Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Tubbythin]

Let it die! Mercy! This is pointless, everyone. Michael is now taking a fictional version of Albert Einstein, giving him a fictional version of a gravity theory, pretending to apply this theory to data that he doesn't understand, and splitting hairs about a purported difference between this fictional theory that he likes and a another fictional theory that he doesn't like.

With a fictional name that gets more and more stupid every time he mentions it.

Can we move this thread to humor?

 

[Tim Thompson]

Perpetual Student has identified the central problem with your argument:

As I have pointed out, since you have no clue what this means:
[latex] R_\mu_\nu - \dfrac{1}{2}g_\mu_\nu R + g_\mu_\nu\Lambda= \dfrac{8\pi G}{c^4}T_\mu_\nu [/latex]
you are not qualified to participate in this discussion. Learn from those here who understand this subject. Your comments expose you as confused and uneducated. You don't even understand the history of GR let alone the mathematics and physics.

Even today, you can complete an undergraduate degree in physics at some schools without understanding that equation.

When I completed my B.S. in 1978 you could easily have done so without ever even seeing that equation, let alone understand it. But since I was interested in astrophysics I took the one general course in GR that the one astronomy professor taught; very basic, and I suspect we really didn't understand the equation except at the basic level. I suspect that it remains the case today that the vast majority of undergrad physics students don't even see that equation. But since I have not been a formal student for a long time I don't know that, it's just a guess. Any undergrads reading this see GR in class?

The physical "cause" of Einstein's lambda was the *purely attractive* thing called "gravity" that consistently shows up in the lab.

What??

The truly astounding depth of Mozina's insight into physics is perhaps best demonstrated by this exchange. Who else could have realized that the universe is flying apart because of a fundamental force which only manifests itself by pulling things together. A truly amazing intellectual feat.

Gravity can easily be empirically linked to "acceleration".

OK, since you think it is so easy, then do it.
Question: What is the "easy" link between the apparently repulsive, accelerated expansion of the universe and the apparently attractive force of gravity?

This has always been, and will always be, a dumb way to think about it---lab vs. non-lab.

ben_m is far too civil. It is in fact just plain stupid. I have already demonstrated in detail (I hope) that Mozina has invented his own personal meaning for the word "empirical", which no other intelligent person on Earth would ever accept. See, for instance, What is "Empirical" Science V and references & links therein. There is no imaginable justification for Mozina's constant claim that only laboratory experiments can be empirical. Furthermore, it is a hypocritical claim anyway, since we already know that Mozina will reject any and all "empirical" controlled laboratory experiments which conflict with his religious & philosophical preconceptions. This is exactly what he did as regards the controlled, laboratory experiments showing magnetic reconnection in situ in laboratory plasmas (see, e.g., Magnetic Reconnection Redux XI and references & links therein).

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Is he not also suggesting we're at the centre of the universe?

I lost track. Are we there surrounded by a solid iron shell yet?

 

[Tubbythin]

I lost track. Are we there surrounded by a solid iron shell yet?

Possibly. Or maybe a righid iron shell. With some neon that's emitting white light. Or something.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Let it die! Mercy! This is pointless, everyone. Michael is now taking a fictional..

The only fictional things I'm talking about are those metaphysical things you stuffed into lambda. The rest of this conversation is going nowhere because you keep trying to blame me personally for your epic fail of qualifying your ideas. Guth literally "made up" inflation in his head. It is and was without precedent. Dark energy is also another "made up" terms that is physically unrelated to "acceleration'. What you have always failed to do, and what you will always fail to do is show a cause/effect relationship between "acceleration" and "dark energy", or "lambda" and any of your magic friends.

Blame me all you like, but in the end it's my personal fault that you failed to qualify your theory. It's like a creationist blaming me because I don't 'have faith' in their idea in the absence of empirical support. In fact it's exactly like that.

 

[Tubbythin]

When I completed my B.S. in 1978 you could easily have done so without ever even seeing that equation, let alone understand it. But since I was interested in astrophysics I took the one general course in GR that the one astronomy professor taught; very basic, and I suspect we really didn't understand the equation except at the basic level. I suspect that it remains the case today that the vast majority of undergrad physics students don't even see that equation. But since I have not been a formal student for a long time I don't know that, it's just a guess. Any undergrads reading this see GR in class?

Its not too many year since I graduated. I never saw it. We did "derive" the Friedmann equation using Newtonian gravity (in so far as that's possible) once.

 

[Tubbythin]

The only fictional things I'm talking about are those metaphysical things you stuffed into lambda. The rest of this conversation is going nowhere because you keep trying to blame me personally for your epic fail of qualifying your ideas. Guth literally "made up" inflation in his head. It is and was without precedent. Dark energy is also another "made up" terms that is physically unrelated to "acceleration'. What you have always failed to do, and what you will always fail to do is show a cause/effect relationship between "acceleration" and "dark energy", or "lambda" and any of your magic friends.

Blame me all you like, but in the end it's my personal fault that you failed to qualify your theory. It's like a creationist blaming me because I don't 'have faith' in their idea in the absence of empirical support. In fact it's exactly like that.

You've made up a whole new history of science in a completely failed attempt to con people in to thinking your completely failed attempt to discredit LCDM was anything other than a complete and utter failure.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

The funny thing about this exchange for me is that it reveals Michael's bizarre respect (if that's the right word) for authority figures, provided that they're dead. Birkeland was a visionary, and his mistakes are forgotten. Alfven was a genius, and progress in plasma physics since him get ignored. And Einstein's work was empirically "qualified" (whatever the hell that means) but modern cosmology is not. The irony of Michael's treatment of Einstein is multi-faceted: Michael doesn't understand GR itself, he doesn't understand that it's primarily a mathematically-justified theory that only gained experimental evidence long after it was formulated, and he doesn't understand that Einstein made unjustified assumptions with lambda. This deference and incomprehension leads Michael to claim he's supporting Einstein when in fact the position he is trying to take is directly contradicted by Einstein's actual work. But he can't bring himself to claim that Einstein was wrong about anything (even though he clearly was, and even admitted so), just like he can't admit Alfven or Birkeland were wrong. It's quite strange. The sad part is that this mythologizing deprives them of their humanity, and the enforced ignorance required to maintain this illusion limits appreciation of their true accomplishments.

And, as I've pointed out (several times), it's this sort of thing which provides the empirical^, objective, independently verifiable evidence in support of the conclusion that MM is approaching this subject (and, indeed, pretty much all of physics, astronomy, and cosmology) from a religious perspective.

To MM, the TRUTH is eternal and static; Birkeland, Alfvén, and Einstein were prophets, who could tap into the TRUTH, and MM is unique* in that he, and he alone, can discern this prophetic reality (he's acting like an acolyte?).

MM's failure to be able to communicate what he means is a further piece of evidence: not only is he, in essence, speaking a different language (see GM's list, for example), but because none of the others who've posted in this thread (and others like it) share his quasi-religious approach to the topic, no communication is possible (at least until the radically different approaches can be acknowledged, recognised, and clarified).

In short, what MM is advocating is, it seems to me, the very antithesis of science.

^ not "empirical", per GM this is equivalent to #&@#%&, i.e. it's meaningless
* though not entirely; several EU proponents seem to be like this too

 

[Michael Mozina]

This is "*"*AMAZING*"*".

What is amazing to me is that fact that you personally give them a "free pass" when it comes to "qualifying" their claims. Guth simply "made up" inflation. It is without precedent. It has no business being associated with "lambda" because it's not real. It's fictional. Whatever the physical "cause" of acceleration, it has nothing whatsoever to do with "dark energy" because "dark energy" has never caused anything to accelerate.

You simply ignore the qualification problems in their theory entirely. That's the part I find amazing and fascinating. If I were stuffing "God energy" (pilfered math and all) in there, would you still think that was an "empirical theory"?

 

[Michael Mozina]

And, as I've pointed out (several times), it's this sort of thing which provides the empirical^, objective, independently verifiable evidence in support of the conclusion that MM is approaching this subject (and, indeed, pretty much all of physics, astronomy, and cosmology) from a religious perspective.

You have reality standing on it's head now DRD. I reject your religion for exactly the same reason I reject other religions. Your unseen entities are evidently entirely impotent on Earth!

It's really not my fault that you choose to "have faith" in the "unseen". It's not my fault you have no physical justification for claiming "dark energy did it" or "inflation did it" when it comes to lambda. The fact you cannot show an empirical cause/effect relationship in the lab is no more my fault than it's my fault that a creationist cannot support their beliefs in the lab! You're simply blaming me for not "having faith" in *your* religion.

 

[GeeMack]

The only fictional things I'm talking about are those metaphysical things you stuffed into lambda. The rest of this conversation is going nowhere because you keep trying to blame me personally for your epic fail of qualifying your ideas. Guth literally "made up" inflation in his head. It is and was without precedent. Dark energy is also another "made up" terms that is physically unrelated to "acceleration'. What you have always failed to do, and what you will always fail to do is show a cause/effect relationship between "acceleration" and "dark energy", or "lambda" and any of your magic friends.

And with no definition of terms, the argument above is the same as...

The only fictional things I'm talking about are those metaphysical things you stuffed into lambda. The rest of this conversation is going nowhere because you keep trying to blame me personally for your epic fail of qualifying your ideas. Guth literally "&%^&#$%" inflation in his head. It is and was without precedent. Dark energy is also another "*#%^@" terms that is physically unrelated to "$^@'. What you have always failed to do, and what you will always fail to do is show a cause/effect relationship between "&#%^@" and "!^@^", or "&#%^@" and any of your magic friends.

Gibberish.

Blame me all you like [...]

You are to blame for refusing to understand the commonly used terminology of astrophysics and for refusing to define the bizarre language you've invented, that language where you use common terms but redefine them somewhere in your imagination to suit your own whim. And you are to blame for refusing to define the terms of that invented language so that other people can understand what the hell you're talking about.

 

[Ziggurat]

I didn't put anyone on any pedestals Zig, or claimed anyone was infallible.

You may know that they make mistakes in an abstract sense, but you can't actually seem to recognize those mistakes.

Einstein's "mistake" in introducing a positive lambda was never an "unqualified" mistake.

I'd contradict you on this, except I have no idea what the hell you even mean by "unqualified". Would you care to define that term? But in any case, it was most definitely unsupported by any observational or experimental evidence.

Your theories however are completely *devoid* of empirical qualification. They are completely ad hoc mental constructs

Sounds like Einstein's original lambda.

 

[Ziggurat]

What is amazing to me is that fact that you personally give the a "free pass" when it comes to "qualifying" their claims.

Once again, what the hell does it mean to "qualify" a claim? You're making up terminology without defining it. I suspect that it's an attempt by you to redirect attention from the fact that you can't quantify anything, but I wonder if you even have a definition for what you mean by "qualify".

 

[Michael Mozina]

Sounds like Einstein's original lambda.

Gah! No! Einstein's lambda was directly related to gravity. There is a clear empirical link between gravity and acceleration of objects in spacetime. There is no empirical cause/effect relationship between lambda and your invisible friends. *That* is the antithesis of science. Einstein's lambda was empirically qualified even if it was eventually falsified. Your invisible friends are entirely *devoid* of empirical qualification. It would be like me calling it "Godflation" and "Godenergy" and starting my own metaphysical religion. There's no cause/effect relationship between lambda and your invisible friends! We can't even falsify your theory because you simply add new friends as needed, and/or change the properties of your friends anytime it suits you.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Once again, what the hell does it mean to "qualify" a claim? You're making up terminology without defining it. I suspect that it's an attempt by you to redirect attention from the fact that you can't quantify anything, but I wonder if you even have a definition for what you mean by "qualify".

If I claim that the cause of acceleration is related to an EM field, I can demonstrate that EM fields cause plasma to accelerate. I could be wrong about some specific observation of acceleration being caused by an EM field, but at least my EM acceleration idea is well "qualified".

If however I claim my invisible friend in my pocket is the cause of acceleration, I have no way to "qualify" that claim even if I quantify the acceleration process correctly. See the difference?

 

[temporalillusion]

This thread makes more sense when viewed through a white light filter.

 

[Michael Mozina]

An anecdote. In oral exams, you get to a point---I've been there from both sides, unfortunately---where the examinee obviously can't say anything intelligent on a certain topic.

Ya and you folks have reached that point evidently. When asked to produce qualified empirical support of your claims, you hem and haw and act like gravity and magic dark elves are equally valid in terms of qualification. You have nothing really intelligent to say, nor any sort of empirical support in the lab. You've got "space" expanding when you cannot even physically define "space" in the first place, let alone tell us what "expands" in "space"! The whole thing is metaphysical woo, from start to finish. You've established no cause/effect relationships between "acceleration/lambda" and either of your invisible buddies. Somehow it's all my fault however, so here we are going around in metaphysical circles.

 

[tusenfem]

It doesn't "test" anything ben, it's simply an "empirical possibility". Gravity can easily be empirically linked to "acceleration". It's therefore "possible" that mass outside of our visible universe "attracts" the mass inside out universe and "accelerates" that mass over time.

Naturally, every first year physics student learns that only mass inside the sphere makes gravity. The notion of a huge universe outside of what we can observe pulling our little corner apart is preposterous.

 

[GeeMack]

Somehow it's all my fault however [...]

Yes, it is, because you are wholly unqualified to communicate in a sane, rational, or intelligent manner on the subject of physics, yet you persist in pretending that you are qualified to do so.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Yes, it is, because you are wholly unqualified to communicate in a sane, rational, or intelligent manner on the subject of physics, yet you persist in pretending that you are qualified to do so.

That's a lot like a theist calling me "evil" for not believing in their particular unseen entity of choice. Since you can't produce any cause/effect demonstrations related to your unseen buddies, I'm somehow at fault.

Note that if I asked you to show a cause/effect relationship between "gravity"" and "acceleration", you'd have no trouble at all. It's only because your inflation genies and dark energies are impotent in the lab that you have problems with my "sanity".