Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Perpetual Student]

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.

"Popularity" in science has had its ups and downs. Someone here said a few days ago "science is not a democracy." Actually, that is not true in one sense. What constitutes "correct science" in any era is that set of ideas a strong consensus of specialists holds to be true.
So, for nearly two thousand years we had the epicycles of Ptolemy instead of Aristarchus' heliocentric theory. A wrong idea was the "correct science" for 100 generations even though someone else got it right in the first place!
I would offer the point, however, that in contrast, today's science is subject to rigorous worldwide scrutiny on a continuing basis. If anyone could demonstrate the flaws in a prevailing theory and offer a good alternative, that person would get a lot of attention and ultimate vindication and would win the next "correct science" election by a landslide.

 

[Michael Mozina]

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.

Inflation theory never been "discarded" and it never will be. It's always "modified to fit" and it was a curve fitting postdiction effort to begin with.

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.

Except you aren't talking about "gradual refinements", you made dark energy 75 percent of your theory in one revision! That's not "gradual refinement", that a complete overhaul.

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

Bull. PC theory is nothing like an earth-centric solar system theory. Whereas every one of your actual predictions was falsified and then grossly overhauled, PC theory actually "predicted" (in actually empirical experiments) all the key solar observations you still can't explain to this day. Inflation is dead. Electricity exists in nature in great abundance and it manifests itself just as Birkeland 'predicted'.

Lambda-CMD theory is however a lot like the epicycles theories of the past because it requires constant introduction of extra stuff to keep in afloat and it's a completely posticted effort based on a "prophetic" assumption, just like epicycles theories.

 

[Michael Mozina]

I would offer the point, however, that in contrast, today's science is subject to rigorous worldwide scrutiny on a continuing basis.

The problem of course is that since inflation is presumably gone, not one person in the whole world will ever be able to actually demonstrate inflation in a normal standard manner. It will forever be an act of faith with a worldwide pool of mathematicians to continue to fudge the numbers to fit anything new they find.

If anyone could demonstrate the flaws in a prevailing theory and offer a good alternative, that person would get a lot of attention and ultimate vindication and would win the next "correct science" election by a landslide.

I'm very confident that will PC/EU theory will win out over time. For one thing, it actually has some hope of producing useful consumer products whereas inflation will certainly never show up in a useful consumer product.

Greed and scientific progress will eventually enable PC/EU theory to win the endurance race IMO. It took the mainstream 60 years to abandon Chapman's "math only' ideas and embrace a *few* of Birkeland's experimental theories. Maybe it will take them another 100 years for all I know to accept his other ideas. Sooner or later however it's bound to happen. It's certainly no mystery to me why the solar wind accelerates as it leaves the sun. Birkeland explained that to me already. That is true of 'jets' and loops as well. Sooner or later we'll learn to surf those electrical currents running between the sun and the heliosphere and then Lambda-Gumby theory will eventually die a natural death. Unfortunately I'll probably be dead by then, just as Birkeland was dead by the time the mainstream accepted even a part of his theories.

I have no practical use for inflation today. It's dead. If it ever was a part of science, it isn't now a part of empirical science and therefore it has no practical use to science other than to prop up *one specific* cosmology theory that is build on no less than three different forms of metaphysics. IMO that is a sure sign it has no useful purpose at all.

 

[Michael Mozina]

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.

This should be considered false advertising. It's got a 100 percent failure rate, including those "dark flows" you are now simply in denial of.

 

[Michael Mozina]

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

Gravity is relevant to every cosmology theory. It's *attractive* not repulsive in nature.

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

Then it should *DECELERATE* with expansion.

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.

Pure dodge.

As I said, there is nothing in the known laws of physics to stop the contraction.

Except of course the one Alfven used.

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

This is so wrong it's pathetic. Not only is your theory of choice *not* right by default, it's not even consistent with the data or your statements.

Those dark flows aren't predicted in your theory. That acceleration process goes against everything you just said about running the process backwards too! In Lambda theory, as things contract things will start to slow down due to the influence of your invisible friend dark energy. You have the whole thing so kludged together with metaphysics even you cannot rewind the process and keep it straight in your head anymore.

 

[Dancing David]

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



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.



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.

You again are engaging in political hyperbole. I can think of one major area of study that is based solely upon observation and is instrumental in the neurosciences.

Mental illness and the biological predispostion to have a mental illness.

Lets us see, during WWII and the Great Depression there was considerable famine and poverty. Retropspective studies of people (mothers and adult children) who were malnurished during the second trimester showed an increase in children who develooped schizophrenia 15-20 years later.
The same is true of febrile diseases during the second trimester and is supported by the seasonal effect is schizophrenia.

These two studies in Europe were totaly retropspective there was no intervention (and there often is not in heart disease studies either, so you are often wrong). It was done through demographic analysis and interviews in Denmark (I don't really remember).

Then also in Denmark and some other countries there are the twin studies, totally retropsective again, and which of the twins develops schizophrenia and which doesn't. This why there is now beleived to be a high biological predisposition to schizophrenia, due to the fact that the twins did not share environments in some samples and did in others.

The same is true of heart disease, cancer and environmental toxins.(And hundreds of others) All are done in either retrospective or longitudinal stuides. All are done without laboratory 'controls' they are done with the statistical controls that Arp does not use. They are valid, informative and robust.

But please continue to misrepresent science.

And yes they can be blinded before you start that nonsense. You should really learn before you shoot your mouth off, you could make a coherent argument if you avoided your silly bombast.

You are so wrong you aren't even in the ball park, you are so wrong you just look silly. There are hundreds of areas and tens of thousands of studies that use these methods.

So please stop your nonsense, it does not help you at all.

 

[sol invictus]

Pure dodge.

You're obviously not interested in the answers to the questions you asked, so there's no point in responding further.

The fact that matter clusters more and more as time passes is the most basic fact in cosmology. You don't understand the theory you criticize at the level of a first year physics student, you won't learn, and you won't listen to anything anyone says.

You're a troll.

 

[Reality Check]

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.

I am still waiting for your evidence that "every one of its current so called "predictions" are actually all postdicted from observation".
I suspect that you are right but that does not invalidate inflation - that just makes it into an unconfirmed scientific theory.

You are still ignorant of the fact that inflation has nothing to do with the acceleration & dark energy. Or maybe you have just renamed the Big Bang Theory yet again?
Is it "Big Bang Theory" == "Lambda-CDM Theory" == "Inflation Theory" == the next thing that MM thinks of?

 

[temporalillusion]

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

Other than entire disciplines of science?

How about the stellar evolution I thought up?

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.

As I said in trials of a life saving drug you can't control, you can only observe. In economics you can't control (well someone is controlling, but they're part of the experiment). Psychology, sociology, geology, paleontology. How do I determine the composition of the earth's atmosphere 3 billion years ago? I can't even do direct observation there.

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.

I never said that, I'm saying the scientific method isn't exclusively controlled experiments. If it was then there wouldn't be methods created for describing the reliability of experiments that aren't controlled.

Something "causes" everything to happen.

Sorry, I meant that more philosophically.. what is space, what is time, what is the strong force.. science isn't about describing the substance of these things, that's more of a philosophical discussion. Science is concerned with theories and models and how things behave.

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.

If you mean that the human factor can influence things, that's very true, but that's part of the scientific endeavor is to remove those things.

 

[sol invictus]

I am still waiting for your evidence that "every one of its current so called "predictions" are actually all postdicted from observation".
I suspect that you are right but that does not invalidate inflation - that just makes it into an unconfirmed scientific theory.?

It's not right - it's completely wrong.

So the predictions of inflation are a near-perfect blackbody spectrum for CMB photons, a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial density perturbations, a particular and very characteristic pattern of peaks and valleys in the spectrum of temperature fluctuations (as a function of angle) in the CMB sky, a particular spectrum for the galaxy and galaxy cluster distribution, and spatial curvature which is very close to zero. Every single one of those predictions has been born out by three or four generations of increasingly sensitive experiments (and at the same time the predictions of every competing theory have been falsified). As a result, inflation is now accepted by the majority of cosmologists as the best theory of the very early universe.

Essentially none of those predictions had been seen when inflation was proposed. The theory has not changed significantly since then, but every single one has been verified by several independent experiments.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Lets us see, during WWII and the Great Depression there was considerable famine and poverty. Retropspective studies of people (mothers and adult children) who were malnurished during the second trimester showed an increase in children who develooped schizophrenia 15-20 years later.

But even in such studied you have the ability to ask questions of real people, find out who was malnourished, etc. Again, you have a real and specific physical change "malnourishment", caused by human activity, being traced to a human disease. All of these things involved real known physical changes to real known physical people. The ability of humans to convey direct information to other humans plays a major role in these studies and all of them take place here on Earth where the variables are changed by human beings in most cases.

You're still not doing "experiments", your just taking "measurements", unless of course the stars are talking to you and giving you specific information about their past.

It is not "nonsense" to expect you to be able to empirically demonstrate your claim in a real physical way. The fact you cannot do so, does not make my argument nonsense, it makes your argument nonsense. I'm interested in empirical physics, not pure leaps of faith in non existent entities that have no material affect on the real world.

All of the "natural experiments" you mention are done *here on Earth*, mostly involving human beings that can communicate with each other, affect one another, and study one another up close and personal. You can do that with distant stars.

 

[Michael Mozina]

You're obviously not interested in the answers to the questions you asked, so there's no point in responding further.

I am interested in real answers, but you avoided my question. I asked you it's original "size" prior to the "bang". Care to answer the specific question with specific answers?

The fact that matter clusters more and more as time passes is the most basic fact in cosmology.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2458/which-came-first-galaxy-or-black-hole

When you say that things *must* work one way or the other, I can tell you from just watching the changes in this industry for the last 30+ years, that simply isn't so.

You don't understand the theory you criticize at the level of a first year physics student, you won't learn, and you won't listen to anything anyone says.

You're a troll.

I'm not a troll. I'm willing to listen to a rational explanation of your theory. I will say "your theory" at some point because I've come to realize that everyone has very specific and individually unique beliefs when we look at them in detail. I've noticed that some astronomers get squeamish about inflation. Some are big time advocates of inflation. Some aren't sure about the size of the universe prior to the bang, nor do they all agree on exact timelines. In fact that has been another of those things that gets rewritten all the time. I've seen a lot of changes in my lifetime and a lot of individual variety in beliefs. I can't read your mind, so I asked you some simple questions. When I ask your for specifics I get the run around. Why is that?

 

[Michael Mozina]

Other than entire disciplines of science?

How about the stellar evolution I thought up?

Um, unfortunately I'm not a big fan of standard solar theory either, so I'm afraid you'll have to think of a better example. I think they made some of the same mistakes there actually.

As I said in trials of a life saving drug you can't control, you can only observe. In economics you can't control (well someone is controlling, but they're part of the experiment). Psychology, sociology, geology, paleontology. How do I determine the composition of the earth's atmosphere 3 billion years ago? I can't even do direct observation there.

All of these things are studies of events on Earth where we do have some element of control in the case of work with human beings, or where we have some ability to directly manipulate the environment to for instance dig up fossils and so on. Again, humans can't travel outside of the solar system, so we really don't have any ability to even take an real in-situ measurements.

I never said that, I'm saying the scientific method isn't exclusively controlled experiments.

Even your natural experiments included controlled variables, just like that smoking ban.

If it was then there wouldn't be methods created for describing the reliability of experiments that aren't controlled.

The are not being directly controlled at that moment, but as in the case of the smoking ban example, there was a specific variable that was "controlled" if only in the past.

If you mean that the human factor can influence things, that's very true, but that's part of the scientific endeavor is to remove those things.

But therein lies the rub. If we had real "experiments" that demonstrated inflation exists in nature, my skepticism of inflation would not exist. Without such experiments and without control mechanisms I have no way to isolate any sort of "cause" of distant events.

The fact I can never hope to *ever* see an experiment involving inflation means that it necessitates a complete act of faith on my part in your personal interpretation of some data, or some "collective" interpretation of the data, and it becomes impossible verify the idea or falsify the idea. It's far closer to religion than to "science" because it requires pure faith in something that I can never hope to actually demonstrate in an empirical way. No other branch of science needs or predicts inflation. The only theory that depends on it is one cosmology model. IMO that is a clear sign that there is a problem with that one theory.

 

[Tim Thompson]

What is Science?

Here's my working hypothesis: MM has a very different view of what modern cosmology, as a science, is than almost everyone else who has posted to this thread. If that's the case, I'd like to take this thread in somewhat of a different direction and focus on what MM's view of modern cosmology, as a science, is. In particular, I'd like to examine the extent to which it is internally consistent and the evidence there is that it employs critical thinking.

I have not seen any follow-up to the extensive posts from DeiRenDopa, but this is a point I really think needs to be explored. We really do seem to be straining over very different views of what "science" really is, or perhaps more appropriately, how science is really supposed to be done.

It seems to me that Mozina has an extremely restrictive view of how science should be done: "Anything that cannot be done in a controlled laboratory experiment is not science" certainly seems to be his fundamental view of how science should be done.

So, Michael, query: Tell us what you think "science" is, how you think it should be done. Is astronomy "science"? After all, virtually nothing that astronomers observe can be replicated in a laboratory. And astronomical observations are not controlled laboratory experiments, so do they count as "scientific" observations? I want to pin down a specific reason, or some specific reasons, with an emphasis on specific, why modern cosmology is not science.

 

[temporalillusion]

Your requirements for what qualifies as real science differs from others.. They've provided tons of evidence but you reject it outright, ultimately based on this difference maybe?

If that's the case, I would say this is an impasse.

EDIT: Ooops, just restating what's already being talked about lol.

 

[Michael Mozina]

I am still waiting for your evidence that "every one of its current so called "predictions" are actually all postdicted from observation".

Which specific observation do you believe was an actual "prediction" that was actually accurate before something was actually "measured" in advance? If you claim the CMBR temp was actually predicted accurately I'm going to point out that this prediction was off by at least a factor of 10.

I suspect that you are right but that does not invalidate inflation - that just makes it into an unconfirmed scientific theory.

Put yourself in my shoes for just one moment. I've watch the current theory morph from what was once a pretty reasonable theory to one that has been stuffed with so many variables I can never hope to verify or falsify that it has become useless IMO. It's completely postdicted from observation, and there isn't any key prediction that has held up to close scrutiny, not ever. I can't personally put any faith in the idea at all. It's just a big curve fitting exercise with 96 percent fudge factor and 4% physics, and only 4% of the theory is even "testable" here on Earth.

You are still ignorant of the fact that inflation has nothing to do with the acceleration & dark energy.

I am not ignorant of the distinction, I just don't happen to believe in either one of them. DE can already be replace with an EM field, but that would put Lambda-CDM theory dangerously close to EU/PC territory, and therefore the resistance to that idea is intense. Inflation would still be Lambda's Achilles heal and you'd ultimately be left with pure EU/PC over time.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1970

 

[Michael Mozina]

I have not seen any follow-up to the extensive posts from DeiRenDopa, but this is a point I really think needs to be explored. We really do seem to be straining over very different views of what "science" really is, or perhaps more appropriately, how science is really supposed to be done.

It seems to me that Mozina has an extremely restrictive view of how science should be done: "Anything that cannot be done in a controlled laboratory experiment is not science" certainly seems to be his fundamental view of how science should be done.

That is actually more of a strawman than an accurate reflection of my statements.

So, Michael, query: Tell us what you think "science" is, how you think it should be done. Is astronomy "science"? After all, virtually nothing that astronomers observe can be replicated in a laboratory. And astronomical observations are not controlled laboratory experiments, so do they count as "scientific" observations? I want to pin down a specific reason, or some specific reasons, with an emphasis on specific, why modern cosmology is not science.

http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html

Here's how I explained why it's woo earlier in the thread:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4455764&postcount=559

 

[Michael Mozina]

Your requirements for what qualifies as real science differs from others..

I would suggest you checkout that first link I gave to Tim in the previous post. I'm simply practicing the standard scientific method, to the letter. I'm not making exceptions for PC theory or Lambda theory.

They've provided tons of evidence but you reject it outright, ultimately based on this difference maybe?

Probably.

If that's the case, I would say this is an impasse.

Perhaps so, I'm not sure. I have no way to verify that inflation even exists. It would appear it is a completely postdicted math formula variable that has no application in any scientific theory, except one specific cosmology theory. Why should I put any faith in something that I'm sure doesn't exist today, and has a 100 percent failure rate when it comes to making accurate predictions with it? I don't get it. It's a "faith" oriented belief that is a "subjective" interpretation of the observation of redshifted photons.

 

[temporalillusion]

I would suggest you checkout that first link I gave to Tim in the previous post. I'm simply practicing the standard scientific method, to the letter. I'm not making exceptions for PC theory or Lambda theory.

I replied to that link the first time you posted it; it's hardly exhaustive on the subject of scientific method, hence the title "Introduction".

 

[Tim Thompson]

Testing Inflation

http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1970

What is the point of citing this paper? I don't get it.

Here's how I explained why it's woo earlier in the thread: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4455764&postcount=559

http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html

Note that the necessity of experiment also implies that a theory must be testable. Theories which cannot be tested, because, for instance, they have no observable ramifications (such as, a particle whose characteristics make it unobservable), do not qualify as scientific theories.

Here's where your dead inflation deity failed to qualify as a "scientific" theory. It's not observable. I can't test it. Unlike any ordinary religious deity, I can't ever even hope to verify it. It's the ultimate in pathetic, impotent, useless deities.

Inflation is a testable hypothesis. Your assertion to the contrary, as an excuse for declaring it unscientific is a factually false statement. See, i.e., Mikheeva, 20008; Lesgourgues & Valkenburg, 2007; Alabidi & Lyth, 2006; Lidsey & Seery, 2006 ... Liddle, 1999.