Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Michael Mozina]

Really, it's been given a fair shake.

No, not really, but maybe this information will start to change things as people notice that "hey", *ELETROmagnetic* filaments do exist in space! Maybe they'll start asking questions like how that plasma maintains such high temperatures if it's not "blowing around" at very high speeds (oh look, an E field).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110527/sc_afp/australiaastrophysicsscience

Cosmologists do think about electrical and magnetic fields, and plasma physics, but they consider gravity as the major force in cosmology for very good reasons. I don't think you'll ever be convinced though - I really only engage in this for the sake of passing readers.

Keep in mind edd, that Rome was not built in a day. RC was just complaining that we don't "see" those high energy filaments, but alas some kid just saw them. Sooner or later we'll figure things out, and I'm sure when we do that the E field and indeed gravity as well are the things that make the universe go round. It will be a "combo" deal of course, and it will require that the mainstream accept the concept of a cathode sun, but sooner or later we'll figure it out. It will probably be done just like this discovery, by a child, in their spare time, without a predefined belief that all the "missing stuff" is necessarily exotic in nature.

 

[Michael Mozina]

That's because as far as anyone can tell, current data is fit by Lambda-CDM cosmology.

IMO, assuming that college student's data is correct, I'd say your theory is about to improve in terms of empirical physics by a WHOPPING 20 percent. That would definitely be a step in the right direction IMO.

If you mean the idea that the motion of stars is significantly affected by EM fields, that's completely impossible. It's inconsistent with the laws of physics, full stop.

That is incorrect for two very important reasons. If most of the mass is contained in that high temperature, high speed plasma between the stars, all you really have to do is move that plasma field around and the smaller mass contained in the stars will move, if only due to gravity alone.

Secondly, your premise *ASSUMES* that stars have no charge, and that Birkeland was incorrect about sun's being cathodes. I see no evidence that this assumption is valid.

 

[sol invictus]

IMO, assuming that college student's data is correct, I'd say your theory is about to improve in terms of empirical physics by a WHOPPING 20 percent. That would definitely be a step in the right direction IMO.

I'm not sure what you're referring to.

That is incorrect for two very important reasons. If most of the mass is contained in that high temperature, high speed plasma between the stars, all you really have to do is move that plasma field around and the smaller mass contained in the stars will move, if only due to gravity alone.

Bold mine. Even if that were true, how does it make my statement - that electromagnetic forces cannot have a significant effect on the motion of stars - incorrect?

Secondly, your premise *ASSUMES* that stars have no charge, and that Birkeland was incorrect about sun's being cathodes. I see no evidence that this assumption is valid.

No, it does not. In order for the star to be affected by EM forces, its charge would have to be enormous. If a star had such a huge charge, it would violently explode in an instant.

It's not even close, MM. We did the calculation for you several times. The charge required is ridiculously huge - far, far, far larger than is allowed by the most basic facts about stars.

 

[ben m]

Secondly, your premise *ASSUMES* that stars have no charge, and that Birkeland was incorrect about sun's being cathodes. I see no evidence that this assumption is valid.

Nope. I've done the calculation, giving you the benefit of the doubt and hypothesizing that the Sun is charged up to 1000 Coulombs.

Remember? Do you remember the result of that calculation, Michael? I wouldn't have bothered I had known you planned on pretending it never happened.

For the purposes of understanding acceleration, it doesn't matter whether the sun is "a cathode" or not. Do you have some new force law that acts only on "cathodes", that's not already in my table?

 

[Reality Check]

No, not really, but maybe this information will start to change things as people notice that "hey", *ELETROmagnetic* filaments do exist in space!

Astronomers have been observing 'electromagnetic filaments' in space for decades.
Or maybe you are complaining about reporters not reporting this dull scientific fact enough to make you notice it?

Keep in mind edd, that Rome was not built in a day. RC was just complaining that we don't "see" those high energy filaments, but alas some kid just saw them.

Wrong:
Amelia Fraser-McKelvie found evidence of filaments between galxy clusters.
Galaxy clusters are not galaxies. They are clusters of galaxies.

These filaments were detected via their x-ray emission but Perratt predicts that his galactic filaments woud be visible in a wide spectrum from x-rays to mictowaves. See the forum posting Cluster-sized diffuse radio waveband synchrotron radiation and its footnote:

Peratt makes it clear that he expects the synchrotron radiation from (galactic-sized) "Bennett-pinched filaments" to be observed from the x-ray to the microwave wavebands ... IOW, the plasma processes will generate copious quantities of (highly) relativistic electrons, and the magnetic fields associated with the field aligned currents are strong enough. Needless to say that a lack of synchrotron emission in wavebands other than the radio (and microwave, depending on how you define the bands) is but one more inconsistency between his model and the observed universe.

It will probably be done just like this discovery, by a child, in their spare time, without a predefined belief that all the "missing stuff" is necessarily exotic in nature.

Amelia Fraser-McKelvie is 22 years old (not a child). She has displayed at least a basic knowledge of astronomy rolleyes and should know the scientific evidence for dark matter and its nature (see my signature for examples). She will have the knowledge that the evidence is strong that

• dark matter exists
• it is non-baryonic (i.e. made up of something 'exotic').

This discovery is nothing to do with dark matter or any thing exotic.
The "missing matter" is missing baryonic matter. The observations such as the WMAP data tell us that about 4% of the universe is baryonic matter. But adding up the visible matter that we can see tells us that the universe is made of ~2% baryonic matter.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Nope. I've done the calculation, giving you the benefit of the doubt and hypothesizing that the Sun is charged up to 1000 Coulombs.

Grrr. You seem intent on ignoring my statements Ben. I'm not suggesting it has to be charged up to 1000 Coulombs. Maybe it's only 1% of that number. Maybe it is 5%. Maybe it's .005%. I can't say for sure, but IMO it's unlikely to be ZERO as you seem to imagine. As far back as Birkeland, all suns act as cathodes.

I'm still struggling to get you and Sol to acknowledge that the mass contained in stars is merely 'chump change" compared to the mass that is contained in the plasma filaments between the stars. Those high energy filaments need to be moved. As that plasma body moves due to EM influences, the gravitational changes in the layout of plasma will cause the stars to fall in line. You and Sol seem intent on ignoring the fact that moving suns via an EM field directly is almost if not entirely unnecessary. All you have to do is move plasma, one charged particle at a time. Even Birkeland assumed the the mass contained in the stars was insignificant compared to the mass of the 'flying charged particles'.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Astronomers have been observing 'electromagnetic filaments' in space for decades.

Ya, and they've been euphemistically referring to them as "magnetic slinkies" in space. I'm really curious to see how that new paper plays out. You folks have consistently underestimated the mass in those high energy filaments because you've ignored the "current" flow for so long. It will be interesting to see what happens as you folks realize that the filaments are "current carrying" filaments that are moved around by EM fields.

 

[Tim Thompson]

Solar Net Charge & What Pushes the Sun? II

If most of the mass is contained in that high temperature, high speed plasma between the stars, all you really have to do is move that plasma field around and the smaller mass contained in the stars will move, if only due to gravity alone.

Of course this cannot possibly be true. As already pointed out, this is not physically reasonable. But we also know by observation of stellar magnetospheres that the stars show a significant velocity relative to the interstellar medium. So regardless of what you think, we can simply see that the kind of motion you postulate is not in fact happening.

Secondly, your premise *ASSUMES* that stars have no charge, ...

No it does not (see my previous post). It does assume that electromagnetic forces are not important, but that assumption is based on the observed fact that electromagnetic forces are in fact not important, not on an arbitrary assumption as to the state of stellar net charge.

...and that Birkeland was incorrect about sun's being cathodes. I see no evidence that this assumption is valid.

I see a great deal of evidence that the Sun is not a cathode. The solar wind is essentially charge-neutral, it is not a normal electric current. If the Sun were a cathode there would be a normal electric current flowing either towards or away from the Sun. There is no such current, therefore the Sun is not a cathode. Furthermore, the dynamics of stars in galaxies, and the dynamics of galaxies in galaxy clusters can be easily explained entirely by gravity alone, so why introduce physically unreasonable electromagnetic forces, which have no observational support, in favor of physically reasonable gravity, which has a great deal of observational support?

Particularly inside the solar system, we can predict the motions of spacecraft, moons, planets, asteroids, comets & etc. by the use of gravity only, with the occasional introduction of non-gravitational forces where necessary (e.g., cometary jets, and thermal forces on asteroids like the Yarkovsky effect). No electromagnetic force is required. How is it that electromagnetic forces can literally push hugely massive stars around like toys, and yet have no visible effect on a few pounds of spaceflight hardware or small rocks? It makes no sense.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Bold mine. Even if that were true, how does it make my statement - that electromagnetic forces cannot have a significant effect on the motion of stars - incorrect?

Not directly, no, but indirectly, yes they can. Even Birkeland predicted that "space' was filled with flying charged particles that far outweighed the mass inside of stars. All we have to do is move that plasma between the stars, one charged particle at a time, and the gravitational changes in the plasma field will cause the suns to fall in line with the rest of the mass.

No, it does not. In order for the star to be affected by EM forces, its charge would have to be enormous. If a star had such a huge charge, it would violently explode in an instant.

Agreed, but...

Consider the effect of "dark energy" for moment. It doesn't "show up" in the lab because it's effect locally is supposedly 'very small'. On the other hand, that small effect over vast distances has a much "larger", more "measurable' effect. It essentially works like "dark energy' because EM field have seemed "dark" to us because nobody has been paying attention to the CURRENTS.

The point Sol is that you don't have to move the suns directly anymore that dark energy has to move them directly.

 

[GeeMack]

Grrr. You seem intent on ignoring my statements Ben. I'm not suggesting it has to be charged up to 1000 Coulombs. Maybe it's only 1% of that number. Maybe it is 5%. Maybe it's .005%. I can't say for sure, but IMO it's unlikely to be ZERO as you seem to imagine. As far back as Birkeland, all suns act as cathodes.

So nobody knows anything at all quantitatively about that nutty electric Sun/Universe idea. It might be a million percent, it might be 0.00000000000547%. But "it's unlikely to be ZERO", asserted with no objective quantitative support. And a dozen people on Earth think that's how the process of science works? And the whole world of physicists are supposed to just drop all the real science they're currently involved in, abandon all the real data, and go along with that. Meet the cranks half way. Come to an agreement somewhere in the middle of something that works and something that doesn't. And all because someone on some Internet forums said so? I think we would all agree that's simply ridiculous.

 

[Tim Thompson]

Galactic baryonic mass

I'm still struggling to get you and Sol to acknowledge that the mass contained in stars is merely 'chump change" compared to the mass that is contained in the plasma filaments between the stars.

Then you are in real trouble. The mass of the filaments in a spiral galaxy amounts to about 10% of the galaxy's baryonic mass, the rest being stars. And of course, in elliptical galaxies there are generally no such filaments at all.

 

[GeeMack]

Not directly, no, but indirectly, yes they can. Even Birkeland predicted that "space' was filled with flying charged particles that far outweighed the mass inside of stars.

Where is the citation to that? Where did Birkeland write that he believed space was filled with particles "that far outweighed the mass inside of stars"? Really. Birkeland has been discussed many times on this forum, and way more often than not those taking the against-the-mainstream position have been proven wrong in their claims or to have been lying about what Birkeland wrote. Is this another one of those cases? Or is there some citation to where Birkeland calculated the mass of the Universe and determined that the particles he hypothesized "far outweighed the mass inside of stars"?

 

[ben m]

Grrr. You seem intent on ignoring my statements Ben. I'm not suggesting it has to be charged up to 1000 Coulombs. Maybe it's only 1% of that number. Maybe it is 5%. Maybe it's .005%. I can't say for sure, but IMO it's unlikely to be ZERO as you seem to imagine.

Even worse. In Peratt's simulations, stars are able to accelerate only because he effectively gives them 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Coulomb charges. If the charge is much less than that, EM forces don't have any effect on them.

I'm still struggling to get you and Sol to acknowledge that the mass contained in stars is merely 'chump change" compared to the mass that is contained in the plasma filaments between the stars.

In our part of the galaxy, that's not true at all. (It's true in dwarf galaxies and in intergalactic space. The Milky Way disk is dominated by stars.)

Those high energy filaments need to be moved. As that plasma body moves due to EM influences, the gravitational changes in the layout of plasma will cause the stars to fall in line. You and Sol seem intent on ignoring the fact that moving suns via an EM field directly is almost if not entirely unnecessary. All you have to do is move plasma, one charged particle at a time.

Nonsense. Utter baloney. Go look at the equations of gravity, Michael. It's a central force law, not a gentle breeze. A star embedded in a uniform stationary plasma feels a gravitational attraction to the center-of-mass of the plasma. A star embedded in a plasma moving real fast under EM forces feels ... um, a gravitational attraction to the center-of-mass of the plasma. Gravity doesn't care about velocity differentials.

You are making up a "drag" version of gravity out of pure imagination.

And it wouldn't fit the data even if it were true. What sort of "drag" force could rigidly carry the Sun, Alpha Centauri, etc. al, straight towards Cygnus at 220km/s, but let Barnard's Star run 45 degrees away from that in-plane, and Kapetyn's Star at a nearly right angles out-of-plane? Go find a drag-inducing fluid that does that.

I'm repeating myself again. Please note that I already explained this issue, just a few posts ago: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7223536&postcount=4324 Was there something unclear in that explanation? Or did you skip it? Or think it was wrong?

 

[Michael Mozina]

Where is the citation to that?

It's in his book that you refuse to read. I'll give you a hint. As I recall the calculation he did is pretty close the sig line that I use, so you can do a search on the document for my sig line and find it if you are actually interested in "truth". What's the point of asking for citations when you never read them, acknowledge them or respond to them anyway?

I don't even know why you engage me in conversations on this forum. Ben and Sol and Tim and most everyone else I have respect for because they know something about science. You do not. The only reason you post to my threads is to harass me personally. You have no other motive or reason for posting here in fact.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Even worse. In Peratt's simulations, stars are able to accelerate only because he effectively gives them 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Coulomb charges.

FYI, I'm not emotionally attached to Peratt's model.

Birkeland suggested it operated at about a 600 million volts. I'm not sure in terms of net charge how that works out at the surface, let alone at the heliosphere.

If the charge is much less than that, EM forces don't have any effect on them.

Dark energy doesn't have much effect on them directly either, does it? I am inclined to believe that you're looking at the acceleration process from the microscopic level, when you should be looking for it to begin at a much "larger" (galactic) scale. The basic acceleration comes from cosmic rays, and high energy intergalactic plasmas that act first and foremost on the *E*m field of galaxies. The EM field around a galaxy shelter the suns from direct acceleration/influence just as the sun's heliosphere shelters us from interstellar winds, and just as the Earth's magnetosphere shelters us from million mile per hour solar winds.

IMO your approaching the acceleration process entirely backwards. You have to approach it like you approach "dark energy". The effect would have to be "large" on individual highly charge intergalactic plasmas, "smaller" on interstellar events, and "smaller still" inside of a solar system and/or magnetosphere.

Nonsense. Utter baloney. Go look at the equations of gravity, Michael. It's a central force law, not a gentle breeze.

Put it this way. It only takes a "gentle breeze" to accelerate individual plasma ions at the intergalactic level. The movement of those plasmas dictate the direction and movement of all other "objects" in the gravitational influence of those plasmas.

A star embedded in a uniform stationary plasma feels a gravitational attraction to the center-of-mass of the plasma.

Think more in terms of a speck of non ionized material embedded in a "current" flow of plasmas. In other words, the plasma is not stationary, it's accelerating, as are all the objects embedded in the manifold. If we used Einstein's analogy, it's like a bunch of objects sitting on a MOVING and "stretching", very "dense" rubber sheet. The objects embedded in the rubber sheet are just along for the ride.

 

[GeeMack]

It's in his book that you refuse to read. I'll give you a hint. As I recall the calculation he did is pretty close the sig line that I use, so you can do a search on the document for my sig line and find it if you are actually interested in "truth". What's the point of asking for citations when you never read them, acknowledge them or respond to them anyway?

I could accept the refusal to provide citation accompanied by the dishonest attempt to deflect the burden of proof as an acknowledgement that the claim was another example of...

[...] more often than not those taking the against-the-mainstream position have been proven wrong in their claims or to have been lying about what Birkeland wrote.

But I think it's safe to just say Birkeland never did any such calculation, never wrote anything of the sort, and that this comment...

Even Birkeland predicted that "space' was filled with flying charged particles that far outweighed the mass inside of stars.

... is simply not true. It might be the second most ridiculous misinterpretation of anything Birkeland supposedly wrote, falling right behind the ridiculous notion that he was proposing the Sun has a solid surface and was modeling it with his terrella experiments. A citation supporting the claim that "Birkeland predicted that 'space' was filled with flying charged particles that far outweighed the mass inside of stars", objectively interpreted by physicists rather than crackpots, would show I'm wrong.

I don't even know why you engage me in conversations on this forum. Ben and Sol and Tim and most everyone else I have respect for because they know something about science. You do not. The only reason you post to my threads is to harass me personally. You have no other motive or reason for posting here in fact.

I am a good skeptic, and part of being a good skeptic is spotting failed arguments built on unsupported claims, logical fallacies, lies, inconsistencies, and nonsense. It's what puts the "E" in JREF. Admittedly it's especially easy to do in the against-the-mainstream threads because all the arguments put forth by those opposing legitimate science are destined to fail.

So back to the topic. How's that objective quantitative argument against dark matter and dark energy, or offering a plausible supportable alternative explanation coming along?

 

[Michael Mozina]

But I think it's safe to just say Birkeland never did any such calculation, never wrote anything of the sort...

Page 720:

It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. We have assumed that each stellar system evolutions throws off electric corpuscles into space. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to think that the greater part of the material masses in the universe is found, not in the solar systems or nebula, but in "empty" space.
Let us see how thickly we should have to imagine iron atoms, for instance, distributed in space between the sun and the nearest star, a Centauri, if, in a sphere with the distance 4.4 light-years as radius we assumed a mass equal to that of our solar system to be evenly distributed.

The mass of our solar system may be estimated at 2 X io33 grammes (see Young, General Astnnomy, pp. 97 and 603). The distance to a Centauri is 4 X io 18 centimetres, and the volume of the said sphere about the sun would thus be 2.7 X io50 cubic centimetres.

If the mass of our solar system be distributed over this sphere, there will be 7.5 X io - 4 grammes per cubic centimetre.

If the mass of an iron atom be put at 5.6 X io - 3 grammes, we find that there will fall i iron atom upon every 8 cubic centimetres of the sphere in question.

It seems as if no known facts can prevent us from assuming by hypothesis that the average density of these flying ions and uncharged atoms and molecules might very well be, for instance, 100 times greater than that found above.

I think it's safe to say that you've demonstrated again that you lie and lie often.

 

[ben m]

Birkeland suggested it operated at about a 600 million volts. I'm not sure in terms of net charge how that works out at the surface, let alone at the heliosphere.

It doesn't operate at 600 MV. If it did, solar wind ions and electrons would have a minimum energy of 600 MeV.

(If it matters 600MV would arise from a 700,000,000 C charge. Nothing at all in terms of force on the Sun)

Dark energy doesn't have much effect on them directly either, does it?

Dark energy is a term in the source term of GR; it has the same sort of effect (same force constant, same equivalence principle, etc.) as any other gravitational attraction.

I am inclined to believe that you're looking at the acceleration process from the microscopic level, when you should be looking for it to begin at a much "larger" (galactic) scale. The basic acceleration comes from cosmic rays, and high energy intergalactic plasmas that act first and foremost on the *E*m field of galaxies. The EM field around a galaxy shelter the suns from direct acceleration/influence just as the sun's heliosphere shelters us from interstellar winds, and just as the Earth's magnetosphere shelters us from million mile per hour solar winds.

Gibberish. You're still imagining a force on a wispy cloud, and somehow that force drags the Sun along. Imagination isn't good enough. If some gentle force makes the Earth's atmosphere move horizontally, that doesn't "magically" drag sailboats along with it. The sailboat is coupled to the atmosphere via ordinary, known forces. If that coupling is weak, the sailboat sits there (no net acceleration) and the wind just moves past it. If the coupling is strong, the sailboat accelerates to catch up with the wind. But the force on the sailboat is a force on the sailboat, in this case a gas pressure differential across the sails.

If there were a Galactic EM force on some wispy plasma around the Sun, what force actually tells the Sun to accelerate along with the plasma? It doesn't have to; "the force pulls the plasma away and the Sun stays behind" is a perfectly physical possibility. I provided you a table of possible forces that would move the Sun itself. Pick one.

 

[Michael Mozina]

But I think it's safe to just say Birkeland never did any such calculation, never wrote anything of the sort, and that this comment...... is simply not true. It might be the second most ridiculous misinterpretation of anything Birkeland supposedly wrote,.....

FYI, he finished up all his calculations including electrons on page 721 with the following statement:

We see from the above that it is not impossible that future investigations will show that without coming into conflict with experience in any way here mentioned, we may reckon that there are more than ten thousand times greater masses gathered as flying corpuscles in "empty" space than the masses in the stars and nebulae.

 

[GeeMack]

FYI, he finished up all his calculations including electrons on page 721 with the following statement:

Oh. So Birkeland was just guessing. And what exactly, in objective and quantitative terms, are corpuscles? Looks like Birkeland had a hunch scientists might find that dark matter stuff.