Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Michael Mozina]

You pick on one specific example where it suits you.

Was there another example from one of the links that you believe is a better example that I should have used instead?

As I said there are entire disciplines of science that depend significantly on natural experiments.

I don't disagree with you, but that is only because it is possible to do so. In astronomy, where we have no effect as human beings, that isn't actually possible. All we can do is observe.

If you can't affect distant object, if you can't create your own control group, you manipulate your methodology to provide the necessary observations to isolate variables.

You're essentially attempting to manipulate the scientific method and do away with the need for a controlled experiment entirely. In some instances that may even be useful and acceptable, but you can't make up new forms of nature that way.

"Cause"? What causes anything?

Something "causes" everything to happen.

Inference is an important tool in science. No assuming is going on.

Your "inferences" seem to be different from mine, so some amount of subjectivity is clearly occurring between "observation" and "inferences" at the level of the individual.

We may not have such information now, but who knows what kinds of things will open up with a good theory of quantum gravity, or when we are able to detect gravity waves, or any number of other things. Not that it's necessary to know conditions "prior" to the big bang to infer inflation... if "prior" means anything at all (what's north of the north pole?).

Everything in nature, every interaction, every event is "caused" by something. Whatever happened to expand the universe, it is certain that there was a "cause" behind this event as well.

 

[Michael Mozina]

I didn't get around to clicking on those links until now ...

... MM, you really are a hoot!

I write about the track record of the 34 initial signatories to the document you cite, in terms of published papers on SS, PC, and "observational contradictions of the big bang", and what do you say in your reply?

Why, you give a list of publications of Carl-Gunne Fälthammar (who is not one of those 34 signatories) and Hannes Alfvén, who died in 1995 ... nine years before the statement was published!!

I'm simply noting that those aren't the only folks that have complained about your theory and written papers on astronomy. Alfven was *a lot* more harsh in his criticisms than anyone on that list and he wrote many papers on that topic. I'm simply noting that while that particular list doesn't represent the sum total of your critics, nor does it represent the sum total of all the collective papers of your critics.

What was my hypothesis again? Oh yes, "that your use of language is so incoherent, and so inconsistent, that it is not possible to have a meaningful discussion with you." Hypothesis passes yet another empirical test.

More useless personal attacks. Yawn.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

[...]

If you can't affect distant object, if you can't create your own control group, you manipulate your methodology to provide the necessary observations to isolate variables.

You're essentially attempting to manipulate the scientific method and do away with the need for a controlled experiment entirely. In some instances that may even be useful and acceptable, but you can't make up new forms of nature that way.

[...]

Sure you can ...

... they're called "galaxies" and "supernovae" and "GRBs" and "AGNs" and ... and even "neutron stars". Each is most certainly a "new form of nature" and each is defined by following the most impeccable of scientific methods, empiricism.

 

[Perpetual Student]

I remember that when I first learned that in GR gravity is not a force I was gobsmacked; it just didn't make sense! How could one of the four* fundamental forces of nature turn out to be not a force at all! Outrageous!!

I can see that and I had a similar reaction (I still do). The geometry of space being distorted by matter is a difficult concept and obviously a radical departure from being simply "pulled by gravity." However, one still feels a "force" when getting out of bed in the morning -- especially at my age!
If the hypothetical graviton were to be established, how does one avoid seeing gravity as a force again? I ask this because I see references to objects exchanging gravitons -- much like objects exchanging photons causes magnetic attraction, which sounds like we would be back to a force again for gravity. See how confusing this stuff is for a layman?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Tubbythin: Its not my theory. If you can't understand that then I really can't be bothered to converse with you any more.

MM, stardate "today, 08:49 PM": "I hear you. It's an annoying habit. I'm sorry."

MM, stardate "today, 09:09 PM": "those aren't the only folks that have complained about your theory" (addressed to DRD in this case)

(bold added)

Old habits - particularly annoying ones? - seem to die rather hard, don't they?

 

[sol invictus]

That last one isn't a mystery at all.

And the rest aren't necessarily scientific questions. Certainly they aren't part of Lambda-CDM, which is what this thread is supposed to be about.

Because you just put all the mass/energy of the whole physical universe into close proximity!

So?

Let's try a new angle here and you folks *explain* this theory of your, step by step.

This isn't a university. And you need much more remedial education than GR. If you politely ask specific questions, you may get answers. If you rant and rave and repeatedly demonstrate ignorance combined with arrogance, you'll get the responses you deserve.

Start with the size of this "thing" of yours. How big was it prior to "expansion"? What was it made of? Did it have Higg's bosons? If not, where did they come from?

You've got it backwards. You don't "start" from the big bang. You start from the universe as it is today. The laws of physics work just as well going back in time as they do going forwards. That means given the state today, one can determine the state at any time in the past - at least until the conditions become so extreme that the known laws of physics cannot be trusted.

So starting from today, run time backwards. The universe is expanding; therefore it was contracting going into the past. Because gravity is attractive, it contracts faster and faster, and gets denser and denser and hotter and hotter. The details of that are complicated, but the qualitative evolution is obvious - at some point it was extremely dense, extremely hot, and expanding very rapidly. We're pretty confident in the laws of physics up to about TeV energies, because we've tested them in accelerators. It turns out that the laws extrapolate nicely up to Planck-scale energies (about 10^16 TeV), so we can try to do that (and that's where inflation comes in). But we have no way of knowing what came before the time when the characteristic energy was Planckian - the known laws of physics break down entirely, and so we are certain there must be large corrections to them. Therefore questions about what "caused" the bang, or what came before, simply have no answer given what we know with reasonable certainty now.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

I can see that and I had a similar reaction (I still do). The geometry of space being distorted by matter is a difficult concept and obviously a radical departure from being simply "pulled by gravity." However, one still feels a "force" when getting out of bed in the morning -- especially at my age!
If the hypothetical graviton were to be established, how does one avoid seeing gravity as a force again? I ask this because I see references to objects exchanging gravitons -- much like objects exchanging photons causes magnetic attraction, which sounds like we would be back to a force again for gravity. See how confusing this stuff is for a layman?

I don't think anyone knows ... while some properties of 'the graviton' can be sketched, assuming such a thing exists as the carrier of gravity, by analogy with the photon and EM, there are just too many unknowns ... and, in the best empirical tradition, no way currently of testing any well-formulated hypotheses (though that may change any day now).

AFAIK, one set of theories that might unify GR and QM gives rise to entities like gravitons, but another set goes the other way and remakes all forces into something like geometry ... it's all very exciting, n'est pas?

 

[Michael Mozina]

Tubbythin: Its not my theory. If you can't understand that then I really can't be bothered to converse with you any more.

MM, stardate "today, 08:49 PM": "I hear you. It's an annoying habit. I'm sorry."

MM, stardate "today, 09:09 PM": "those aren't the only folks that have complained about your theory" (addressed to DRD in this case)

(bold added)

Old habits - particularly annoying ones? - seem to die rather hard, don't they?

Evidently so.

 

[Perpetual Student]

I don't think anyone knows ... while some properties of 'the graviton' can be sketched, assuming such a thing exists as the carrier of gravity, by analogy with the photon and EM, there are just too many unknowns ... and, in the best empirical tradition, no way currently of testing any well-formulated hypotheses (though that may change any day now).

AFAIK, one set of theories that might unify GR and QM gives rise to entities like gravitons, but another set goes the other way and remakes all forces into something like geometry ... it's all very exciting, n'est pas?

C'est vrai.

 

[Michael Mozina]

If the hypothetical graviton were to be established, how does one avoid seeing gravity as a force again?

It would be a "force" again in that instance, just a force that operates on curved objects in space. In essence your aversion to curved space theory could be with good cause. Of course even if the math changes it back to a force again, it won't make it any easier for us to get out of bed.

 

[Michael Mozina]

So?

So last time I checked, gravity *attracts*. I've never once been able to jump off the planet.

This isn't a university. And you need much more remedial education than GR. If you politely ask specific questions, you may get answers. If you rant and rave and repeatedly demonstrate ignorance combined with arrogance, you'll get the responses you deserve.

I'm simply asking you to demonstrate your theory has merit and *qualify* as well as quantify your work. Why should I let you stuff DE or inflation into a GR formula when you've never established any cause/effect relationship?

You've got it backwards. You don't "start" from the big bang. You start from the universe as it is today.

The Alfven's bang wins hands down. His physical universe doesn't compress as far as yours does and it doesn't suffer from the same unanswered questions.

The laws of physics work just as well going back in time as they do going forwards.

Then all those Higgs particles will be attracting other Higgs particles the same way they do here on Earth today. The curvature of gravity will eventually form an event horizon around your mass object. How small was this thing anyway?

That means given the state today, one can determine the state at any time in the past - at least until the conditions become so extreme that the known laws of physics cannot be trusted.

Uh oh. You weren't going to start claiming that science no longer applies are you?

So starting from today, run time backwards. The universe is expanding; therefore it was contracting going into the past.

Yes, but how far does it contract?

Because gravity is attractive, it contracts faster and faster, and gets denser and denser and hotter and hotter. The details of that are complicated, but the qualitative evolution is obvious - at some point it was extremely dense, extremely hot, and expanding very rapidly.

I think that must be true in Alfven's model too, but again the amount of contraction seems to be variable depending on which "bang" model one uses.

What exactly makes current BB theory "better than" Alfven's version of events?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

[...]

What exactly makes current BB theory "better than" Alfven's version of events?

Ability to quantitatively account for:

* the observations of the CMB

* ditto, high-z SNe Ia

* ditto, large-scale structure (particularly this one!)

* ditto, BAO

* ditto, ...

In fact, we're in another lather-wash-rinse cycle ... IIRC, we went through all this on the PC woo or not thread, several months ago ...

 

[Michael Mozina]

Sure you can ...

... they're called "galaxies"

Those are just collections of stars and matter as far as I know.

and "supernovae"

That's just an exploding star

and "GRBs" and "AGNs" and ... and even "neutron stars".

None of these require any new elements or particles to be present.

Each is most certainly a "new form of nature" and each is defined by following the most impeccable of scientific methods, empiricism.

Not one of your examples cannot be explained using ordinary *standard* particle physics theory. No new elements or particles are required, no new forms of energy are necessary, and there is nothing in them that cannot be gathered here on Earth. They are simply larger versions of what we already know physically exists inside our own solar system.

Compare and contrast that now with inflation which doesn't even exist in particle physics theory, and never will exist their either.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Ability to quantitatively account for:

* the observations of the CMB

* ditto, high-z SNe Ia

* ditto, large-scale structure (particularly this one!)

* ditto, BAO

* ditto, ...

In fact, we're in another lather-wash-rinse cycle ... IIRC, we went through all this on the PC woo or not thread, several months ago ...

It seems to me that all of these claims are predicated upon a misconception about 'expansion of space' vs. "expansion of objects".
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0601171
http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1970

These redshift observations are *not* necessarily related to anything other than pure doppler movement. Alfven's theories would most likely result in a surface of last scattering and as long as things were relatively uniform to start, I see no reason why it wouldn't be relatively uniformly distributed today. It requires no form of "inflation" and no forms of "dark energy".

 

[Reality Check]

Like? Please, be specific. What exactly would it take to convince you that inflation has been falsified once and for all?

You giving me a set of predictions from inflation and the observations that contriduict those predictions.

 

[Michael Mozina]

You giving me a set of predictions from inflation and the observations that contriduict those predictions.

The problem here is that every one of its current so called "predictions" are actually all postdicted from observation. More importantly the theory continues to be modified to fit every new "surprise" they have come across. Anything that may have been able to be used to 'falsify' the theory is simply ignored, and they just build a new theory to fit. Acceleration was something inflation theory failed to predict so they simply added dark energy. If it isn't homogeneously distributed like they expected, they just tweak a few variables and "viola", a new "matching prediction" is added to the list of "triumphs".

Hoy.

 

[Perpetual Student]

The problem here is that every one of its current so called "predictions" are actually all postdicted from observation. More importantly the theory continues to be modified to fit every new "surprise" they have come across. Anything that may have been able to be used to 'falsify' the theory is simply ignored, and they just build a new theory to fit. Acceleration was something inflation theory failed to predict so they simply added dark energy. If it isn't homogeneously distributed like they expected, they just tweak a few variables and "viola", a new "matching prediction" is added to the list of "triumphs".

Hoy.

On the surface this accusation appears to have merit. I have had similar thoughts as I have read of these new developments over the years. The problem is that there are no better theories. These are the best models theorists have come up with to explain astronomical observations that are consistent with modern physics.
The PC/EU theories you espouse appear to have fundamental flaws, as evidenced by the virtually universal rejection by specialists within the communities of cosmology, physics and astronomy. After following this debate for some time now, that has become all too obvious.

 

[sol invictus]

So last time I checked, gravity *attracts*. I've never once been able to jump off the planet.

That's because you didn't jump hard enough. Did you think your vertical leap was relevant to cosmology?

The Alfven's bang wins hands down. His physical universe doesn't compress as far as yours does and it doesn't suffer from the same unanswered questions.

I can't keep track of your shifting opinions, MM. A while back you said you believed in GR because it was experimentally verified. Then you flipflopped many times, and currently you're in a flop. OK.

Then all those Higgs particles will be attracting other Higgs particles the same way they do here on Earth today.

Not really. But yes, as I said, the force of gravity will accelerate the contraction (going back).

The curvature of gravity will eventually form an event horizon around your mass object. How small was this thing anyway?

No. The universe is homogeneous on large scales - there's no center. As you go back in time it gets more homogeneous, but also more dense. So no black holes form.

Uh oh. You weren't going to start claiming that science no longer applies are you?

What?

Yes, but how far does it contract?

As I said, there is nothing in the known laws of physics to stop the contraction. However, at some point the conditions get too extreme for us to trust the known laws of physics. At and before that time, in principle anything could have happened. Of course there are various theories about that, but all of them are speculative.

What exactly makes current BB theory "better than" Alfven's version of events?

It's consistent with data. His isn't. Therefore his is wrong, and the BB might be right.

 

[sol invictus]

On the surface this accusation appears to have merit. I have had similar thoughts as I have read of these new developments over the years.

That's because only the surprising developments get reported. Every day, hundreds of telescopes scan the skies, collecting data and improving our knowledge of the universe. Every single photon they collect is a test of the BB theory, and it almost always passes unscathed. Occasionally - extremely rarely - it fails in some aspect, and must be modified or discarded.

That's how science works. That's the process that lead to the BB theory in the first place - remember, almost every physicist believed in a steady-state universe about 100 years ago. But the evidence, which is overwhelming, forced them to change their minds. Since then there have been many surprises, many changes to the model, as data improved and details became clear. But the fundamental idea underlying it - which is simply GR plus the redshift-distance relation - has not changed. And that's the underlying characteristic of a successful theory: rare and gradual refinements leading to increased accuracy, but almost every day-to-day test passed.

Contrast to PC or an earth-centered solar system with epicycles. Those are wrong theories - they fail almost every new observation.

 

[Michael Mozina]

On the surface this accusation appears to have merit. I have had similar thoughts as I have read of these new developments over the years. The problem is that there are no better theories.

The problem of course is that inflation doesn't actually work either without 96% fudge factor. The notion of "better" in this case is evidently *highly* subjective. "Dark energy" isn't even actually "explained", it's just stuffed in there in a highly ad hoc, physically undefined manner. For all they know DE is actually nothing more than an EM field and it's ultimately going to morph into an EU theory over time anyway.

These are the best models theorists have come up with to explain astronomical observations that are consistent with modern physics.

But Lambda-CMD theory is absolutely NOT consistent with "modern physics". Inflation doesn't exist in modern physics, nor does dark energy. The only useful function of inflation and DE in fact is to prop up this otherwise one dead cosmology theory. In no way is their theory consistent with physics, in fact it's based on only 4% actual physics and 96% non standard physics and 3 different giant leaps of faith.

The PC/EU theories you espouse appear to have fundamental flaws, as evidenced by the virtually universal rejection by specialists within the communities of cosmology, physics and astronomy.

Chapman probably said the same thing about Birkeland's theories and he probably lived his whole life and even died believing that his own theories were "better". The mainstream can't even explain solar wind, jets, coronal loops and sustained aurora to this day, and yet Birkeland simulated all of these things in his experiments and actually most of them are real "predictions' that came from real experiments, not that postdicted nonsense that mainstream relies upon. Their theories are useless. Birkeland's theories are not.

After following this debate for some time now, that has become all too obvious.

Well, I was never naive about that point. Unfortunately/fortunately appeals to popularity fallacies were never very convincing to me personally. Empirical physics is convincing to me however and that is why am am attracted to Birkeland's work, even more so than Alfven's work actually.