Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Sol88]

Gas
ETA: which includes plasma in astronomy.

Once more time: Gas is the general term. Plasma is the term used when talking about .... plasma!

Anything confusig about that Sol88?

Are they talking here generaly about gas or did they realy mean plasma?

I know and understand why they would dumb down the explination and call plasma a gas, but they shouldn't!! We are not all ignorant of plasma (Hot, excited gas)

And if they keep calling plasma just a gas, then how do lay people now if they are indeed talking gas or plasma?

it seems much more confusing calling plasma a gas, when just like liquids and solids they are completely different!


Point in case: A news bite the otherday about an erupting volcano in Indonesia it was spweing HOT GAS and ash, is this the same HOT GAS astronomers talk about??

 

[Reality Check]

Are they talking here generaly about gas or did they realy mean plasma?

They are talking about gas in general which includes plasma.

There is no dumbing down. The fact is that there is actual gas in galaxies as well as plasma.

Point in case: A news bite the otherday about an erupting volcano in Indonesia it was spweing HOT GAS and ash, is this the same HOT GAS astronomers talk about??

You do know that geology is not astronomy?

ETA:
Did you know that in the Milky Way up to 25% of hydrogen in the the interstellar medium is neutral, i.e. definitely gas.

 

[Sol88]

They are talking about gas in general which includes plasma.

There is no dumbing down. The fact is that there is actual gas in galaxies as well as plasma.


You do know that geology is not astronomy?

Seems in fact they were not talking about GAS in general but H-Alpha Plasma!

Looks like you may have trouble with galaxy mergers now! Seems the new study AGAIN confirms the electrical nature of the Universe.

Stars form where there are areas of excited hydrogen gas (PLASMA) and not were there is molecular H (a Gas) why?

 

[GeeMack]

Looks like you may have trouble with galaxy mergers now! Seems the new study AGAIN confirms the electrical nature of the Universe.

Point out specifically where the study confirms that. Otherwise I'm sure you'll agree it's reasonable to conclude that you're making it up and you'll withdraw your assertion.

 

[Sol88]

@ GeeMack

Ben M Wrote :

CMB data quickly proved Lerner's predictions wrong (even though he hypothesized vast clouds of utterly invisible plasma). All available kinematics and lensing data proves Peratt's predictions wrong (even though he hypothesized utterly-invisible magnetic fields and ultra-strong field/star interactions). All available large-scale structure data looks nothing whatsoever like Alfven's cosmology predictions (insofar as he bothered making them) but the sort of model he proposes in "On Hierarchical Cosmology" is obvious nonsense. (LSS surveys clearly show that small galaxies formed first, and large clusters formed from their mergers; Alfven explicitly says the opposite). All of Arp's predictions disagree with modern data.

The new line of thinking is

The traditional picture of galaxy growth is not pretty. In fact, it’s a kind of cosmic cannibalism: two galaxies are caught in ominous tango, eventually melding together in a fiery collision, thus spurring on an intense but short-lived bout of star formation. Now, new research suggests that most galaxies in the early Universe increased their stellar populations in a considerably less violent way, simply by burning through their own gas over long periods of time.

 

[Reality Check]

Seems in fact they were not talking about GAS in general but H-Alpha Plasma!

Wrong: the H-Alpha ionized gas (which is probably plasma) is how they deteted the star formation in the galaxies.

Looks like you may have trouble with galaxy mergers now!

Wrong: There are no problems with the mergers . This is an additional mechanism for galaxy growth. It seems to have dominated in the early universe. It no longer does.

Seems the new study AGAIN confirms the electrical nature of the Universe.

Utterly wrong.
This new study confirms that standard physics works, e.g. that dark matter created filaments of gas that fed the growth of galaxies in the early universe.
This has nothing to do with the nonsense of EU.

Stars form where there are areas of excited hydrogen gas (PLASMA) and not were there is molecular H (a Gas) why?

Quite ignorant: Stars from gas (including plasma) at any place where there is gas for them to form.
The H-Alpha ionized gas is created by the stars. No stars = no h-alpha spectrum from ionized hydrogen.

NASA's Spitzer Finds Distant Galaxies Grazed on Gas

Chary and his team addressed this question by using Spitzer to survey more than 70 remote galaxies that existed 1 to 2 billion years after the Big Bang (our universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old). To their surprise, these galaxies were blazing with what is called H alpha, which is radiation from hydrogen gas that has been hit with ultraviolet light from stars. High levels of H alpha indicate stars are forming vigorously. Seventy percent of the surveyed galaxies show strong signs of H alpha. By contrast, only 0.1 percent of galaxies in our local universe possess this signature.

 

[Reality Check]

@ Sol88

Ben M Wrote :

CMB data quickly proved Lerner's predictions wrong (even though he hypothesized vast clouds of utterly invisible plasma). All available kinematics and lensing data proves Peratt's predictions wrong (even though he hypothesized utterly-invisible magnetic fields and ultra-strong field/star interactions). All available large-scale structure data looks nothing whatsoever like Alfven's cosmology predictions (insofar as he bothered making them) but the sort of model he proposes in "On Hierarchical Cosmology" is obvious nonsense. (LSS surveys clearly show that small galaxies formed first, and large clusters formed from their mergers; Alfven explicitly says the opposite). All of Arp's predictions disagree with modern data.

A cluster is not a galaxy. It is a cluster of galaxies - more than 1. This new discovery is about the growth of individual galaxies.

 

[Tim Thompson]

Gas & Plasma

Are they talking here generaly about gas or did they realy mean plasma?

Plasma is almost always an ionized gas. Your implicit assumption that gas & plasma are two different things is fallacious.

Seems in fact they were not talking about GAS in general but H-Alpha Plasma!

H-alpha emission only comes from neutral hydrogen, never from ionized hydrogen (i.e., never from plasma).

Looks like you may have trouble with galaxy mergers now! Seems the new study AGAIN confirms the electrical nature of the Universe.

The new study has nothing at all to do with plasma and nothing at all to do with the "electrical" nature of the universe. You are making things up.

Stars form where there are areas of excited hydrogen gas (PLASMA) and not were there is molecular H (a Gas) why?

Wrong. Stars form where there is mostly neutral atomic & molecular gas. The gas does not ionize (i.e., become plasma) until the star formation process has begun.

 

[tusenfem]

Seems in fact they were not talking about GAS in general but H-Alpha Plasma!

The fact that you talk about "H-alpha plasma" shows clearly that you have no idea what you are talking about, but then who would expect that from you?

 

[Michael Mozina]

The hypothesized vacuum energy.

The "real" (not make-believe) energy in every vacuum we've observed contains positive kinetic energy and positive pressure. Is that the vacuum energy you mean ben?

If you hypothesize that this energy exists, then GR alone accounts for all the cosmology data.

Ok. By that same logic if the constant does turn out to be related to EM fields, one could also claim that GR accounts for all the data, even though gravity itself is a "bit player" in terms of the actual "acceleration process". You're sort of regulating the inward curvature of gravity to a negligible role in the whole process.

That's why we hypothesize that vacuum energy exists.

Again, are you talking about POSITIVE PRESSURE vacuums or some "made up" kind of vacuum that you cannot demonstrate in the lab?

Get used to me repeating this answer, Michael, because it's still the answer. The fact that you have failed to understand it twelve times does not change it.

Dark stuff isn't an "answer", it's a "statement of faith' in the unseen in the lab. It's a DARK RELIGION. You can't even tell me where dark energy comes from, let alone why the acceleration is greater today that in the past. You've technically "explained/answered" exactly nothing.

What objects, forces, and laws of nature does EU/PC have to hypothesize in order to account for cosmology data?

Ari's paper proposed nothing new to physics in the final analysis. It's just as viable of an "explanation" as your dark sky gods.

 

[Michael Mozina]

No it's not. My redshift interpretation is that the same redshift we see in every moving or gravitating system whatsoever is the same one we see in faraway moving, gravitating systems.

So you're saying that this redshift is directly related to MOVING OBJECTS, not 'expanding space"?

Ari's "interpretation" requires a "sparse hot plasma" filling the Universe. We have lots of evidence that this plasma is not there.

WHAT?!?!? Are you blind?

(Pay attention: I did NOT say "he merely hypothesizes that it is there". I said we have positive evidence of the absence of Ari's plasma: if this plasma existed it would have obliterated the Lyman-Alpha forest. It did not.

Which positive published evidence is that ben?

That is the first of many explicit disagreements between Ari's hypothesis and the cosmology data.

Those same redshift patterns blew away your beliefs too ben. That's why you folks stuff your theory full of "dark energy" in the first place. Get over this notion that one handwave on your part constitutes evidence that Ari's "explanation" is invalid. You're pulling this stuff out of your back pocket IMO.

Ari's paper does one thing that I asked for. He uses his hypothesis to generate a curve, and overlays that curve on actual cosmology data. Yaaaaaay! Woo hoo! Finally! Why can't you do that, Michael?

Because it's already been done, and therefore there is no need for me to personally do it for you here and now? What is it with your cult anyway? Since when did ANY scientific theory rise and fall on the math skills of a single individual on a cyberforum? What difference would it make if I couldn't do ANY math at all? Would Ari's work be any different than it is?

Which is exactly what Riess predicted it would do based on the z<1 data; it's how GR tells you that vacuum energy would behave.

In theory or in the lab Ben? Is the pressure of the "vacuum" positive like in the lab, or negative as in "make believe"?

Thus Ari's model---his only actual numerical comparison to modern data---has been proven wrong/I]. (Or at least he has to---gasp!---add new parameters to re-fit the data.)

So what? At least he didn't "make up" new forces of nature.

LCDM predicted the z>1 data points perfectly and did not need to add any new parameters.

Oh boloney. You just tweaked your number first. So what?

I repeat, again, my request: DO YOU HAVE A NON-LCDM MODEL THAT ISN'T ALREADY FALSIFIED? Show me.

I just did Ben. The fact you refuse to even look it honestly says volumes IMO. I just showed you that an EU orientation and a static universe get us VERY close to the exactly the SAME numbers you're so damned interested in, but you aren't even willing to "tweak" it even a little bit to "fit" even though you folks tweak the properties of your "dark" sky entities on a regular basis!

Empirical physics be damned with you folks. It's all about "make believe math" with you folks.

I assume nothing. I have a hypothesis. Do you?

You don't have a "hypothesis" ben, you have a 'religion' that begins. "In the beginning the dark energy entity did it". It's so impotent on Earth it's never going to show up in a lab, and therefore it's forever an "act of faith' on the part of the "believer".

Do you have a CMB-generated-by-stars hypothesis that isn't already disproven by the data? Show me. Show me plots of the CMB frequency spectrum, angular power spectrum, and polarization as calculated from your best hypothesis. I've asked three times.

I've yet to see you even look at Ari's work in a truly honest way ben. You're essentially "nitpicking' about what could and might be "tweaked" with minor parameter changes. Give me a break! If that's your handwaving attitude toward these ideas, what's the point? You're perfectly fine with tweaking your dark sky entities anytime you need to do that, yet you refuse to honestly entertain a single "tired light" theory, even one that puts us into the very same ballpark.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Because MM does "not bark math on command"?

I actually did that for you personally *ONE TIME*. Do you even remember what the topic was about? Did it matter to you one iota?

Because MM cannot do the sort of math necessary to produce such things?

When I have done the math, the person asking for the math never cared one tiny little bit that I did it. Not once did you say "thank you" or appreciate my effort. To this day you still give me no credit at all for the efforts I made on your behalf. What then is the value of math? You folks don't actually care about the math or you would have found some flaw in Alfven's maths. Instead you use your math skills to protect your ego from admitting that you have a QUALIFICATION problem, not a QUANTIFICATION problem. Nice.

MM already did, many times ... it's called "Mozplasma is wot dun it". It's the true eighth wonder of the world, because it's Mozpirical, and Mozifiable to boot*.

I'm afraid tired light theories predated my birth and they will survive my death as well. Get over it DRD.

* for those who don't already know, the only person who can Mozify an idea is MM himself.

I've seen religious cults attack the messenger less than this pitiful group. It seems that since you refuse to address or acknowledge the QUALIFICATION problems in your theory (dark, invisible sky gods did it), you only have one other option, attack the messenger. Every day, that's all you folks can seem to do. No demonstration of that dark stuff is possible, so all you can do is attack the messenger. How pitifully sad.

 

[Tim Thompson]

Vacuum Energy

The "real" (not make-believe) energy in every vacuum we've observed contains positive kinetic energy and positive pressure.

Wrong. The energy of an electromagnetic field in a vacuum is definitely not kinetic. Likewise, the energy of a gravitational field in a vacuum is also not kinetic. In fact, the energy of almost any field in the vacuum is definitely not kinetic, because kinetic energy is defined as the energy of a moving particle with non-zero mass. The only exception might be a "matter field" as theoreticians contrive it, but I am not familiar enough with that part of theoretical physics to opine about the kinetic nature of matter field energy.

Dark energy or a cosmological constant or a vacuum energy or any other putative causative agent for the accelerated expansion of the universe is nothing more exotic than the introduction of field energy to the vacuum, which violates no physical sensibility except those of the sublimely ignorant. The fact, if fact it is, that such a field does not show up in a laboratory is not relevant to its scientific or philosophical or intellectual validity.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Despite the literary shouting, this is an extremely weak criticism.

Not IMO. "Dark sky gods did it" isn't even a "testable" hypothesis Tim, not the way you folks have created your sky gods. The energy god is utterly impotent on Earth and utterly incapable of producing negative pressures in a vacuum. It can't move a single atom or a single photon in a controlled experiment. It's more impotent than your average religious entity.

Assumptions are the "meat & potatoes" of science, where nearly everything is based on some kind of assumption. But the reality is that not all assumptions are equal, and all assumptions are subject to testing and verification.

But you are just "assuming" that the "perfect" gap filler exists to fill in the gaps of your otherwise falsified "redshift" theory. You just stuffed the redshift gaps of your theory with mythical mathical "dark stuff" that magically fills in the gaps of your otherwise falsified redshift "interpretation".

The assumption that the CMB is not generated by stars, galaxies or scattering is easy to test. None of those three mechanisms can produce a radiation field that shows a Planck Law spectral energy distribution (SED), not individually and not in combination (this is a fact not an assumption). This fact leaves your criticism looking more like a whisper than a shout. There is, in fact, no known physical mechanism, such as you have described, whereby one might produce a Planck Law SED, except through the obvious mechanism of a thermal blackbody source.

How about we begin with ANY *RAW* CMB image and look at what are the "brightest" of the objects in those images. Why is it that our galaxy and the stars in our galaxy are the brightest things in that image Tim? The raw, unfiltered, unprocessed, unfutzed with images, all show a clear pattern of galaxies being the brightest things in the image. The absorption and emission of such light has long been proposed as a source for such a "background radiation".

But this cannot possibly be true. You are already on record as denying the validity of both science & empiricism. Therefore the idea that you could be attached to "empirical physics" is nonsensical. We all know for a fact that your arguments are in fact entirely emotional and have no basis in empirical science.

That is absolutely false Tim. I reject your religion for the same reason I reject all non empirical religions. Your sky gods are a complete and utter dud in the lab Tim. They have no material effect whatsoever on a single atom or a single photon or a single ion of any sort. They are "dead" in the lab. They are *IMPOTENT* at the level of empirical reality, are surely as most religious icons.

"Dark sky god did it" is at least as implausible as "God did it and intentionally made it mysterious".

 

[Michael Mozina]

Wrong. The energy of an electromagnetic field in a vacuum is definitely not kinetic.

Sure it is. The photon is the carrier particle of the EM field and photons ARE kinetic energy Tim.

Likewise, the energy of a gravitational field in a vacuum is also not kinetic.

That depends on whether QM's concept of a graviton has merit. It could in fact simply be a "curvature" that creates "potential' energy that ultimately is converted to KINETIC energy of moving particles.

In fact, the energy of almost any field in the vacuum is definitely not kinetic, because kinetic energy is defined as the energy of a moving particle with non-zero mass.

How many neutrinos blow through an average "vacuum" here on Earth every single second?

Dark energy or a cosmological constant or a vacuum energy or any other putative causative agent for the accelerated expansion of the universe is nothing more exotic than the introduction of field energy to the vacuum, which violates no physical sensibility except those of the sublimely ignorant.

Or sublimely ignorant of the fact that even photons are a form of kinetic energy!

The fact, if fact it is, that such a field does not show up in a laboratory is not relevant to its scientific or philosophical or intellectual validity.

God did it must also then be a valid hypothesis from your perspective too then, correct?

 

[Michael Mozina]

The universe refuses to obey Michael Mozina once again:
Dark energy spotted in the cosmic microwave background

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/15/7/15/cmb1.jpg

Of course when we look at the CAUSE, the SOURCE of these wavelengths, we notice that our GALAXY is the single largest producer of such wavelengths and we already know that "scattering happens". Your own raw images demonstrate conclusively that the stars in a given galaxy are the primary EMISSION points of these wavelengths, since we can even observe the galactic disk in our own galaxy!

Sorry, but all you've found are "redshift patterns" that are congruent with "acceleration". You've still shown no empirical link between that acceleration pattern and God, or that acceleration pattern and your sky entities.

 

[Reality Check]

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/15/7/15/cmb1.jpg

Of course when we look at the CAUSE, the SOURCE of these wavelengths, we notice that our GALAXY is the single largest producer of such wavelengths and we already know that "scattering happens". Your own raw images demonstrate conclusively that the stars in a given galaxy are the primary EMISSION points of these wavelengths, since we can even observe the galactic disk in our own galaxy!

Sorry, but all you've found are "redshift patterns" that are congruent with "acceleration". You've still shown no empirical link between that acceleration pattern and God, or that acceleration pattern and your sky entities.

Sorry, but you are displaying your ignorance once again, Michael Mozina.
The known sources of microwave radiation (such as our GALAXY) are subtracted from the CMB analysis.

The idiocy of thinking that fluctuations in the CMB is produced by stars in our (or any) galaxy is obvious: They are excluded from the CMB !
(and the fluctuations are correlated with supervoids and superclusters).

Sorry for your inability to read but but what scientists have found are

• confirmation of the correlation of the fluctuations with large-scale structures.
• an empirical link between that observed acceleration and dark energy.

Dark energy spotted in the cosmic microwave background

In the first of two papers, a team of astronomers including Sudeep Das at the University of California, Berkeley, has uncovered fluctuations in the CMB that deviate from this Gaussian distribution. The deviations, observed with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile, are caused by interactions with large-scale structures in the universe, such as galaxy clusters. "On average, a CMB photon will have encountered around 50 large-scale structures before it reaches our telescope," Das told physicsworld.com. "The gravitational influence of these structures, which are dominated by massive clumps of dark matter, will each deflect the path of the photon," he adds. This process, called "lensing", eventually adds up to a total deflection of around 3 arc minutes – one-20th of a degree.
Dark energy versus structure

In the second paper Das, along with Blake Sherwin of Princeton University and Joanna Dunkley of Oxford University, looks at how lensing could reveal dark energy. Dark energy acts to counter the emergence of structures within the universe. A universe with no dark energy would have a lot of structure. As a result, the CMB photons would undergo greater lensing and the fluctuations would deviate more from the original Gaussian distribution.
However, the opposite was found to be true. "We see too little lensing to account for a universe with no dark energy," Sherwin told physicsworld.com. "In fact, the amount of lensing we see is consistent with the amount of dark energy we would expect to see from other measurements."

That should be simple enough for you to grasp, Michael Mozina.

 

[Reality Check]

I'm afraid tired light theories predated my birth and they will survive my death as well. Get over it DRD.

Wrong: tired light theories predated your birth and have been dead for a long time (Errors in Tired Light Cosmology). Get over it MM.

 

[GeeMack]

So you're saying that this redshift is directly related to MOVING OBJECTS, not 'expanding space"?

WHAT?!?!? Are you blind?

Which positive published evidence is that ben?

Those same redshift patterns blew away your beliefs too ben. That's why you folks stuff your theory full of "dark energy" in the first place. Get over this notion that one handwave on your part constitutes evidence that Ari's "explanation" is invalid. You're pulling this stuff out of your back pocket IMO.

Because it's already been done, and therefore there is no need for me to personally do it for you here and now? What is it with your cult anyway? Since when did ANY scientific theory rise and fall on the math skills of a single individual on a cyberforum? What difference would it make if I couldn't do ANY math at all? Would Ari's work be any different than it is?

In theory or in the lab Ben? Is the pressure of the "vacuum" positive like in the lab, or negative as in "make believe"?

So what? At least he didn't "make up" new forces of nature.

Oh boloney. You just tweaked your number first. So what?

I just did Ben. The fact you refuse to even look it honestly says volumes IMO. I just showed you that an EU orientation and a static universe get us VERY close to the exactly the SAME numbers you're so damned interested in, but you aren't even willing to "tweak" it even a little bit to "fit" even though you folks tweak the properties of your "dark" sky entities on a regular basis!

Empirical physics be damned with you folks. It's all about "make believe math" with you folks.

You don't have a "hypothesis" ben, you have a 'religion' that begins. "In the beginning the dark energy entity did it". It's so impotent on Earth it's never going to show up in a lab, and therefore it's forever an "act of faith' on the part of the "believer".

I've yet to see you even look at Ari's work in a truly honest way ben. You're essentially "nitpicking' about what could and might be "tweaked" with minor parameter changes. Give me a break! If that's your handwaving attitude toward these ideas, what's the point? You're perfectly fine with tweaking your dark sky entities anytime you need to do that, yet you refuse to honestly entertain a single "tired light" theory, even one that puts us into the very same ballpark.

Another argument by long winded complaint, dishonestly distorting real science, lying about the position of others in this discussion who do understand physics, argument by showing contempt for math, argument by whining about being left out of the mix for not understanding science, but not a speck of actual scientific, objective criticism of LCDM theory. Maybe LCDM should be abandoned because it's too complicated for a handful of crackpots on the 'net to understand it.

 

[Tim Thompson]

Dark Energy & CMB

No, you *ASSUME* that the CMB isn't just generated by stars, galaxies and "scattering". Everything else you believe is predicated upon that one ASSUMPTION.

Despite the literary shouting, this is an extremely weak criticism.

Not IMO. "Dark sky gods did it" isn't even a "testable" hypothesis Tim, not the way you folks have created your sky gods. The energy god is utterly impotent on Earth and utterly incapable of producing negative pressures in a vacuum. It can't move a single atom or a single photon in a controlled experiment. It's more impotent than your average religious entity.

Mozina's arguments here are not just unscientific, they are anti-scientific, and constitute an example of his continual denial of the validity of science. His opinion does not alter the objective facts. Dark energy is an empirically testable hypothesis which has in fact been empirically tested. That hypothesis has passed its empirical tests. Observation and theory are mutually consistent, and that consistency is the heart & soul of science. I have already demonstrated these objective facts in numerous past posts (e.g., Empirical Evidence for Dark Energy (17 August 2010), Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Inflation and Real Science (16 May 2010), Cosmological Parameters (12 February 2010), Dark Energy is a Cosmological Constant III (7 February 2010), Inflationary cosmology is real science (30 January 2010), Dark Energy is a Cosmological Constant (26 january 2010), Inflationary cosmology & science (10 January 2010)).

the bottom line is this:

Bottom line: There is no religion at work from our end, only from yours. You, Michael Mozina are the one & only person engaged in the defence of a religious argument, while the rest of us are engaged in empirical science. And I might add that you are failing badly while we are remarkably successful. Neither is there any hint of arbitrariness at work from our end, only from yours. You, Michael Mozina are purely arbitrary in your choice to always ignore anything and everything that conflicts with your subjective & unreasonable religious doctrine of faith. Indeed, you have yet to present anything even remotely resembling empirical science in this "debate", and don't fool yourself into thinking that it has gone unnoticed.

Certainly the idea of dark energy stands on strong empirical grounds; it is testable, it has been tested, it has passed the those tests with greater confidence than any other hypothesis that has been presented.

Now, let us go back to the CMB ...

No, you *ASSUME* that the CMB isn't just generated by stars, galaxies and "scattering". Everything else you believe is predicated upon that one ASSUMPTION.

How about we begin with ANY *RAW* CMB image and look at what are the "brightest" of the objects in those images. Why is it that our galaxy and the stars in our galaxy are the brightest things in that image Tim? The raw, unfiltered, unprocessed, unfutzed with images, all show a clear pattern of galaxies being the brightest things in the image. The absorption and emission of such light has long been proposed as a source for such a "background radiation".

Mozina's comments stand on a firm foundation of profound ignorance. Is there anyone else out there who fails to appreciate the difference between background and foreground? The CMB is a cosmic microwave background. Galaxies and galaxy clusters are a non cosmic microwave foreground. It is not a terribly demanding task to realize that in a system of [background + foreground] then [background + foreground - foreground = background].

Standard LCDM cosmology requires the existence of a background electromagnetic radiation that is very strictly thermal, meaning that is very strictly adheres to a Planck Law spectral energy density (SED). One cannot clearly see the very weak background until one has removed the very strong foreground. Mozina says, "The absorption and emission of such light has long been proposed as a source for such a 'background radiation'." But he has it all wrong. All the way back in 1926, Sir Arthur Eddington addressed that very question in his book The Internal Constitution of the Stars. Eddington explicitly pointed out that the background starlight has an "effective temperature", but is necessarily has a non-thermal SED. The CMB predicted by big bang cosmology must be thermal. So to insist that anyone has "long proposed" that the non-thermal starlight & galaxy emission is in fact the same thing as the thermal CMB is clearly just plain wrong.

Big bang cosmology survives as the leading cosmological paradigm for several reasons. One of those reasons is that all big bang cosmologies predict the existence of a pervasive thermal CMB, and that observations in all cases confirm the existence of a thermal CMB that meets the requirements of the paradigm. Alternate cosmological models might allow for such a CMB, but they do not require it. Only big bang cosmologies require it. That's why the empirical existence of the CMB favors big bang cosmologies over competing or alternate cosmologies.

Mozina's appeal to look only at the raw images from which the CMB is derived is an appeal to ignore science & reason. Mozina's claim that dark energy is without empirical merit is based on his own rejection of empirical science. This thread has grown to 115 pages, 4580 posts, and yet nothing new has been added since the first few pages, the first few posts. It's just a long string of Mozina claiming to be more scientific & empirical than everyone else, while at the same time actually rejecting science & empiricism! How ludicrous is this whole thread, and how ludicrous are Mozina's arguments!