Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[edd]

There seems to be an empirical disconnect somewhere in terms of 'cause/effect' relationships as it relates to cosmology. Rather than limiting themselves to known forces of nature, astronomers tend to be very comfortable "making up" new forces of matter and energy even in the complete absence of any support in the lab

Erm. There's two options. There's making up an all new force, or there's using a good old fashioned one. Guess which of those two options is dark energy?

, and even without the ability to falsify the concept in the lab. That tends to make the term "best" a bit subjective IMO. "I don't know the cause of acceleration" is one thing. "Dark energy did it" is quite another.

The point of suggesting something is so that we can design tests to falsify it. If we just said "don't know" how would we go about falsifying that?

When you said

Somewhere the phrase "I don't know" got lost along the way in the field of cosmology. Sometimes an honest 'I don't know" is probably "best" rather than pure speculation.

I couldn't disagree more. You'll quite easily get an "I don't know" out of a cosmologist, but suggesting options and trying to find ways to test them is the way forward, not just shrugging your shoulders and pointing your telescope without a purpose and hoping that new data will just serendipitously come along to make everything ok. Saying that LCDM is the currently most favoured model does not mean that we think we know everything.

I agree with Zig. You appear to have a fundamentally different concept of how to go about doing science.

 

[Michael Mozina]

You really do have a fundamentally different concept of science than actual scientists. Of course there's a need to quantify things. That's rather the whole bloody point.

IMO your headlong rush to quantify everything has led to some unacceptable shortcuts in terms of empirical physics. That's the whole bloody point! If you don't know what the real "cause" of "acceleration" might be, calling it "dark energy" is simply irrational IMO. There is nothing gained by substituting the term "unknown acceleration" with "dark energy". In fact it simply creates more problems that it solves. Now you're claiming that 72% of the universe is composed of "dark energy"! How do you know anything of the sort is true since you never showed any cause/effect relationships?

FYI, my time today is really limited so I'm going to focus on the core issues and skip the less relevant stuff. Don't take it personally.

 

[Ziggurat]

Should there not be some "expectation/prediction" of "younger and newer" galaxies in your theory that would be easy to distinguish from say an eternal universe concept where galaxies would not necessarily 'change' all that much in the last 13.7 billion years?

You don't get it, Michael. Your eternal universe is prohibited by the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. Unless you want to claim that these laws are not valid, then the entire class of eternal universe theories are invalidated from the start.

Seriously, do you even know what the 2nd law of thermodynamics is?

 

[Michael Mozina]

It's a very good hypothesis, a fact you seem unable to grasp.

It's not a matter of "grasping", it's a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with your assessment. I don't see how you've achieved anything useful by renaming an observation of acceleration "dark energy". There's no empirical link between them. You might as well call it magic energy.

In your need to quantify you're now taking shortcuts with empirical physics ben. There is no connection between an observation of acceleration and "dark energy". That's the rub.

 

[Ziggurat]

IMO your headlong rush to quantify everything has led to some unacceptable shortcuts in terms of empirical physics.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

FYI, my time today is really limited so I'm going to focus on the core issues and skip the less relevant stuff. Don't take it personally.

You always ignore stuff even when you aren't pressed for time, I hardly expect today to be any different. Again, do you even know what the 2nd law of thermodynamics is?

 

[Michael Mozina]

You don't get it, Michael. Your eternal universe is prohibited by the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. Unless you want to claim that these laws are not valid, then the entire class of eternal universe theories are invalidated from the start.

Seriously, do you even know what the 2nd law of thermodynamics is?

I am not promoting any specific theory Zig, I'm simply trying to use some of the tenets of your own theory to differentiate it from some other potential cosmology theories.

 

[Ziggurat]

I am not promoting any specific theory Zig, I'm simply trying to use some of the tenets of your own theory to differentiate it from some other potential cosmology theories.

Why do you consider models which violate the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics to be potential alternatives?

 

[edd]

IMO your headlong rush to quantify everything has led to some unacceptable shortcuts in terms of empirical physics. That's the whole bloody point! If you don't know what the real "cause" of "acceleration" might be, calling it "dark energy" is simply irrational IMO. There is nothing gained by substituting the term "unknown acceleration" with "dark energy".

Dark energy limits the range of potential accelerations, so it is very much more restrictive than 'unknown acceleration'. It specifies the force involved and how that force might be expected to change over time, and what acceleration we should expect to see, if any, at other epochs than the current one.

It's a long way better than just calling it an unknown acceleration when it comes to eliminating potential causes of that acceleration through observation. There is an enormous amount to be gained.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

To be more specific: to get robust constraints on the evolution of galaxies, from first LCDM principles, is - today - next to impossible.

Well, that's just another example of why it's not a useful theory IMO.

This is nuts MM, and I think - deep down - you know it.

To get robust constraints on the causes of the 'anomalous ~1000 point drop in the Dow' earlier this month, from first LCDM principles, is - today - impossible.

Do you conclude that it is therefore not a useful theory?

To get robust constraints on the causes of the 'anomalous ~1000 point drop in the Dow' earlier this month, from theories on the formation of the Earth's continents, is - today - impossible.

Do you conclude that it is therefore not a useful theory?

(Shall I go on?)

Leaving everything else aside, there is a 'creation event' associated with Lambda-CDM theory that necessitates a "galaxy formation process" of some sort, with a definite "starting date".

As I tried, carefully, to explain (see my immediate previous post), this is at best very poorly worded, and contains strawmen (at worst, I daresay some would characterise it as gibberish)

That concept of a starting date distinguishes any creation oriented theory from say an "eternal universe" type of theory. Should there not be some "expectation/prediction" of "younger and newer" galaxies in your theory that would be easy to distinguish from say an eternal universe concept where galaxies would not necessarily 'change' all that much in the last 13.7 billion years?

I really have no idea what these two sentences mean; for starters, there is a logical fallacy in conflating "an "eternal universe"" with a "totally no changes universe" (it is, logically, possible that ""younger and newer" galaxies" are an essential component of some ""eternal universe" type of theory").

 

[Reality Check]

Somewhere the phrase "I don't know" got lost along the way in the field of cosmology. Sometimes an honest 'I don't know" is probably "best" rather than pure speculation.

Astronomers and cosmologists are quite ready to say that they do not know something. Sometimes it is hidden away. For example dark matter and dark enegy are not known things. They are placeholder terms for observations that there are some unknown things causing certain effects in the universe.

You seem to think that dark matter and dark energy are real rather than placeholders. Thus your rather inane obsession with changing their names by randomly inserting "god" and "evil" into them.
The real things are the candidates for these, e.g. WIIMPs, axions, non-zero cosmolgical constant, etc.

It seems to me that the professional need to 'quantify' everything they see has created a "rush to creativity" IMO. Guth's addition to BB theory was probably the most objectionable addition from my perspective because it was along the lines of "wild speculation" rather than anything dictated by experimentation.

The problem is that this is not how science works.
Einstein made his "wild speculation" of the equivalence principle and consulted other mathematicians to produce GR. He showed that GR matched existing observations and made predictions. These predictions were tested and found to be correct.
Guth made his "wild speculation" of the inflationary period and showed that it matched existing observations (after a bit of work and help from other scientists). He made predictions from the theory. These predictions were tested and found to be correct.

But wouldn't the concept of older/newer galaxies be a rather "critical" prediction of any BB/creation oriented theory?

Actually no.
The theory of the evolution of galaxies has little to do with the Lambda-CDM model. The model just provides initial conditions for the formation of galaxies. The galaxies then evolve on their own.

Well, so far it's not looking good. LHC is your best bet, but if that last paper I cited has any merit, things aren't looking very promising.

You have not cited a paper in a while (just news articles), so could you cite the paper again?
I assume that it is a paper that proves that the LHC can never ever produce or detect SUSY particles.

I think "acceleration" is actually the elephant in the room. Since there is no cause/effect relationship between acceleration and dark energy, well, that's just like painting the elephant neon yellow.

You have it wrong. The acceleration is like elephant ****. There is a cause of it. We may not be sure that it is an elephant but we know that it is not a mouse.

There seems to be an empirical disconnect somewhere in terms of 'cause/effect' relationships as it relates to cosmology. Rather than limiting themselves to known forces of nature, astronomers tend to be very comfortable "making up" new forces of matter and energy even in the complete absence of any support in the lab, and even without the ability to falsify the concept in the lab. That tends to make the term "best" a bit subjective IMO. "I don't know the cause of acceleration" is one thing. "Dark energy did it" is quite another. Zig seemed to imply a cause/effect relationship between an observation of acceleration, and something he calls 'dark energy', but no such empirical link was ever established. Do you see the dilemma?

There is no dilemma except in your head.
Astronomers do not make up "new forces of matter and energy". They use the 4 (four, 1+1+1+1, an integer between 3 and 5, etc.) known forces to observe the universe.


There is no "empirical link" between dark energy and the cause of the acceleration. Dark energy is defined as the cause of the observed acceleration. Given the measured properties of dark energy it will never be detected in labs here on Earth. But scientists are Ok with this because there are a many things that will never studied in labs here on Earth, e.g.

• super-massive black holes,
• stellar sized balck holes,
• stars,
• galaxies,
• neutron stars,
• planetary nebula,
• supernova,
• nova,
• planets,
• the intragalactic medium,
• the intracluster medium,
• the universe!

There is no requirement to falsify scientific theories in the lab - that is you won personal requirement that is not shared by the scientific community. Science also allows scientific theories to be falsified by observations. That is why we no longer think that the Sun orbits the Earth. That has never been falsified in a lab.
It would be really easy to falsify the existence of dark energy - show that the effect does not exist.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

It's not a matter of "grasping", it's a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with your assessment. I don't see how you've achieved anything useful by renaming an observation of acceleration "dark energy".

We've been here before, MM, many times.

For starters, you are - once more - completely ignoring what so many have been trying so hard, in so many ways, to explain to you.

The entire observation-dark energy thing is quantitative, top to bottom!

To put it extremely crudely, the conclusion "acceleration" from "observations" is a quantitative one; take away the quantitative parts and there is neither acceleration nor observation.

There's no empirical link between them. You might as well call it magic energy.

As above, "magic energy" is utterly useless (one of your key "woo" criteria, remember?), because you can never test it, by definition.

On the other hand, dark energy, in the form you'll find in hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, is extremely useful ... you can formulate hypotheses based on it, and devise tests of it. And how do you do that? By rolling up your sleeves and diving into the quantitative details.

In your need to quantify you're now taking shortcuts with empirical physics ben.

First, and again for n-th time, it is the very epitome of empirical physics.

Second, for the m-th time, your concept of empirical physics - per your very own posts here in the SMMT section of JREF - is woo, per your very own definitions of woo!

 

[Reality Check]

Outstanding questions for Micheal Mozina

1. Any problems with this analysis of the evidence for nonbaryonic matter?
   First asked 18 July 2009

 

[Michael Mozina]

Dark energy limits the range of potential accelerations, so it is very much more restrictive than 'unknown acceleration'. It specifies the force involved and how that force might be expected to change over time, and what acceleration we should expect to see, if any, at other epochs than the current one.

It's a long way better than just calling it an unknown acceleration when it comes to eliminating potential causes of that acceleration through observation. There is an enormous amount to be gained.

Emphasis mine. There's also a potential for loss here too however. How can you be sure you aren't being "too restrictive" and how can you be sure what "force" is involved?

 

[Michael Mozina]

We've been here before, MM, many times.

For starters, you are - once more - completely ignoring what so many have been trying so hard, in so many ways, to explain to you.

The entire observation-dark energy thing is quantitative, top to bottom!

Well, the observation of "acceleration" is a quantitative thing perhaps, but "dark energy" is not related to that quantified acceleration unless you can make some 'qualified" connection between them.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Emphasis mine. There's also a potential for loss here too however. How can you be sure you aren't being "too restrictive" and how can you be sure what "force" is involved?

In a word, you can't.

But that's why really, really, really smart people - far smarter than I am - who are also really, really, really familiar with the relevant theories and observations - far more familiar than I am - work really, really hard to develop hypotheses (and publish them).

And then some other really, really, really smart people who are also really, really, really familiar with the relevant theories and observations (sometimes they're the same people) go and make really, really clever observations (etc) to test those hypotheses (and publish them).

From the results of those tests, some really, really, really smart people who are also really, really, really familiar with the relevant theories and observations draw conclusions from the above (and publish them), and the process repeats.

There is always the possibility that a totally left-field cosmological hypothesis will be developed, and turn out to be consistent with the relevant experimental and observational results ... however, to the best of my knowledge, there have been none that have come from the minds of those who have not first understood a great deal about contemporary physics, for at least a century.

 

[Michael Mozina]

The idea DRD is that your creation event put time constraints on galaxy formation processes that may not be true of other types of theories. Since you've evoked a loophole to allow for "faster than light expansion", we can't really use the size of the galaxy to attempt to falsify your theory. We should however expect to see some progression of events as it relates to the formation of larger material objects in the universe, correct?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Well, the observation of "acceleration" is a quantitative thing perhaps, but "dark energy" is not related to that quantified acceleration unless you can make some 'qualified" connection between them.

Um, er, no.

I strongly recommend that you take the time to learn astrophysics, to the level of at least a really good BSc degree.

Without that basic understanding, I can't see how you will ever even begin to realise just how nonsensical stuff like what's in your post is.

Here's a clue: try to write your posts without the use of double quotes*, and, when you absolutely must use them, carefully and clearly describe just what you mean, paying particular attention to how your meaning differs from that found in standard physics textbooks (for example).

* around key terms; I'm not talking about the orthographic convention concerning reported speech

 

[DeiRenDopa]

The idea DRD is that your creation event

<snip>

Since it's not my "creation event", there's no point in me even quoting the rest of this post, is there?

Would you care to re-write it?

 

[Michael Mozina]

Since it's not my "creation event", there's no point in me even quoting the rest of this post, is there?

Would you care to re-write it?

Would you care to address my point instead?

 

[Michael Mozina]

Um, er, no.

Um, er *YES*! You do not actually observe "dark energy". At most you can claim to observe "acceleration". There is no empirical correlation between "acceleration" and "dark energy". That's where your disconnect occurs.