Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not

[Dancing David]

And the statement about non-baryoic matter is sort of ignorant, there is non-baryonic matter here on earth. DUH.

I guess Zuezzz does'nt believe in leptons of nutrinos.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

So as I do not have immediate responses to many of the critiques here that shows to me that I need to do my homework all around. I am glad I got the vigorous responses I have seen here for the BB side of the debate. I do want to make a note about one thing though related to RC's signature and the link to the NASA webpage "NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter" in it.

To me, this is not direct proof. I would say this even if I 100% believed in the BB. Direct proof to me is having dark matter particles being detected in a particle detector. Anything less then this is indirect proof. Therefore, the proof NASA has, I would still consider to be indirect proof. This is not a religious or philosophical position to hold. It is a show me the beef position to hold.

So thanks for the links and arguments. It is very much so making me reevaluate the PC/EU ideas.

Take it easy.

tensordyne,

How's the homework coming along?

 

[Zeuzzz]

Tim Eastman has written a revised version of his Cosmic Agnostisism paper, which is a good read and cites lots of plasma cosmology.

Cosmic Agnosticism, Revisited
Timothy E. Eastman, Ph.D.
Plasmas International, 1225 Edgevale Road Silver Spring, MD 20910

http://journalofcosmology.com/Multiverse5.html

The Big Bang (BB) research program has been highly successful in generating fruitful scientific hypotheses and tests, and has achieved a significant level of confirmation for many hypotheses. However, outstanding questions remain and substantial alternative cosmology models, which also have been fruitful, remain viable and continue to evolve. This paper reviews outstanding issues in cosmology, both those specific to BB and general limitations in developing a comprehensive cosmology. It is unknown how well the BB or any alternative approach will stand up to future tests using burgeoning new data sets and future critical tests and falsification instances. At the present time, there appear to be advantages and yet serious problems for all options – they may all be wrong – thus, the "agnosticism" in physical cosmology. Suggestions are provided for constructive dialogue in cosmology considered in both its philosophical and physical aspects.

 

[Zeuzzz]

And the statement about non-baryoic matter is sort of ignorant, there is non-baryonic matter here on earth. DUH.

I guess Zuezzz does'nt believe in leptons of nutrinos.

No I do, just due their null (rather near insignificant) masses they are not often referred to as matter.

And baryonic matter is made up of smaller parts. Wherther or not they themselves are baryonic is kind of arbitrary.

 

[Zeuzzz]

 

[Zeuzzz]

Obviously Zeuzzz has still not read the Clowe, et. al. paper as I suggested in my reply to his post.

[blah blah]

Well, if you consider that post of mine so wrong, maybe Mr Invicitus could elaborate why he later said of it:

What's unique and amazing about your post is that you're actually almost right.

And if he wants to retract that statement based on what you have brought up.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

No I do, just due their null (rather near insignificant) masses they are not often referred to as matter.

Cite?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Tim Eastman has written a revised version of his Cosmic Agnostisism paper, which is a good read and cites lots of plasma cosmology.

Cosmic Agnosticism, Revisited
Timothy E. Eastman, Ph.D.
Plasmas International, 1225 Edgevale Road Silver Spring, MD 20910

http://journalofcosmology.com/Multiverse5.html

Did you actually read this, Z?

Did you find any glaring - and I mean really, really glaring - errors (or, say, mistakes, misunderstandings, boo-boos, ...)?

For example:

the basic premise of all BB models and most of their contenders, i.e. the requirement that in the "beginning" all of matter was concentrated into a singularity, in which space is not just infinitesimally small, but where there is no space at all, such that the amount of energy stored at the singularity also becomes infinite.

Actually, this is a pretty good document ... to demonstrate that a) Eastman doesn't understand the science of astrophysics (much less cosmology), and b) what a wonderful dog's breakfast you can make when you mix up random selections of crackpot ideas, woo, and serious science.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Quote:
the basic premise of all BB models and most of their contenders, i.e. the requirement that in the "beginning" all of matter was concentrated into a singularity, in which space is not just infinitesimally small, but where there is no space at all, such that the amount of energy stored at the singularity also becomes infinite.

DeiRenDopa
Actually, this is a pretty good document ... to demonstrate that a) Eastman doesn't understand the science of astrophysics (much less cosmology), and b) what a wonderful dog's breakfast you can make when you mix up random selections of crackpot ideas, woo, and serious science.

I would appreciate some help with this. I have seen many comments describing the primordial singularity in the manner above including the statement that not only space, but time itself, began with the BB. I'm not sure about the energy becoming infinite but I have seen statements about infinite density. In what way are Eastman's statements so off the mark?

 

[Reality Check]

And if he wants to retract that statement based on what you have brought up.

This is what sol invictus actually stated in full rather than your bit of quote mining:

So 99% of the matter in the universe is NOT in plasma?!???!!???

What an admission from a PC/EU advocate!

What's unique and amazing about your post is that you're actually almost right. As you point out, the main conclusion we can draw from the Bullet cluster observations by themselves is merely that very little of the mass in those clusters is in plasma.

Of course when you throw in everything else we know from other observations, it's highly unlikely that the excess matter is baryonic (there just aren't any good baryonic candidates) - which is why they weren't very careful with the wording in their paper.

 

[Reality Check]

I would appreciate some help with this. I have seen many comments describing the primordial singularity in the manner above including the statement that not only space, but time itself, began with the BB. I'm not sure about the energy becoming infinite but I have seen statements about infinite density. In what way are Eastman's statements so off the mark?

The BB starts with the set of observations that show that the universe was once in a very hot, very dense state, i.e. has been and is expanding. There is no statement that the universe started as a singularity or that space or time were created at the BB.
Using general relativity to extrapolate backward produces a singularity but general relativity is incomplete (does not include quantum mechanics) at the scales of the size of the universe as we get below the Planck length. Cosmologists treat the singularity as a breakdown of GR rather than a physical object.

Eastman's statements are the creationist equivalent of stating that evolution describes the origin of life.

 

[Perpetual Student]

The BB starts with the set of observations that show that the universe was once in a very hot, very dense state, i.e. has been and is expanding. There is no statement that the universe started as a singularity or that space or time were created at the BB.
Using general relativity to extrapolate backward produces a singularity but general relativity is incomplete (does not include quantum mechanics) at the scales of the size of the universe as we get below the Planck length. Cosmologists treat the singularity as a breakdown of GR rather than a physical object.

Eastman's statements are the creationist equivalent of stating that evolution describes the origin of life.

Well, over the years I have read many such comments made by mainstream cosmologists. The popular literature created by respected cosmologists is replete with such statements.

"The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down."

From Steven Hawking: LINK

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I would appreciate some help with this. I have seen many comments describing the primordial singularity in the manner above including the statement that not only space, but time itself, began with the BB. I'm not sure about the energy becoming infinite but I have seen statements about infinite density. In what way are Eastman's statements so off the mark?

This is way out of my field, but I'm going to report my first impressions of the paper.

The sentences quoted by DeiRenDopa are, as you say, quite similar to what you can read in many other popular expositions of the Big Bang. Note that this is not a research paper; of the five kinds of article published by the Journal of Cosmology, I'd guess that this paper falls into the review, commentary, or speculation categories. Note also that the Journal of Cosmology is a pay-to-publish online journal founded in 2009. If you click on their book review page, you'll find a review of science fiction. Note also the contents of its first volume. The first few paragraphs of the first paper in that first volume may give you some idea of what that journal is willing to publish.

Eastman's review is clearly partial to the steady-state models advocated by Burbridge, Hoyle, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there appear to be good reasons for the general opinion that these steady-state models are incorrect. Eastman's main source is another review paper by Geoffrey Burbridge, whose web page lists his collaborators as Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar, who have been prominent advocates of steady state cosmology. If you look at Burbridge's web page, you will see a short explanation of "quasi-steady state cosmology", including a graph of the cosmic scale factor that resembles a graph you might see for the so-called standard model, surrounded on either side by an infinite number of universes that also resemble the standard model. In other words, even the steady state cosmologists have pretty much given up on traditional steady state cosmology and are now incorporating variations of the Big Bang and Big Crunch into their cosmologies.

Back to Eastland's article. In the first paragraph of section 2, he quotes Burbridge saying "while the black body nature of the radiation was predicted by the big bang theory, the numerical value of the temperature was not, and cannot be". That's pretty misleading. The famous Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper^WP of 1948 argued for Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In 1948 through 1953, Gamow, Alpher, and Herman estimated temperatures ranging from 5 through 50 K; the higher estimates were based on an estimated age for the universe that is now believed to be too low by a factor of 4 to 5. Eastman actually mentions those predictions in paragraph 6 of section 2. When measured in 1965 for the first time, the actual temperature turned out to be 3 K. Eastman acts as though that discrepancy is strong evidence against the Big Bang model.

Ignorant though I be, I could point to several other problems I see in the paper. The above should be enough to give you some idea of why I wasn't impressed.

 

[Perpetual Student]

This is way out of my field, but I'm going to report my first impressions of the paper.

The sentences quoted by DeiRenDopa are, as you say, quite similar to what you can read in many other popular expositions of the Big Bang. Note that this is not a research paper; of the five kinds of article published by the Journal of Cosmology, I'd guess that this paper falls into the review, commentary, or speculation categories. Note also that the Journal of Cosmology is a pay-to-publish online journal founded in 2009. If you click on their book review page, you'll find a review of science fiction. Note also the contents of its first volume. The first few paragraphs of the first paper in that first volume may give you some idea of what that journal is willing to publish.

Eastman's review is clearly partial to the steady-state models advocated by Burbridge, Hoyle, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there appear to be good reasons for the general opinion that these steady-state models are incorrect. Eastman's main source is another review paper by Geoffrey Burbridge, whose web page lists his collaborators as Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar, who have been prominent advocates of steady state cosmology. If you look at Burbridge's web page, you will see a short explanation of "quasi-steady state cosmology", including a graph of the cosmic scale factor that resembles a graph you might see for the so-called standard model, surrounded on either side by an infinite number of universes that also resemble the standard model. In other words, even the steady state cosmologists have pretty much given up on traditional steady state cosmology and are now incorporating variations of the Big Bang and Big Crunch into their cosmologies.

Back to Eastland's article. In the first paragraph of section 2, he quotes Burbridge saying "while the black body nature of the radiation was predicted by the big bang theory, the numerical value of the temperature was not, and cannot be". That's pretty misleading. The famous Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper^WP of 1948 argued for Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In 1948 through 1953, Gamow, Alpher, and Herman estimated temperatures ranging from 5 through 50 K; the higher estimates were based on an estimated age for the universe that is now believed to be too low by a factor of 4 to 5. Eastman actually mentions those predictions in paragraph 6 of section 2. When measured in 1965 for the first time, the actual temperature turned out to be 3 K. Eastman acts as though that discrepancy is strong evidence against the Big Bang model.

Ignorant though I be, I could point to several other problems I see in the paper. The above should be enough to give you some idea of why I wasn't impressed.

I was not referring to the paper. I was asking about the comments quoted, specifically,

"the basic premise of all BB models and most of their contenders, i.e. the requirement that in the "beginning" all of matter was concentrated into a singularity, in which space is not just infinitesimally small, but where there is no space at all, such that the amount of energy stored at the singularity also becomes infinite,"

to which DeiRenDopa and Reality Check appear to object.

 

[Zeuzzz]

careful, someones getting dangerously close to asking questions that will get very different answers according to who replies, which in itself reveals something about the clarity of the theory in question

over and out [for now]

 

[DeiRenDopa]

I was not referring to the paper. I was asking about the comments quoted, specifically,

"the basic premise of all BB models and most of their contenders, i.e. the requirement that in the "beginning" all of matter was concentrated into a singularity, in which space is not just infinitesimally small, but where there is no space at all, such that the amount of energy stored at the singularity also becomes infinite,"

to which DeiRenDopa and Reality Check appear to object.

There are, indeed, lots of popular articles, books, etc in which the Big Bang (theory) is described somewhat similarly to Eastman's characterisation.

And some of those have big names - in physics, astronomy, etc - as authors.

However, I rather doubt you'll find any published papers which describe "BB models" in this way (whether by big name authors or not), and certainly not in the last decade, say.

The two most successful theories we have, in physics, today are General Relativity and the Standard Model (of particle physics). The two are mutually incompatible in the Planck regime^WP^, and mutually incompatible in a particularly fundamental way (some popularisations address this fact well - e.g. IIRC one of Greene's - others, badly).

So any "BB model" of the universe either explicitly excludes the Planck regime (and so says nothing about what happened earlier than ~1 Planck time), or explicitly includes a theory in which QFT and GR are compatible (e.g. string theory, or LQG).

Now everyone serious about cosmology knows (or knew) this, including all the people Eastman cites (e.g. G. Burbidge, Arp, Narlikar), and so, in a serious paper, to write what Eastman did shows gross ignorance (even of the works of G. Burbidge), extreme sloppiness, a coldly cynical intent to mislead, or {insert your fave interpretation here}. It's the kind of nonsense you see all too often on crackpot websites, and is remarkably similar to a standard creationist tactic.

Note that Hawking, even in a popularisation, is not saying what Eastman says.

^ though you need to take WP with a grain of salt

 

[DeiRenDopa]

careful, someones getting dangerously close to asking questions that will get very different answers according to who replies, which in itself reveals something about the clarity of the theory in question

over and out [for now]

So, can we take it that you have admitted - quite openly - that you are merely trolling?

Or that you are quite in favour of the cynically misleading tactics so often used by creationists (and which Eastman seems to have used, perhaps unwittingly)?

Or ... ?

ETA: I, for one, find it amusing that you have, again, elevated what Eastman wrote to the status of "paper", all the time knowing full well just how far from being a paper it is (in the usual sense), as W.D.Clinger so clearly showed.

 

[Reality Check]

Well, over the years I have read many such comments made by mainstream cosmologists. The popular literature created by respected cosmologists is replete with such statements. From Steven Hawking: LINK

That is correct - the popular literature commonly "dumbs down" the language of BB and so there are many comments made by mainstream cosmologists that confuse BB with the origin of the universe or time or space.

Which is a bit of an excuse for Eastman: It is not a scientific paper where he made the comment, just what looks like a commentary in an on-line journal. It does mention peer review but given the mistakes in the commentary it is liley that it was not reviewed.

The fact is that GR breaks down (has a singulatity) at t = 0. No one can say what happens there. Most cosmologists think that this is a bug in GR and will vanish when QM is added.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Thanks, DeiRenDopa and Reality Check.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

That is correct - the popular literature commonly "dumbs down" the language of BB and so there are many comments made by mainstream cosmologists that confuse BB with the origin of the universe or time or space.

Which is a bit of an excuse for Eastman: It is not a scientific paper where he made the comment, just what looks like a commentary in an on-line journal. It does mention peer review but given the mistakes in the commentary it is liley that it was not reviewed.

Re-reading the Eastman article, and sleeping on it, I am pretty much convinced this is pure propaganda, and that its science content is zero.

For example, Eastman knows full well what scientific models are (and are not), so his gross mis-characterisation (the bit I quoted) can only be deliberate.

It gets worse, much worse.

For example, Eastman cites (at least) three crackpot ideas^ as "problems" which "The Big Bang research program and its complex of theories" is "plagued with"!

Then there's his critical (NOT!) assessment of alternatives; for example "Reginald Cahill of Flinders University has introduced a new dynamical theory of space, which has become increasingly successful with explaining both ground-based and space-based experimental results (e.g., Cahill, 2009)" - is Eastman's grasp of physics as poor as Z's (and MM's) so obviously is? Or does he know full well just how woefully inconsistent Cahill's ideas are, not only with the theories they depend on, but also on the relevant observational and experimental results (yet chose to present them with a straight face)?

^ "non-expansion redshifts (Ratcliffe, 2009)", "several viable frequency transfer processes available for quantitative testing (Marmet, 2009; Brynjolfsson, 2009)"