• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Universe's expansion may be understood without dark energy

Cheetah

Master Poster
Cheetah
Joined
Feb 4, 2010
Messages
2,934
Location
South Africa
"Using Maupertuis’ form of the principle of least action, Arto Annila has calculated that the brightness of light from Type 1a supernovae after traveling many millions of light-years to Earth agrees well with observations of the known amount of energy in the universe, and doesn’t require dark energy or any other additional driving force."

For the less scientifically literate:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-supernovae-universe-expansion-understood-dark.html


The original article:

ABSTRACT
The variational principle in its original form á la Maupertuis is used to delineate paths of light through varying energy densities and to associate shifts in frequency and changes in momentum. The gravitational bending and Doppler shift are in this way found as mere manifestations of least-time energy dispersal. In particular, the general principle of least action due to Maupertuis accounts for the brightness of Type 1a supernovae versus redshift without introducing extraneous parameters or invoking conjectures such as dark energy. Likewise, the least-time principle explains the gravitational lensing without the involvement of additional ingredients such as dark matter. Moreover, time delays along curved geodesics relative to straight paths are obtained from the ratio of the local to global energy density. According to the principle of least action the Universe is expanding uniformly due to the irrevocable least-time consumption of diverse forms of bound energy to the lowest form of energy, i.e. the free electromagnetic radiation.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.19242.x/abstract;jsessionid=D205CF1C8887378A648B632E8EC19739.d03t04

This just sounds too simple and I'm skeptical, but don't understand enough of the physics to draw a conclusion.
 
Last edited:
I don't know how much http://www.helsinki.fi/~aannila/arto/light.pdf differs from the published version but... well... fig 3 needs error bars or we can't tell much, and some actual stats on the fits would be good.

And isn't it all a bit Newtonian?

There's a lot of oddness but I'll let someone with a little more time dissect it.

Don't think there's anything to it.
 
Last edited:
Physical basis for dark energy

“On-going expansion of the universe is not a remnant of some furious bang at a distant past, but the universe is expanding because energy that is bound in matter is being combusted to freely propagating photons, most notably in stars and other powerful celestial mechanisms of energy transformation,” Annila said.

In other words, the expansion is due to an on-going process, not a singular historic event. This part agrees with the duality thesis, that DE is energy-coupling, k, divided by distance-between, R, squared. Or:

lambda=k/R2
See www.dark-energy.org

In other words, DE is not an ad-hoc mathematical parameter, but a reflection of physical processes.
 
Cheetah said:
"Using Maupertuis’ form of the principle of least action, Arto Annila has calculated that the brightness of light from Type 1a supernovae after traveling many millions of light-years to Earth agrees well with observations of the known amount of energy in the universe, and doesn’t require dark energy or any other additional driving force."
Click to expand...

If so, then "Maupertuis' form of the principle of least action" (whatever that is) is not equivalent to the standard form or the known laws of physics. So the first thing you'd need to do is check that it's consistent with all the much more prosaic stuff we know, like precision solar system data, gravitational lensing by the sun, etc.
 
Last edited:
sol invictus said:
If so, then "Maupertuis' form of the principle of least action" (whatever that is) is not equivalent to the standard form or the known laws of physics. So the first thing you'd need to do is check that it's consistent with all the much more prosaic stuff we know, like precision solar system data, gravitational lensing by the sun, etc.
Click to expand...

Yup, that's one of the things that struck me. He somehow predicts that gravitational lensing is 5 times greater than GR (while doing it in some kind of a Newtonian way) and yet doesn't manage to be screwed by the solar system result?
 
edd said:
Yup, that's one of the things that struck me. He somehow predicts that gravitational lensing is 5 times greater than GR (while doing it in some kind of a Newtonian way) and yet doesn't manage to be screwed by the solar system result?
Click to expand...

If he predicts lensing is 5x greater than GR, he's ruled out. Newtonian gravity (treating light as a very fast particle) gives a factor of 2 different from GR, and that's easily ruled out.

The whole thing sounds completely crazy. According to both GR and Newton, everything propagates according to the principle of least action. In other words all of physics can be formulated in terms of a least action principle. Clearly, the principle he's using doesn't coincide with that. So why is it consistent with any physics experiment?
 
Generally my feeling as well. I guess I'm always a little cautious when I find the language hard to parse in case I'm the one missing something, but I don't think I am this time.

I'm increasingly baffled that this got published in MNRAS.
 
edd said:
via a comment on the physorg link - http://arxiv.org/pdf/0910.2629v1 - the guy claims to have solved Riemann's Hypothesis (page 12). And he does it in less than half a page.
Click to expand...

:p

Kuko 4000 said:
You can always email the author for clarification:

http://www.helsinki.fi/~aannila/arto/

http://www.biocenter.helsinki.fi/bi/research/researchgroups/AnnilaAR.html

arto(dot)annila(at)helsinki.fi

Would be interesting to see how he replies.
Click to expand...

No thanks. I think things are quite clear.
 
Cheetah said:
FYI sol invictus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_action

Did any of you actually try to read and comprehend the article? Seems like everyone is commenting on the abstract.
Click to expand...

I fully aware of the principle of least action, Cheetah. As I said above, it's the principle that one uses to calculate the path and redshift of photons in general relativity. It's also the principle from which one can derive every known law of physics.

Since this paper uses a principle that contradicts the principle of least action in at least two instances (gravitational redshift and scattering angle), the first thing to do is check that it agrees with standard physics for other quantities. I see no reason why it would, but that's not my problem - it's the author's. If he doesn't address that, his paper is at best incomplete, and more likely just crackpot. Given edd's last post, it's pure crackpot.
 
Last edited:
Trying to comprehend it

The DE portion seems to rest on this assertion: “The simple functional form of Eq. 4 for the distance modulus vs. redshift = 5log(R/rr) + 2.5log(z2(1 + z)) agrees with observations (Fig. 3).”

To my eyes, the data points in Fig. 3 trend above the line, and that’s the whole point. My understanding is that Eq. 4 represents the geometry for constant expansion, that is, acceleration equal to zero. They were expecting deceleration, which would tend to put data points below the line.
 
Thank you very much everyone for your replies, and especially sol invictus. Wonder how this guy got it published.

What sounded weird/odd/intriguing was that he claimed to have gotten results agreeing with observation using this strange method and without involving DE/DM.

Cheers
 
Last edited:
Cheetah: I read the article, and while I think there are issues with what he's saying, he does have some credentials, and he has been published in MNRAS. Don't dismiss this as "crackpot" on the say-so of some anonymous guy on the internet. Instead check how it relates to papers like http://iopscience.iop.org/0256-307X/25/5/014 and compare the sense of what he's saying with some of the things Newton and Einstein said:

"Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines?"

"I arrived at the result that the velocity of light is not to be regarded as independent of the gravitational potential. Thus the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is incompatible with the equivalence hypothesis".

And don't let other people do your thinking for you.
 
Yeah, sorry Dancing David - it is published in MNRAS and MNRAS is very respectable as a journal. The reviewers in general have high standards, but I think something went wrong here.
 
Cheetah said:
Wonder how this guy got it published.
Click to expand...

Me too.

What sounded weird/odd/intriguing was that he claimed to have gotten results agreeing with observation using this strange method and without involving DE/DM.
Click to expand...

It's intriguing. But DM and DE are kind of a minor effect (not for cosmology, but for physics in general). When you have some revolutionary new theory, they're not the correct testing ground (unless somehow your theory only affects very large things).

When your theory affects the way objects or light propagate through gravity fields, as his evidently does, the first thing to do is test it against physics we understand much better, like the solar system or ground-based gravity experiments.

Farsight said:
Cheetah: I read the article, and while I think there are issues with what he's saying, he does have some credentials, and he has been published in MNRAS. Don't dismiss this as "crackpot" on the say-so of some anonymous guy on the internet. Instead check how it relates to papers like http://iopscience.iop.org/0256-307X/25/5/014 and compare the sense of what he's saying with some of the things Newton and Einstein said:

"Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines?"

"I arrived at the result that the velocity of light is not to be regarded as independent of the gravitational potential. Thus the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is incompatible with the equivalence hypothesis".

And don't let other people do your thinking for you.
Click to expand...

That quote of Einstein is about the propagation of light through a gravity field in Einstein's own theory, namely general relativity. This paper contradicts general relativity. So why is Einstein's quote relevant?
 
Farsight said:
Cheetah: I read the article, and while I think there are issues with what he's saying, he does have some credentials, and he has been published in MNRAS. Don't dismiss this as "crackpot" on the say-so of some anonymous guy on the internet. Instead check how it relates to papers like http://iopscience.iop.org/0256-307X/25/5/014 and compare the sense of what he's saying with some of the things Newton and Einstein said:

"Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines?"

"I arrived at the result that the velocity of light is not to be regarded as independent of the gravitational potential. Thus the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is incompatible with the equivalence hypothesis".

And don't let other people do your thinking for you.
Click to expand...

yes but when people present very reasonsable critiques, take them seriously.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom