidence that 96% of the universe is missing

• Dark matter.
• Dark energy.

 

[Reality Check]

What kind of weaseling around is that? What did *BIRKELAND HIMSELF* actually "predict" and write about DRD? (Hint: Read my sig line!)

What kind of weaseling around is that? Or have you totally forgotton how to read?
DRD's question is about Birkeland's sphere - you know the one in his experiment? The one in the book you keep lying about and misrepresenting?
(Hint: his brass sphere is not the Sun )

 

[Michael Mozina]

There is no claim. There is the scientific evidence that 96% of the universe is missing...

You just contradicted yourself. The universe is all there RC.

It might be safe for you to say that you've only positively identified 4% of it, but then your claims don't stop there, do they? You folks claim "dark energy" only "weakly" interacts with matter. Why? Because you said so. You claim a bunch of matter is "non baryonic", not just 'dark' as in 'we don't know what it is". You make claims on a daily basis about how much "normal" matter is in the universe, etc, etc. etc.

You guys make claims right and left that are completely based on self serving circular arguments.

All you really know is that you don't know much. I can tell you why you don't know much too. You don't know much because you refuse to turn to the one force of nature that could help you empirically dig your way out of that dark metaphysical hole you crawled into.

 

[Michael Mozina]

What kind of weaseling around is that? Or have you totally forgotton how to read?
DRD's question is about Birkeland's sphere - you know the one in his experiment? The one in the book you keep lying about and misrepresenting?
(Hint: his brass sphere is not the Sun )

Hint: Parts of his metallic sphere (and various cathodes) were stuck the wall of his experiments and he wrote about that process.

 

[Reality Check]

You just contradicted yourself. The universe is all there RC.

I will make it clearer then:
There is no claim. There is the scientific evidence that 96% of the content of the universe is not visible to us.
Can you understand that?

It might be safe for you to say that you've only positively identified 4% of it, but then your claims don't stop there, do they? You folks claim "dark energy" only "weakly" interacts with matter. Why? Because you said so.

Oh the ignorance !
We do not "say so". The universe tells us that dark matter weakly interacts with matter because it is dark!

You claim a bunch of matter is "non baryonic", not just 'dark' as in 'we don't know what it is". You make claims on a daily basis about how much "normal" matter is in the universe, etc, etc. etc.

Oh the ignorance !
We do not "say so".
The universe tells us that dark matter acts like non baryonic matter.

You would know this if you had could understand or answer:

• Any problems with this analysis of the evidence for nonbaryonic matter
  First asked 18 July 2009

Constraints on baryonic matter from cosmological nucleosynthesis means that at most 8% of the mass & energy in the universe is baryonic matter. See for example this extract from the 1998 book Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Baryonic Matter or look up the many preprints on arXiv.

The power spectrum of the CMB cannot be matched by models that have only baryons. See the first argument against MOND in this blog article.

You guys make claims right and left that are completely based on self serving circular arguments.

Oh the ignorance !

There are no circular arguments.

1. The universe presents us evidence of certain effects.
2. We give names to the causes of these effects.

All you really know is that you don't know much. I can tell you why you don't know much too. You don't know much because you refuse to turn to the one force of nature that could help you empirically dig your way out of that dark metaphysical hole you crawled into.

Oh the ignorance !
Luckily your ignorance is not shared by the scientific community.
The scientific community knows a lot about dark matter and dark energy.
The scientific community knows a lot about electromagnetism. This includes the fact that (despite your obsession with it) it cannot cause the effects that we see with dark matter or dark energy.

You don't know much. Thus you refuse to turn to the four forces of nature that could help you empirically dig your way out of that dark metaphysical hole you crawled into.

 

[Reality Check]

Hint: Parts of his metallic sphere (and various cathodes) were stuck the wall of his experiments and he wrote about that process.

Hint: I know that.
But the solar wnd is not made up of chunks of brass and only has very small amounts of the other materials he tried.

Shall we follow your logic and say that Birkeland's empirical experiment proves that his idea about the solar wind was that it was made up of brass and electrons?

Of course not!
He came up with a different "prediction", i.e. that the solar wind is made up of electrons and ions. I am surprised that he did not take the next obvious step and give the composition of the solar wind as similiar to the known composition of the Sun.
Observations that the solar wind contains electrons and ions shows that he was right.

Of course if you were serious about citing Birkeland you would have cited his paper on the solar wind:
"Are the Solar Corpuscular Rays that penetrate the Earth's Atmosphere Negative or Positive Rays?". Videnskapsselskapets Skrifter, I Mat -- Naturv. Klasse No.1. Christiania, 1916.

The "various cathodes" he tried were mostly about his comet and planet theories (both sadly wrong), e.g.
Page 635

For the purpose of seeing and studying how a substance containing carbon is discharged as a cathode in a vacuum-tube, I have made, as already mentioned, numerous experiments with cathodes of
ordinary coal, coke, graphite, and pice'in over a metallic cathode.

Page 636

In connection with the above-mentioned experiments with carbonaceous cathodes, experiments were also made with cathodes of platinum thinly coated with lime. This was for the purpose of finding out
whether rays from a cathode such as this which, as is known, emit- ceedingly soft rays might be repelled by electric forces, and bent right round, just as the radiation from the head of a comet appears to be by apparent repulsion from the sun.

And in connection with his planet theory, Page 718

In three hours the brass anode was completely coated with a shining mirror of platinum. On the glass wall of the vacuum-case there was a fairly sharp shadow of a screen that stood between the cathode and the wall, so that in this experiment we are fully justified in speaking of "platinum rays".
In the same way, in many and varied experiments, rays of palladium and uranium were produced with the employment of as much as from 15,000 to 20,000 volts to the cathode (the positive pole was earthed) and temperatures of from 600 to about 1800 C.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

You'll be posting in the Religion and Philosophy section from now on then?

I don't think so. My light is electrical in nature. It belongs here. You're the one peddling religion based on "pure faith", not me.

Let's go over this one more time, shall we?

"Lambda-CDM theory" is, in your eyes, scientific woo, right?

But you do not understand what this "Lambda-CDM theory" is, if only because critical parts of it involve math you cannot follow.

Then there's the fact that the criteria you use to judge if "theories" in astrophysics or cosmology are scientific or not aren't those of any scientist living today (and, likely, any astronomer or physicist over the last several centuries).

So it's only "scientific woo" when judged by some other criteria, perhaps yours.

But when we examine those criteria, we find they are illogical and/or applied inconsistently.

For example:

* the requirement of utility ("Woo is stuff that fails to [be] useful") - pretty much the whole of contemporary particle physics is thus "woo"; and helium remained "woo" for many decades, but is no longer "woo"

* the requirement of direct measurement ("Woo is stuff that can't be measured by humans directly") - thus all of astronomy is "woo", and neutrinos were "woo" for several decades

* the requirement of 'presence in the lab' ("Woo is stuff that doesn't show up in the lab") - so [OIII] is "woo", superclusters of galaxies are "woo", and the top quark was "woo" for several decades

* the requirement of discovery by the MM scientific process - so General Relativity is "woo" (no "Empirical Idea" nor any "Empirical Experimentation" before "Numerical Prediction").

And perhaps the most potent demonstration of the illogical and inconsistent application of these criteria is that your very own solar "model" is "woo" of purest MM kind!

Now none of this is particularly new, nor is it new that every attempt, by any JREF member, to discuss this with you has met with failure.

Nor is it new that a dispassionate, objective application of your own "woo" criteria shows that much of what Birkeland wrote is "woo" (again, by your own definitions - look at what he wrote about zodiacal light, or the rings of Saturn, to take just two examples).

But the last day or so of your posts reveals* that the criteria you actually use are very similar to ones used in some religions; namely, a fundamental requirement that a body of work be accepted on faith, that its truth be not questioned.

The body of work I'm referring to is, of course, the published work of Birkeland, and extends to even newspaper reports of what he said!

And it goes further; in explaining your understanding of Birkeland's work, you invent new articles of faith, such as "My light is electrical in nature", "Well, If I could wake you up to the mass flows involved in "current flows" it wouldn't be so darn "dark" anymore" (your use of double quotes is a good guide to your invocation of new articles of faith), and "All I need is "current flow"".

Finally, a good test of whether a new article of faith is, indeed, quasi-religious and not scientific is to apply your very own criteria to it.

And ""current flows"" passes this test with flying colours: it has no utility, it cannot be directly measured by humans, it does not show up in any lab, and you clearly did not discover it using any version of what you consider to be the scientific process.

I really do think you'd be better off discussing your ideas in the Religion and Philosophy section.

* to me at least; several others seem to have realised this quite some time ago

 

[Tubbythin]

Err, oops. When I said "power spectrum" of the CMBR, I think what I actually meant was "frequency spectrum". Or just "spectrum". Apologies for the confusion.
<Looks at feet in shame>

 

[Tubbythin]

It's a "forced fit"! You are literally "making up" whatever properties you wish to assign. It's make believe time.

Note my explicit use of the word "subsequent". Its pretty difficult to force a fit with data that doesn't exist yet.

I remember that you can't handle the comparison because it exposes the flaw in your argument and shows that you are relying on 'make-believe math'.

Err no. I find the fact that you think your "argument" is a good absolutely hilarious. In actual fact, your argument is literally as stupid as saying "If we just pretend Albert Einstein was actually called Jesus McGodson then all his work is invalid".

You don't have an empirical leg to stand on, so somehow it's all my fault.

You don't have a clue what empirical means.

There is no *experimental data". You "made up" the properties to fit the observation and then your right around and try to use that same observation to support the very same argument. It's a completely made up solution.

Nope. Adjustments are made to the model and if the they better match future experiments we start to have confidence the adjustments make the model better match reality. This is how science is done in the real world. This is how we got from Newtonian gravity to GR and from classical to quantum mechanics.

What "experiment"? You're using the *SAME OBSERVATIONS* that you POSTDICTED your theory from to now support that same theory! It's a completely self serving argument.

Nope. The CMBR was most definitely a prediction of the BB cosmology. As was the shape of the frequency spectrum. I could find you thousands or references to this fact.

Ya and in religious circles I'm "evil" too. I guess since you can't call me a pawn in satan's minions, the personal attacks are a little different. Oh well.

It wasn't a personal attack. It was an attack on the form of argument.

Somehow it's always my fault when a creationists argument lacks empirical support.

You're in the wrong forum to talk about creationism. This is the SMT forum. Please stick to the topic. And, I'll repeat, you have no idea what empirical means.

I believe you folks are living in the "dark" ages of astronomy and some day you'll eventually (maybe not this group actually) have to accept that we live inside of an electric universe.

No, we live in a gravitational, electromagnetic, strong and weak Universe.

Things will then improve dramatically in terms of empirical physics.

You have no idea what empirical means.

Of course you did. Alfven's bang would have been a radically different date for instance.

And would it have produced the frequency spectrum of the CMBR? Is it consistent with the known laws of gravity and thermodynamics.

All it highlights is that other assumption you made about all matter and energy being collected to a "clump". You can't justify that claim or your date in terms of empirical physics.

Yes, we can. There are thousands upon thousands of references to this end. And once again, you do not know what the word empirical means.

You just selected it at random based on a series of assumptions you made.

Nope. COmpletely false yet again. Unless by "assumptions" you mean "multiple, independent measurements" and by "selected it at random" you mean "used these multiple independent measurements together with the laws of physics to calculate several, independent, estimates for the age of the Universe".

Galaxies might be created and destroyed all the time for all I know. I have no belief that it all "started' from a single clump and therefore I hold no belief that they should "age" in any particular way.

Nevertheless, they still can't violate the second law of thermodynamics.

You never actually "test" anything. You postdict a fit. You point to the same observation and then say "See how well I "predicted" that!" Some "prediction".

This is a lie.

So you need it in order to claim it "fits so perfectly"?

We need it to match or an alternative to match all the data. Just like we need special relativity as an extension to Newtonian mechanics for relative velocities close to that of light. NM does a very good job at predicting most of what we observe. But to get things even better we need to extend to SR. What your suggesting is throwing out the BB cosmology altogether despite numerous successful predictions and going back to something more primitive because it is only consistent with a subset of the data. This is entirely analogous to throwing out Newtonian mechanics in favour of something more primitive and refusing to look at SR.

Ever think of giving up metaphysics and trying for "nearly perfect"?

Nope. Its impossible for me to give up something I've never invested a moment of time in.

 

[Ziggurat]

Galaxies might be created and destroyed all the time for all I know.

Quite true, in the sense that you know nothing about either the first or second laws of thermodynamics.

 

[edd]

Define "well" for me. I trust you'll try to be fair. I don't know how to define 'well' when the DM "test" is a failure and the galaxies are way more "mature" than you "predicted". What exactly does it predict "well" in terms of empirical physics?

Again, I'm being comparative. Certainly I wouldn't say LCDM is completely correct or complete but its the best. I also certainly wouldn't argue that there aren't outstanding questions in galaxy formation (very much complicated by the fact that normal physics in galaxies even without the dark sector getting involved is very messy and hard to do right), and in the exact nature of dark matter and how it fits into our usual particle physics framework and how we might go about detecting it in a lab.

Dark energy is an elephant in the room and you can't deny it by raising questions about the colour of the carpet on the floor and how many windows the room has, or even how it managed to get through the door, however interesting that latter question might be.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Excuse me, but that "dark energy makes up 72% of the universe" claim pushed me over the edge in terms of trusting any of your numbers. You guys make this stuff up as you go. 15-20 years ago nobody had ever heard of the stuff. Suddenly its 3/4th of the whole universe?

Maybe that's a sign that the evidence for it is really, really good. Having reviewed that evidence myself, I have to agree that it is really, really good.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Err, oops. When I said "power spectrum" of the CMBR, I think what I actually meant was "frequency spectrum". Or just "spectrum". Apologies for the confusion.
<Looks at feet in shame>

Looking at the last post where you did this, I think that your usage was at least more-or-less correct. The most advanced work on the CMB looks at the power spectrum of anisotropy in the CMB. This is a way of looking at and comparing the different scales of deviation from the average temperature. This is an amazing project in many ways, and the results are something that no other cosmological model has been able to fit so far.

Earlier work, still excellent, has been on predicting the average temperature of the background radiation and predicting the characteristic spectral curve of that radiation. I don't know that a plasma cosmology can even match the details of that spectral curve.

 

[Tubbythin]

I've never once seen your side correctly predict when the galaxies first formed, not in 30 years.

I don't have "a side" and that wasn't the question. Please answer the question.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Again, I'm being comparative. Certainly I wouldn't say LCDM is completely correct or complete but its the best.

Somewhere the phrase "I don't know" got lost along the way in the field of cosmology. Sometimes an honest 'I don't know" is probably "best" rather than pure speculation.

It seems to me that the professional need to 'quantify' everything they see has created a "rush to creativity" IMO. Guth's addition to BB theory was probably the most objectionable addition from my perspective because it was along the lines of "wild speculation" rather than anything dictated by experimentation.

I also certainly wouldn't argue that there aren't outstanding questions in galaxy formation (very much complicated by the fact that normal physics in galaxies even without the dark sector getting involved is very messy and hard to do right),....

But wouldn't the concept of older/newer galaxies be a rather "critical" prediction of any BB/creation oriented theory? In other words, the fact mainstream theory begins with a "creation event", from which all matter and energy originate, requires us to make some logical predictions from that starting point. We "should" see some sort of progression from "simple" to complex at time marches on. In reality however, that hasn't been born out by the observations. We find very old clusters of galaxies less than 4 billion years from the event, every bit as massive as those we find in our own neighborhood today.

and in the exact nature of dark matter and how it fits into our usual particle physics framework and how we might go about detecting it in a lab.

Well, so far it's not looking good. LHC is your best bet, but if that last paper I cited has any merit, things aren't looking very promising.

Dark energy is an elephant in the room and you can't deny it by raising questions about the colour of the carpet on the floor and how many windows the room has, or even how it managed to get through the door, however interesting that latter question might be.

I think "acceleration" is actually the elephant in the room. Since there is no cause/effect relationship between acceleration and dark energy, well, that's just like painting the elephant neon yellow.

There seems to be an empirical disconnect somewhere in terms of 'cause/effect' relationships as it relates to cosmology. Rather than limiting themselves to known forces of nature, astronomers tend to be very comfortable "making up" new forces of matter and energy even in the complete absence of any support in the lab, and even without the ability to falsify the concept in the lab. That tends to make the term "best" a bit subjective IMO. "I don't know the cause of acceleration" is one thing. "Dark energy did it" is quite another. Zig seemed to imply a cause/effect relationship between an observation of acceleration, and something he calls 'dark energy', but no such empirical link was ever established. Do you see the dilemma?

 

[Ziggurat]

Somewhere the phrase "I don't know" got lost along the way in the field of cosmology. Sometimes an honest 'I don't know" is probably "best" rather than pure speculation.

It seems to me that the professional need to 'quantify' everything they see has created a "rush to creativity" IMO.

You really do have a fundamentally different concept of science than actual scientists. Of course there's a need to quantify things. That's rather the whole bloody point.

But wouldn't the concept of older/newer galaxies be a rather "critical" prediction of any BB/creation oriented theory?

Not really. Again, the question is NOT why those galaxies are the wrong age. The question is why the age derived from two different methods don't agree. The most likely answer is that galactic evolution models are wrong, and it's most likely because they are more complex and uncertain. Such models being wrong would not impact the bib bang theory.

There seems to be an empirical disconnect somewhere in terms of 'cause/effect' relationships as it relates to cosmology. Rather than limiting themselves to known forces of nature, astronomers tend to be very comfortable "making up" new forces of matter and energy

What the hell is a "force of matter"? You complain about a communication problem, but the fault is yours for pulling stuff like this out of nowhere, without even defining what you mean.

Zig seemed to imply a cause/effect relationship between an observation of acceleration, and something he calls 'dark energy', but no such empirical link was ever established. Do you see the dilemma?

Indeed I do: you have chosen a definition of "empirical" which is at odds with the standard definition. So how can we discuss these issues with you in any sensible fashion when you essentially have your own vocabulary which does not match that of everyone else? It's quite a dilemma.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

But wouldn't the concept of older/newer galaxies be a rather "critical" prediction of any BB/creation oriented theory?

I'm not edd, but my answer to this would be something like this:

To even ask the question seems to show a rather surprising ignorance of either cosmology or the study of galaxies (or perhaps both).

To be more specific: to get robust constraints on the evolution of galaxies, from first LCDM principles, is - today - next to impossible. One reason is that there is, today, essentially no way to constrain - and perhaps even define! - the physical processes which should (per an LCDM model) play important roles in galaxy formation and evolution; another is the rather weak constraints that observational astronomy can provide, on the times/conditions during which these physical processes should play the most important roles.

In other words, the fact mainstream theory begins with a "creation event", from which all matter and energy originate,

But - as you have been told, and as you can check for yourself any time you want - LCDM models do not so begin (more bluntly, this is a strawman).

requires us to make some logical predictions from that starting point.

If you replace "starting point" with "initial conditions", then yes ... and thousands of cosmology papers do exactly that (check out Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, for example).

We "should" see some sort of progression from "simple" to complex at time marches on.

I'm sure there is a name for this logical fallacy, no doubt similar to the 'evolution by design' one.

Of course, you can develop hypotheses incorporating such progressions, but, of course, they need to be fully quantitative (this sort of logic, without any observational constraints, is a key component of what we call the Aristotelian approach to science).

In reality however, that hasn't been born out by the observations.

This, too, is a classic logical fallacy, something to do with presuming the conclusion.

It's also inconsistent with the actual observations (check out the papers, not the pop-sci write-ups).

We find very old clusters of galaxies less than 4 billion years from the event, every bit as massive as those we find in our own neighborhood today.

So?

(to be continued, maybe)

 

[ben m]

Somewhere the phrase "I don't know" got lost along the way in the field of cosmology. Sometimes an honest 'I don't know" is probably "best" rather than pure speculation.

Michael, welcome to the world of the "hypothesis". Dark energy is a hypothesis. Calling it a hypothesis is part of how scientists say "I don't know".

It's a very good hypothesis, a fact you seem unable to grasp. It DOES accurately describe the data; it DOES introduce an absolute minimum of previously-unknown laws of nature; it DOES describe the data better than anything anyone else (especially you) has ever proposed. Should we pretend that it doesn't? Do you want us to lie about the statistical tests that we've applied to this hypothesis? "Nope, nope nothing to see here. Please don't ask me for a chi^2/dof, it'd scare you into thinking this hypothesis was a good one and that would offend some random guy on the Web whose alternate theory is much worse."

 

[Michael Mozina]

To be more specific: to get robust constraints on the evolution of galaxies, from first LCDM principles, is - today - next to impossible.

Well, that's just another example of why it's not a useful theory IMO. Leaving everything else aside, there is a 'creation event' associated with Lambda-CDM theory that necessitates a "galaxy formation process" of some sort, with a definite "starting date". That concept of a starting date distinguishes any creation oriented theory from say an "eternal universe" type of theory. Should there not be some "expectation/prediction" of "younger and newer" galaxies in your theory that would be easy to distinguish from say an eternal universe concept where galaxies would not necessarily 'change' all that much in the last 13.7 billion years?