Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not

[Reality Check]

We are talking about the theory of plasma cosmology here and PC theory is the theory that explains the Plasma theory of nucleosynthesis.

Wrong: the theory of plasma cosmology does not exist. Thus we cannot be discussing it.

We are discussing the various mutually exclusive and mostly invalid theories that people have tried to explain onservations with. They have failed.

...usual Lerner papers listed...
Blah Blah Blahdy Blah.

Quite correct: Blah Blah Blahdy Blah.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Recent data is "irrelevant to PC"

Yes, recent data can, and most likely is, irrelevant to pc. The recent study on the ritual mating regimen of Afrian swallows is probably just as irrelevant to pc as to BBT. As may be the data collected on the geophysical properties of reconnection regions in small terrestrial systems.

Unless you can show why it either falsifies PC, or proves BBT (as I said above *sigh*) then its just irrelevant data!

Listen carefully

Yes sir.

if I tell you that the Universe today has X g/cc baryons, Y g/cc dark matter, and Z g/cc dark energy, and a Hubble constant H (all measurable), then BBT tells you that the CMB should be a blackbody at 2.73K, nearly-but-not-exactly isotropic, with perfectly Gaussian fluctuations with a peak-y angular power spectrum, and from the four numbers X,Y,Z,H you can predict exactly where all of the peaks are. Then it tells you that the CMB should be polarized, with the polarization all in the E-mode, and it tells you how to predict the TE and EE cross-power angular spectra.

All of those predictions[?] are confirmed.

The specifics of this when I press you could be very interesting

While I get some much needed kip (night shifts + free parties are always a baaaaad combo) I cant help but notice I seem to have touched a nerve, Ben. Why suddenly so condescending and dismissive? Was it the references and evidence I gave above?

 

[ben m]

Zeuzzz, I didn't see whatever you put up before deleting it, but if it's about the epistemological basis of science in the case of plasma cosmology, I don't care. You have fragments of a theory that bluntly does not agree with observations at all. You seem to think that it will agree with observations some time in the future when someone does more calculations.

If someone gets around to doing some actual PC calculations of actual precision cosmology observables (the CMB TT, TE, and EE power spectra, the BBN ratios; LSS, LyA, BAO, SNe, weak lensing)---THEN we'll see if there is any match at all. Then we'll see what the actual statistical power (chi^2/dof) of that match is.

Save your "epistomology" post for the day that you want to compare two hypotheses that both pass statistical tests. PC isn't wrong because of some subtle statistical issue, or because its priors were biased, or because of the difference between frequentist and Bayesian statistics. PC is wrong because none of the stuff it says is out there is actually out there.

 

[ben m]

Yes, recent data can, and most likely is, irrelevant to pc.

So PC (whatever it is)

a) Doesn't know or care what determines the size scale of galaxies and voids (LSS, LyA) or how far away they are (weak lensing, SZ) or the tight correlation between their distances, redshifts, and time dilations (SNe).

b) Doesn't know or care why the CMB is a blackbody, doesn't care how uniform it is, doesn't care about its polarization, and doesn't care about any of the details of its nonuniformities.

c) Doesn't know or care what elements and isotopes are found in old, unprocessed gas.

d) Doesn't care about the apparent masses of galaxy clusters (strong lensing, virial velocities, ICM temperatures) or galaxies (rotation curves, disk oscillations).

Not much left, is there? What does PC care about at high redshift? It sounds like PC is a theory of cosmology that ignores everything very far away, except for Arp's five quasar photos.

Unless you can show why it either falsifies PC, or proves BBT (as I said above *sigh*) then its just irrelevant data!

OK, let's go. PC proposes, as far as I can tell, that the CMB is the "thermalized" leftovers of high-redshift objects whose light has to pass through lots of Mystery Filaments between the sources and ourselves. PC therefore predicts an anticorrelation between the CMB brightness ("lots of gas") and LSS voids ("big redshift gaps" = "wall of of Mystery Filaments" in PC). This is obviously false. PC predicts that the CMB is unpolarized, also false. PC predicts that the CMB anisotropies are strongly non-Gaussian, also false.

PC proposes, as far as I can tell, that redshift is an absorption/scattering phenomenon with a magic broadband absorber. Even if the absorber actually exists, this predicts no correlation between redshift and time-dilation, which SNe data proves false.

The specifics of this when I press you could be very interesting

What, do you think I'm making this up? Don't press me, go read one of the carefully-written pedagogical sources. Read an astro textbook. Read the Wiki article. Play with the CMBFast applet (http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/cmbfast_form.pl).

 

[Zeuzzz]

might as well make it 3 days and ten minutes ... [this may make absolutely no sense, disclaimer]

Think the issue in this thread as to why posts are nearly 100% disagreements and never focusing on any potential common ground is either that too many people have too much invested in the work they are defending to make any concessions, or a lack of realization on both parts that PC and BBT are by no means at all mutually exclusive and in fact share more in common than they differ in (albeit the differences are quite majorly contrasting epistemic building blocks to build from), or is the main issue that most people that bundle in here and make a "valid point" that refutes everything I said assume that I have no counterpoint and there is no valid answer thus why is the thread still going? To nearly all I have a (subjectively) valid retort, but the inundation of replies and misunderstandings I get after each post makes me have to ignore the majority and choose which ones to answer to. Else I would have no life outside this, admittedly awesome, forum. But maybe I'd have a nobel prize instead. But I'm quite happy with my current balance of cosmology intrigue / real life tbh.


Im probs going to request a moderated thread on plasma cosmology with the goal of:


a) Giving a thread like this an ordered structure where when a person asks a question the ONLY person who can answer may have to be the person asked, or if another person has a point that also directly answers it. Rather than the current trend of people being excruciatingly pedantic by nitpicking mistakes or ambiguous points in each post while ignoring the actual underlying point being made.

b) Big Bang advocates can explain exactly how all the data collected by the one main cosmological theory in the game that actually gets investment to test its hypothesis still strengthens the premise of the original theory (and similar offshoots), and on what basis are the premises of alternative theories undermined. Case by case, data-set by data-set, if need be.

c) No arguments from authority, ad homs or short unsupported assertions attacking each side of the argument senselessly.

d) Clearly reference where the predictions said to make BBT such a powerful theory were made, with dates, numbers, magnitudes, etc, and match each with the subsequent data confirmation, amount of deviation and what subsequent changes were made, followed by what the data says now and if it is still in agreement.

e) Expand on the idea that as cosmology its really not like any other science, and how this greatly effects the way that people can approach this and if applying standard scientific principles from different scientific disciplines is an erroneous use of these techniques in cosmology.

f) What data and cosmically relevant aspects we a) are likely to know in the near future that we dont now b) may not know for sure for centuries c) can never know (not "never", a real specified finite number that does not literally mean "never", else practically everything is "technically" possible in some form or the other with infinite time) d) what these constraints put on how cosmolog(ies) can progresses compared to theories in other fields.

g) Why do they classify the "sun" a star when its quite clearly much brighter, hotter and bigger than all the others in the universe?

OAO.

 

[Tubbythin]

might as well make it 3 days and ten minutes ... [this may make absolutely no sense, disclaimer]

Think the issue in this thread as to why posts are nearly 100% disagreements and never focusing on any potential common ground is either that too many people have too much invested in the work they are defending to make any concessions, or a lack of realization on both parts that PC and BBT are by no means at all mutually exclusive and in fact share more in common than they differ in (albeit the differences are quite majorly contrasting epistemic building blocks to build from), or is the main issue that most people that bundle in here and make a "valid point" that refutes everything I said assume that I have no counterpoint and there is no valid answer thus why is the thread still going? To nearly all I have a (subjectively) valid retort, but the inundation of replies and misunderstandings I get after each post makes me have to ignore the majority and choose which ones to answer to. Else I would have no life outside this, admittedly awesome, forum. But maybe I'd have a nobel prize instead. But I'm quite happy with my current balance of cosmology intrigue / real life tbh.

I have absolutely nothing invested in the Big Bang theory.

 

[Dancing David]

Zeuzzz, the issue as always is... what model of PC explains what data that is observed?

 

[Zeuzzz]

OK, let's go. PC proposes, as far as I can tell, that the CMB is the "thermalized" leftovers of high-redshift objects whose light has to pass through lots of Mystery Filaments between the sources and ourselves. PC therefore predicts an anticorrelation between the CMB brightness ("lots of gas") and LSS voids ("big redshift gaps" = "wall of of Mystery Filaments" in PC). This is obviously false. PC predicts that the CMB is unpolarized, also false. PC predicts that the CMB anisotropies are strongly non-Gaussian, also false.

PC proposes, as far as I can tell, that redshift is an absorption/scattering phenomenon with a magic broadband absorber. Even if the absorber actually exists, this predicts no correlation between redshift and time-dilation, which SNe data proves false.

Tumm tee tum, cosmological paradox central alert

okies I can play your game (not today though, for sure!) Give me the five original pillar-stone predictions the Big Bang made and I can pretty much parrot each of them with an easily found falsification too I bet.

Heres a few for your picking.

Hows about the homogeneous state prediction?
The isotropic nature of the CMB?
The random anisotropy of the CBR?
Light Element Abundance densities?
Surface brightness should decrease as (z+1)^-3, as to be expected by an expanding universe?

Take your pick

 

[Tubbythin]

Im probs going to request a moderated thread on plasma cosmology with the goal of:

Oh, and I'm not participating in an unnecssesarily moderated thread

 

[Tubbythin]

Original pillar stone predictions hmmm...
1) On the large scale the Universe should look the same in all directions.
2) It should, however, not long the same as we go back in distance and therefore time (Ie distribution of cosmological radio sources).
3) The hydrogen to helium ratio.
4)The existence of an almost perfectly isotropic perfect blackbody spectrum to be found somewhere in the microwave region of the EM spectrum.
Errrmm...
5)The lack of anything older than the (accurately) measured time since the Big Bang.

 

[Reality Check]

Im probs going to request a moderated thread on plasma cosmology with the goal of:

Well the first post in that thread will be similar to the OP:
Zeuzzz: Provide a defintion of the plasma cosmology model. i.e.
Match up each theory that pc uses with the cosmological observation that it uniquely (no mutually exclusive theories) explains. So we would expect a list like

• Red shift is explained by theory A (and only theory A).
• The CMB is explained by theory B (and only theory B).
• Nucleosynthesisis is explained by theory C (and only theory C).
• The large scale structure is explained by theory D (and only theory D).
• etc.

(N.B. Some observations can be explained by the same theory)
The collection of theories A, B, C ... are the plasma cosmology model.

If you cannot provide such a list then plasma cosmology does not exist except as already noted in this thread: Collections of mutually exclusive, mostly invalid theories that various people have put together according to their own personal criteria.

An equivalent list for BBT (not that this is relevant to this thread) would be

• Red shift is explained by an expanding universe
• The CMB is explained by an expanding universe (it was once in a hot dense state).
• Nucleosynthesisis is explained by an expanding universe (it was once in a hot dense state).
  (And yes: lithium abundance is a problem for BBT)
• The large scale structure is explained by gravity acting on matter.
• etc.

 

[ben m]

I can pretty much parrot each of them with an easily found falsification too I bet.

Of course, you'll search through Thunderbolts and parrot whatever they said. If they say "Dark energy isn't real because my fillings told me so" is that a falsification? If they say "The CMB can't be emitted by hydrogen because hydrogen emits UV" is that a falsification?

Hows about the homogeneous state prediction?

What do you mean?

The isotropic nature of the CMB?
The random anisotropy of the CBR?
Light Element Abundance densities?

All fit LCDM perfectly, this is well known.

Surface brightness should decrease as (z+1)^-3, as to be expected by an expanding universe?

Surface brightness---of what objects, in what wavelength band? To predict the surface brightness of high-redshift galaxies you need to know (a) how far away the galaxies are, (b) the geometry of the intervening spacetime, and (c) the intrinsic luminosity. Galaxy luminosities have changed over cosmic time in a very complex fashion---at z=10 galaxies are newborn objects consisting mostly of unprocessed gas but undergoing rapid star formation; most of the stars are short-lived giants. At z=3,2,1,0 galaxies are gas-depleted, are forming very few stars, have formed dust and metals, have been through several mergers, etc.., and the stellar mass function is different. In other words: luminosity depends on z for many reasons, which get multiplied by to the distance/geometry factor.

LCDM gets distance and geometry right (ingredients (a) and (b)).

LCDM plus everything else we know about star formation appears to get luminosities right (http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403293) but this is obviously a less precise job, so we're doing OK on (c) too.

 

[ben m]

LCDM plus everything else we know about star formation appears to get luminosities right (http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403293) but this is obviously a less precise job, so we're doing OK on (c) too.

I want to add one more comment to this. Why is a mainstream physicist (like me) allowed to say "you test LCDM theory with SNe1a, not with Tolman surface brightness", but I get to complain if Lerner says "You don't test PC with SNe1a, you test it by looking for close quasars pairs"? Isn't that a double standard? I don't think it is.

The reason SNe1a is a good test of LCDM is not "because it matches". SNe1a is a good test of LCDM because this test has a strong potential for falsification. It is known a priori that the theory calculations are very precise. It is known a priori that the measurements can be done with low systematic error---SN1a are called "standard candles" for a reason. Therefore, you embark on this measurement knowing that the results will stand up to scrutiny no matter what they tell you.

Tolman surface brightness? Observationally it's a mess (as you know ahead of time); it's a morass of filters, flux-limited area estimators, foreground stars, etc.. Theoretically it's worse; you need all of this star-formation history and merger history in the model, and you need it all to fit together well enough to synthesize spectra. You know this ahead of time. You know, ahead of time, that if Calculation A disagrees with Observation B, someone will try again with a different filter set and star-formation model and get a different result. (That's how science works.)

Nobody is allowed to ignore a test which has high falsification potential---a test, like SNe1a are for LCDM, that's precise and unambiguous both on the theory side and the observation side. That's not to say that the tests are the same for all theories.

All of the tests that could have falsified LCDM---BBN, SNe1a, CMB, CMBpol, weak lensing, etc., I've been through this before---have agreed with it. They have not forced it to add parameters.

What are the list of tests that could have falsified PC? Let's look. We're looking for the list of phenomena for which PC can make a rock-solid and precise theoretical calculation---not an approximate one, not a photo of a terella and the words "sort of scale this up", not an elliptical screed about how that there's something weird about LCDM. SNe? Nope. CDM? Nope. Tolman? Sort of; Lerner presents a theory paper of extraordinarily low quality, with missing data and entirely without error bars, on a test where we know the observations suck, so No. BBN? (My home institution, an extremely large research university, doesn't subscribe to the obscure journal where the supposed PC BBN theory is published.) BAO? LSS? Weak lensing? I'm trying here, Zeuzzz. What precise cosmology calculation has strong falsification potential for PC?

None. Go down the list of precisely observed bits of cosmology, and right down the list you'll see PC avoiding precise calculations. Go down the list of PC's precise predictive calculations, and you'll see ... oh wait. Go down the list of PC's vaguely mathematical sort-of-calculations and you'll see a list of qualitative or otherwise imprecise observations.

Why the anticorrelation? What makes precision-observables so hard for PC to calculate?

 

[dafydd]

Zeuzzz, the issue as always is... what model of PC explains what data that is observed?

As a long time lurker I would like that question answered too.

 

[Dancing David]

I want to add one more comment to this. Why is a mainstream physicist (like me) allowed to say "you test LCDM theory with SNe1a, not with Tolman surface brightness", but I get to complain if Lerner says "You don't test PC with SNe1a, you test it by looking for close quasars pairs"? Isn't that a double standard? I don't think it is.

The reason SNe1a is a good test of LCDM is not "because it matches". SNe1a is a good test of LCDM because this test has a strong potential for falsification. It is known a priori that the theory calculations are very precise. It is known a priori that the measurements can be done with low systematic error---SN1a are called "standard candles" for a reason. Therefore, you embark on this measurement knowing that the results will stand up to scrutiny no matter what they tell you.

Tolman surface brightness? Observationally it's a mess (as you know ahead of time); it's a morass of filters, flux-limited area estimators, foreground stars, etc.. Theoretically it's worse; you need all of this star-formation history and merger history in the model, and you need it all to fit together well enough to synthesize spectra. You know this ahead of time. You know, ahead of time, that if Calculation A disagrees with Observation B, someone will try again with a different filter set and star-formation model and get a different result. (That's how science works.)

Nobody is allowed to ignore a test which has high falsification potential---a test, like SNe1a are for LCDM, that's precise and unambiguous both on the theory side and the observation side. That's not to say that the tests are the same for all theories.

All of the tests that could have falsified LCDM---BBN, SNe1a, CMB, CMBpol, weak lensing, etc., I've been through this before---have agreed with it. They have not forced it to add parameters.

What are the list of tests that could have falsified PC? Let's look. We're looking for the list of phenomena for which PC can make a rock-solid and precise theoretical calculation---not an approximate one, not a photo of a terella and the words "sort of scale this up", not an elliptical screed about how that there's something weird about LCDM. SNe? Nope. CDM? Nope. Tolman? Sort of; Lerner presents a theory paper of extraordinarily low quality, with missing data and entirely without error bars, on a test where we know the observations suck, so No. BBN? (My home institution, an extremely large research university, doesn't subscribe to the obscure journal where the supposed PC BBN theory is published.) BAO? LSS? Weak lensing? I'm trying here, Zeuzzz. What precise cosmology calculation has strong falsification potential for PC?

None. Go down the list of precisely observed bits of cosmology, and right down the list you'll see PC avoiding precise calculations. Go down the list of PC's precise predictive calculations, and you'll see ... oh wait. Go down the list of PC's vaguely mathematical sort-of-calculations and you'll see a list of qualitative or otherwise imprecise observations.

Why the anticorrelation? What makes precision-observables so hard for PC to calculate?

Wonderful post!

Thanks.

 

[Dancing David]

As a long time lurker I would like that question answered too.

Well it is usually the issue with all the PC threads, not unique to Zeuzzz, but a question I have been asking him for about three years.

 

[ben m]

OK, let's go. PC proposes, as far as I can tell, that the CMB is the "thermalized" leftovers of high-redshift objects whose light has to pass through lots of Mystery Filaments between the sources and ourselves. PC therefore predicts an anticorrelation between the CMB brightness ("lots of gas") and LSS voids ("big redshift gaps" = "wall of of Mystery Filaments" in PC). This is obviously false. PC predicts that the CMB is unpolarized, also false. PC predicts that the CMB anisotropies are strongly non-Gaussian, also false.

PC proposes, as far as I can tell, that redshift is an absorption/scattering phenomenon with a magic broadband absorber. Even if the absorber actually exists, this predicts no correlation between redshift and time-dilation, which SNe data proves false.

I know there are a lot of intervening posts, but: do you think the above statements are incorrect evaluations of PC theory? If so, in what way---either "PC evaluates to the opposite of what you say", or "PC makes no prediction at all for those things"? Or perhaps "Because I know PC is the best theory, I expect it can't fail in those ways, so until I find more information I'll stick with that."?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Tumm tee tum, cosmological paradox central alert

okies I can play your game (not today though, for sure!) Give me the five original pillar-stone predictions the Big Bang made and I can pretty much parrot each of them with an easily found falsification too I bet.

Heres a few for your picking.

Hows about the homogeneous state prediction?
The isotropic nature of the CMB?
The random anisotropy of the CBR?
Light Element Abundance densities?
Surface brightness should decrease as (z+1)^-3, as to be expected by an expanding universe?

Take your pick

Still doing your woo-spam/seagull thing eh Zeuzzzzz?

Shall I remind you of the fact that you promised - a long time ago now - to start answering the many dozen questions I asked you, of material you posted earlier in this thread?

And will you now do yet another disappearing act, true to seagull form?

 

[BeAChooser]

Listen carefully: if I tell you that the Universe today has X g/cc baryons, Y g/cc dark matter, and Z g/cc dark energy, and a Hubble constant H (all measurable), then BBT tells you that the CMB should be a blackbody at 2.73K, nearly-but-not-exactly isotropic, with perfectly Gaussian fluctuations with a peak-y angular power spectrum, and from the four numbers X,Y,Z,H you can predict exactly where all of the peaks are. Then it tells you that the CMB should be polarized, with the polarization all in the E-mode, and it tells you how to predict the TE and EE cross-power angular spectra.

All of those predictions are confirmed.

Hmmmm. Does this screw things up?

http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/universe-more-stars-galaxy-red-dwarf-02122010/

A new study suggests that a blunder of cosmic proportions has been made when estimating the total number of stars in the universe; the research points out that a specific kind of galaxy has 10 times more red dwarf stars than previously estimated. This would not only triple the number of stars throughout the universe, but also hold significant implications for how galaxies and stars form and evolve.

Because it looks like X and Y just changed.

 

[ben m]

Hmmmm. Does this screw things up?

http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/universe-more-stars-galaxy-red-dwarf-02122010/



Because it looks like X and Y just changed.

Nope. The accurate baryon budget ("X" in my formulation) is best measured via the CMB, when all of the baryons were in the gas/plasma whose acoustic waves we're measuring. Much later on these baryons divide themselves up into cluster gas, galactic gas, big stars, small stars, dead stars, etc. In fact, it's quite hard to find enough modern stars/gas to add up to the CMB baryon count, so the presumption has always been that one of these modern star/gas budgets has come up somewhat short. If anything, then, this helps cosmology, by bringing the imprecise modern X closer into agreement with the precise CMB X.

The details of the late-time star counts---like the ratio of red dwarfs to giant stars or whatever---are not relevant to cosmology in the slightest. (High mass stars are often relevant to cosmology---they're the ones that drove reionization, they're the ones that go supernova and move metals around, the ones that dominate star-formation which is the only thing visible at high redshift, etc.)